Resend vs SendGrid
Resend is a developer-first transactional email API, known for the cleanest DX in the category and for React Email, with a free tier of 3,000 emails/month. SendGrid is The Twilio-owned incumbent, processing billions of emails a month across transactional and marketing with deep enterprise tooling, with a free tier of none — a 60-day trial at 100 emails/day, then a paid plan (their free tier was retired in 2025). The choice usually comes down to whether you optimise for developer experience, deliverability reputation, or price at volume.
Resend
A developer-first transactional email API, known for the cleanest DX in the category and for React Email.
- Free tier
- 3,000 emails/month
- Pricing shape
- Transactional priced per volume, with Marketing (audiences + broadcasts) billed separately by contact count — so a team doing both pays on two axes.
- Strongest at
- The API shape and error semantics that set the modern standard — we deliberately match them
- React Email is the de-facto way to build email in React, and Resend maintains it
- A permanent free tier at the same 3,000 emails/month we offer
- Broad SDK coverage, including Go, PHP, and Elixir, which we do not have yet
- Pick it when
- You need an SDK we don't ship yet — Go, PHP, Elixir, or Rust
- You only ever send transactional email and want the most battle-tested option in that lane
- You want the largest community and the most third-party tutorials to lean on
SendGrid
The Twilio-owned incumbent, processing billions of emails a month across transactional and marketing with deep enterprise tooling.
- Free tier
- None — a 60-day trial at 100 emails/day, then a paid plan (their free tier was retired in 2025)
- Pricing shape
- Monthly plans by volume, competitive at high throughput, with marketing contacts and add-ons like email validation billed separately.
- Strongest at
- Proven at a scale we have not operated at, with enterprise support to match
- The broadest integration catalogue in the category
- Sub-account management for multi-tenant platforms, which we do not offer
- Advanced IP management and dedicated IP pools for high-volume senders
- Pick it when
- You send hundreds of thousands of emails a month, where their volume pricing is genuinely cheaper
- You need sub-accounts to isolate sending for your own customers
- You need an enterprise contract, procurement paperwork, or a named support contact
- You depend on one of their many first-party integrations
Pricing and free-tier details for both providers last verified 2026-07. These change often — check each provider's own pricing page before deciding.
Disclosure: we also build an email API
This comparison is published by Unitpost, which competes with both providers above. We have kept this page about them because that is the question you searched for. If you want our side of it, we have honest head-to-heads at Unitpost vs Resend and Unitpost vs SendGrid, both of which list where those providers beat us.
Considering a third option?
Transactional and marketing email in one product
3,000 emails a month free. Migrate from either provider with a read-only API key — nothing is written until you accept.