SendGrid vs Mailgun
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). Mailgun is Sinch-owned email infrastructure aimed at developers, with strong validation and deliverability tooling, with a free tier of 100 emails/day on the trial. The choice usually comes down to whether you optimise for developer experience, deliverability reputation, or price at volume.
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
Mailgun
Sinch-owned email infrastructure aimed at developers, with strong validation and deliverability tooling.
- Free tier
- 100 emails/day on the trial
- Pricing shape
- Volume tiers with noticeable jumps between them, plus paid add-ons for validation and dedicated IPs.
- Strongest at
- Email validation is a genuinely good, widely used product we do not offer
- Deep deliverability tooling, including inbox placement testing
- Log retention and analytics depth aimed at high-volume senders
- EU data residency, which we do not offer yet
- Pick it when
- You need email address validation as part of your pipeline
- You need EU data residency for compliance reasons
- You want inbox-placement testing and detailed deliverability analytics
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 SendGrid and Unitpost vs Mailgun, 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.