TL;DR: For transactional email from your own code, Resend gives 3,000 emails a month at 100 a day, and Mailjet doubles that at 6,000 a month. If you’d rather pay in log retention than volume, EmailLabs is the highest here at 9,000 emails a month, on a single day of logs. For newsletters, SendPulse and Sender both clear 15,000 emails a month, and beehiiv is the only one that states unlimited sending outright, against a 2,500-subscriber ceiling. Full comparison and gotchas below.
What’s in this list, and what isn’t
This covers two related jobs that get bundled together more often than they should: firing transactional email from application code, and sending newsletters or marketing campaigns to a list. A few things that look like they belong here don’t make the table:
- Email verification and testing tools - Abstract’s email validation API, EmailGuard, UserCheck, Verimail, and emailvalidation.io - check whether an address is real. They don’t send anything. Mailtrap stays in the table because, alongside its testing sandbox, it publishes a real production send quota.
- Wraps sells email templates and tracked events, not a send quota - there’s no monthly number to put in a comparison table.
- Notification infrastructure - Novu, Knock, and Courier - route messages across email, SMS, push, and in-app channels at once. That’s a different job, and it’s covered in the background jobs and queues roundup.
- Disposable inboxes like the 10 Minute Mail family and the rest of the disposable email category receive throwaway mail; they don’t send anything on your behalf.
- Kit, Ghost, and Mailmodo are out for the same reason Railway is out of the cloud-hosting roundup: a free trial or a one-time credit isn’t a sustained free tier, and none of the three keeps sending for free once the trial or credit runs out.
- SendGrid is the one that needed a closer look. Twilio’s own pricing page states a 60-day trial capped at 100 emails a day, no credit card required - and after that, a paid plan starting at $19.95 a month is required to keep sending. There’s no ongoing free plan to compare against the twenty-three below, so it’s excluded from the table on the same basis as Kit and Ghost.
- Emitlo publishes a 12,000-emails-a-month free allowance, but conditions it on joining during its private beta; the standard free plan on the same page is 2,000. The pricing page doesn’t say which of the two a signup gets today, so there’s no number to compare against.
Developer sending: transactional email APIs
Fifteen products here answer the same question - “my app needs to send a password reset or a receipt, and I want an API or SMTP endpoint for it” - at very different volumes and with very different catches.
| Product | Free tier | Daily cap | Gotcha |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resend | 3,000 emails/month | 100/day | 3 domains, 30-day data retention |
| Postmark | 100 emails/month | - | Never expires, but no overage - hit the cap and sending stops until next month |
| Amazon SES | Shares the $200 AWS Free Tier credit | - | Available 6 months from account creation, not a dedicated email quota |
| MailerSend | 500 emails/month | - | 1 domain, 1 template, and 100 API requests a day |
| Mailjet | 6,000 emails/month | 200/day | 1,000 contacts included |
| Brevo | 300 emails/day | 300/day | No monthly cap stated - the daily figure is the only ceiling |
| Plunk | 1,000 emails/month | - | Plunk branding stays on outgoing email |
| Loops | 4,000 sends/month | - | Loops branding footer on every email |
| AhaSend | 1,000 emails/month | - | Only 1-7 days of log retention, 3 sending domains |
| MailChannels | 3,000 emails/month | 100/day | 3 domains, 30-day log retention |
| Maileroo | 3,000 emails/month | - | 14-day message retention, includes a free dedicated IP |
| EmailLabs | 9,000 emails/month | 300/day | Log retention is 1 day only |
| Sweego | 100 emails/day | 100/day | No stated monthly cap, unlimited domains |
| EmailJS | 200 requests/month | - | Only 2 email templates on the free plan |
| Mailtrap | 4,000 emails/month | 150/day | 3-day log retention, 1 domain |
Resend and MailChannels land on almost the same numbers - 3,000 emails a month, capped at 100 a day - but the details diverge. Resend gives 3 domains and 30 days of data retention with React Email support built in; MailChannels matches the domain count and retention window but skips the templating layer, aiming purely at REST and SMTP integration. Mailjet doubles both at 6,000 emails a month, with 1,000 contacts and a drag-and-drop editor bundled in. EmailLabs goes further still at 9,000 emails a month and 300 a day, the highest flat monthly figure in this table, but its log retention is a single day, so a delivery problem you don’t catch immediately is gone by the time you look.
Brevo is the odd one out on shape: rather than a monthly ceiling, its free plan caps at 300 emails a day with no separate monthly number published, so a full month of daily maximums works out close to 9,000 - competitive with EmailLabs, but only if you send every single day. Postmark sits at the opposite end: 100 emails a month, permanently, with zero overage allowed. It’s built for a low-volume transactional flow you never want to worry about again, not for anything that scales.
Amazon SES doesn’t fit the same table shape as the rest. There’s no dedicated SES email quota on the free tier anymore - sending draws down the same $200 AWS Free Tier credit every new account gets across all eligible services, available for six months after account creation. That makes it cheap per email at AWS’s usage-based rates, but it isn’t a flat monthly number the way the other fourteen are, and the six-month window means it isn’t a sustained free tier once that period ends.
