What transactional email costs at 50k, 100k, 500k and 2.5M a month

Transactional email cost depends far more on volume than on which provider you pick, until you get big. As of October 2026, 50,000 emails a month costs about $5 on Amazon SES and about $20–35 on Resend, SendGrid or Mailgun. At 2.5 million a month, Resend is up to $1,150 and SendGrid about $1,099. A self-hosted server costs roughly the same at every volume: a VPS, typically $5–20 a month, plus our one-time setup or a monthly management fee.

Below is the full table, the assumptions behind it and the arithmetic. All competitor prices come from third-party pricing trackers as of October 2026; confirm on each vendor's pricing page before you decide.

The comparison table

Monthly cost, as of October 2026:

Check current figures at resend.com/pricing, sendgrid.com/pricing, mailgun.com/pricing, postmarkapp.com/pricing and aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing.

Assumptions and arithmetic

Resend. Pro is $20 for 50k and $35 for 100k. At 500k, Scale's $350 tier beats Pro plus overage ($35 + 400 × $0.90 = $395). At 2.5M, Scale is up to $1,150 versus $35 + 2,400 × $0.90 = $2,195 on Pro. Our Resend pricing breakdown has every tier.

SendGrid. Essentials covers 50k ($19.95) and 100k ($34.95) on shared IPs. Pro from $89.95 at 100k adds a dedicated IP. We don't have a reliable figure for the tier covering 500k, only that it sits between the ~$249 (300k) and ~$1,099 (2.5M) Pro tiers. Details in our SendGrid pricing breakdown.

Mailgun. Foundation is $35 for 50k. At 100k, Scale's $90 beats Foundation plus overage ($35 + 50 × ~$1.30 = ~$100). Sources disagree on Mailgun's higher tiers, so we don't quote 500k or 2.5M.

Postmark. We only have prices for the 10,000-email plans: Basic $15 ($1.80 per extra 1,000), Pro $16.50 ($1.30), Platform $18 ($1.20). Platform plus overage is the cheapest of the three at these volumes:

• 50k: $18 + 40 × $1.20 = $66 (Pro: $16.50 + 40 × $1.30 = $68.50; Basic: $15 + 40 × $1.80 = $87)
• 100k: $18 + 90 × $1.20 = $126 (Pro: $133.50; Basic: $177)

Paying overage on a 10k plan at 500k or 2.5M wouldn't be a realistic comparison, and Postmark may offer a larger tier that costs less, so those cells say check pricing.

Amazon SES. $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails: 50 × $0.10 = $5, 100 × $0.10 = $10, 500 × $0.10 = $50, 2,500 × $0.10 = $250. That's the sending fee only. A standard dedicated IP adds $24.95 per IP per month, and you build bounce handling, suppression and dashboards yourself.

Self-hosted. The VPS is yours, typically $5–20 a month at providers like OVH, Hetzner, Vultr or Linode; there's no fixed figure. Server Setup is $499 once, and then you run the server with our written runbook. Managed Server is $499 setup plus $99 a month, so $99 + $5–20 = ~$104–119 a month. Neither has per-email fees.

What the table doesn't show

Self-hosting at 2.5 million. A small VPS is fine for most volumes, but 2.5 million a month may call for a larger VPS or more than one IP, which would raise the VPS line. More importantly, you can't send 2.5 million from a brand-new IP on day one. Warm-up starts at tens of emails a day and grows over 2–6 weeks; see our IP warm-up guide.

Your time. Server Setup has no monthly fee because you do the upkeep: updates, certificate renewals, blocklist checks, DMARC reports. If nobody on your team wants that, price in the Managed plan instead. Amazon SES has a similar hidden cost in engineering time.

Dedicated IPs. SendGrid Pro includes one. Mailgun's is an add-on at about $59–60 a month, SES's about $24.95 per IP. A self-hosted server sends from its own IP by default. More in shared vs dedicated IPs.

Marketing email. Resend bills marketing separately by contacts (about $40 a month for 5,000), and SendGrid's Marketing Campaigns start around $15 a month. None of that is in the table.

What you get for the money. Hosted providers include dashboards, analytics, webhooks and support. Postmark is known for a transactional-only focus and fast delivery; Resend for its developer experience. A bare server gives you logs and control.

How to estimate your own volume

Most teams underestimate how much transactional email they send. Before you compare prices, count every stream for a typical month:

• account emails: signups, verification, password resets, login codes;
• product emails: receipts, invoices, shipping or status updates, alerts;
• internal mail: admin notifications, error reports, cron job output;
• anything else that goes out through the same provider, including marketing if it shares the account.

Then look at the shape, not just the total. A steady 3,000 a day is easy to plan for and easy to warm up on a new server. Large spikes, such as a monthly invoice run, matter for daily caps on free tiers and for how fast you can ramp a new IP. If your total sits close to a tier boundary, price both the tier below with overage and the tier above.

First-year cost, side by side

Spreading one-time setup across a year makes the self-hosted lines easier to compare:

From year two, the $499 setup drops out.

So which is cheapest?

• Under 100k a month: Resend or SendGrid at $20–35, or SES at $5–10 if you'll build the extras. A managed server costs more here. We say that plainly.
• Around 200k a month: roughly where a managed self-hosted server starts winning on cost.
• 500k and up: a server you own costs a fraction of the hosted tiers, as long as you warm it up properly.

Plug in your own volume with the email cost calculator, read how a managed email server works, or compare our plans. If SES is your benchmark, our Resend vs Amazon SES comparison covers that trade-off.