Email cost calculator
Estimate what Resend, SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark and Amazon SES cost at your volume, and compare with running your own server.
Emails per month. Prices as of October 2026.
How we calculate it
For each provider we take the cheapest published plan that covers your monthly volume, adding per-email overage where a plan allows it. Where a vendor only quotes custom pricing at your volume, we show the nearest published tier and mark it. Self-hosted assumes a $10/month VPS. Read the full breakdowns: Resend pricing and SendGrid pricing.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is the email cost calculator?
It uses list prices published as of October 2026 and the cheapest plan that covers your volume, including overage where a plan allows it. Vendors change prices and offer custom deals at high volume, so treat it as an estimate and confirm on each pricing page.
Why is self-hosting more expensive at low volumes?
Because hosted APIs are very cheap for small senders, and a managed server has a fixed monthly cost. Self-hosting usually wins on price somewhere above 200,000 emails a month, or immediately if you choose the one-time Server Setup and run it yourself.
Does the self-hosted cost include the VPS?
The calculator adds an estimated $10 a month for a VPS. Real costs typically range from about $5 to $20 a month depending on the provider and size.
Is Amazon SES really the cheapest?
Per email, yes: about $0.10 per 1,000. But SES is a raw sending service: you build bounce handling, suppression lists, monitoring and dashboards yourself, and AWS controls your sending limits. See our Amazon SES alternative page.
Sending 250,000+ emails a month?
Get your own server and dedicated IP at a flat price, with warm-up and deliverability handled for you. Scale plans are in early access.