AhaSend, Plunk, and Mailtrap sit in the middle of the volume range at 1,000, 1,000, and 4,000 emails a month respectively. AhaSend’s catch is retention - as little as a single day depending on plan tier - while Mailtrap’s free plan doubles as an email-testing sandbox alongside its 4,000/month production sending limit, at the cost of only 3 days of logs and a single connected domain. Loops gives 4,000 sends a month with every feature unlocked on the free tier, but keeps a Loops footer on outgoing mail until you upgrade. Maileroo matches Resend and MailChannels at 3,000 emails a month but throws in a free dedicated IP address, unusual for a free tier at any volume. Sweego and EmailJS are the two smallest by volume: Sweego caps at 100 emails a day with no monthly ceiling and unlimited domains, while EmailJS measures in requests rather than emails - 200 a month, with only 2 templates to build them from.
Newsletter and marketing senders
The other eight products answer a different question: growing and emailing a subscriber list, with a visual editor, automation, and landing pages built around the send itself.
| Product | Subscriber cap | Monthly sends | Gotcha |
|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite | 250 subscribers | 2,500 emails | Community support only, no support desk |
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts | 500 emails (250/day) | Email support only for your first 30 days |
| SendPulse | 500 subscribers | 15,000 emails | Only 3 sender addresses allowed |
| EmailOctopus | 2,500 subscribers | 10,000 emails | EmailOctopus branding stays on every email |
| Sender | 2,500 subscribers | 15,000 emails | Sender branding on emails, forms, and popups |
| Buttondown | 100 subscribers | None stated | Pricing assumes at most one email a day to your whole list |
| beehiiv | 2,500 subscribers | Not capped | AI credits capped at 10/day; Send API excluded |
| Maildroppa | 100 subscribers | 2,500 emails | No credit card required |
SendPulse and Sender tie for the highest monthly send volume at 15,000 emails, but they get there differently. SendPulse pairs that volume with a 500-subscriber list, 3 sender addresses, and a limited automation builder. Sender allows 2,500 subscribers and keeps its own branding on every email, form, and popup you send until you upgrade. MailerLite makes the opposite trade: 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, but 2 user seats, a website, a landing page, and 3 automations on the free plan. Support is the community rather than a desk you can write to.
beehiiv is the only plan here that states unlimited sending outright, rather than simply omitting a send figure: no monthly email cap, a 2,500-subscriber ceiling, up to 3 publications, and one team member. The catch shows up around the edges: AI credits are limited to 10 a day, and API access excludes the Send API specifically, so you can manage content programmatically but not trigger sends through the API on the free plan. EmailOctopus matches beehiiv’s 2,500-subscriber cap but caps sends at 10,000 a month and keeps its own branding on every email, with reports available for 30 days.
Mailchimp is the name most people already know, and it also has the smallest monthly send allowance in the newsletter group: 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, worked out as no more than 250 in a single day. Email support only runs for your first 30 days before you’re on your own with the help center. Buttondown and Maildroppa both cap subscribers at a much smaller number - 100 each - but neither charges anything for that first 100: Buttondown doesn’t publish a monthly send figure at all, and its pricing page prices everything on the assumption that you send at most one email a day to your whole list, which is the practical ceiling to plan against. Custom domains and hosted newsletter archives are included. Maildroppa caps at 2,500 sends a month and states outright that no credit card is needed up front.
Which one should you actually use?
- Lowest-friction transactional email: Resend - 3,000 emails a month, 3 domains, and a developer experience built around React Email from day one.
- Highest flat volume for developer sending: EmailLabs at 9,000 emails a month, if you don’t need more than a day of logs.
- Already on AWS and comfortable with usage-based pricing: Amazon SES, for as long as the six-month account credit lasts.
- A newsletter with no send ceiling: beehiiv - unlimited sends up to 2,500 subscribers, though the Send API itself needs a paid plan.
- The highest flat monthly send volume for a subscriber list: SendPulse or Sender, both at 15,000 emails a month.
- A newsletter that never asks you to pay while you’re small: Buttondown - your first 100 subscribers cost nothing, with a custom domain and hosted archives included, priced around roughly one send a day.
Whichever you pick, check its page in the transactional email or email marketing tools category for the exact numbers before you build against it - daily caps, log retention windows, and branding requirements change what a flat monthly figure actually gets you.
FAQ
What’s the best free tier for transactional email? Resend is the most commonly reached-for option at 3,000 emails a month with React Email support built in. If you need more volume and can live with a single day of log retention, EmailLabs goes to 9,000 a month.
Is there a free plan for sending newsletters? Yes - MailerLite, SendPulse, EmailOctopus, Sender, Buttondown, beehiiv, and Maildroppa all run permanent free plans built around a subscriber list rather than raw API sending.
Does SendGrid have a free tier? No. SendGrid’s only no-cost option is a 60-day trial capped at 100 emails a day, with no credit card required to start - after the trial, a paid plan is required to keep sending.
What’s the free tier for Amazon SES? There’s no SES-specific quota anymore. New AWS accounts get a $200 Free Tier credit usable across eligible services, including SES, for six months after account creation - after that, or once the credit runs out, SES billing is pay-as-you-go.
Do any of these require a credit card to start? Maildroppa and Brevo both state on their own pricing pages that no card is needed to create a free account. Most of the rest don’t address it either way on their pricing pages, so check at signup. Amazon SES needs an AWS account, which does require a card.
See also
- The Best Free Background Jobs and Cron in 2026 - webhook and queue infrastructure that often sits next to a transactional email send
- Transactional email and email marketing tools - every free-tier product in each category, filterable
- Free-tier products - every permanent free plan on the site, not just this list
- FTV methodology - how the dollar value on each product page is estimated