SendGrid pricing, price hikes and cheaper alternatives
SendGrid (sendgrid.com) is a email API. Volume tiers on Essentials and Pro. No free plan.
What SendGrid costs
- 10k emails / month: $19.95/mo
- 50k emails / month: $19.95/mo
- 100k emails / month: $34.95/mo
- 500k emails / month: $499/mo
- 1M emails / month: $799/mo
Plan compared: Essentials (Pro above 100k). Cheapest paid plan (plus overage when that's cheaper) covering the monthly volume, billed monthly. Contact-based pricing assumes 4 emails per contact.
SendGrid price hikes
- SendGrid killed its free plan · May 27, 2025
New sign-ups lost the free-forever plan in March 2025 and got a 60-day trial instead. On May 27, existing free accounts were told to upgrade by July 26 or have sending turned off. Paid plans start at $19.95 a month.
Cheaper alternatives to SendGrid
At 100k emails/mo, SendGrid costs $34.95/mo. 1 email API costs less:
- Amazon SES: $10/mo (À la carte, $0.10 per 1k (any account can switch to it))
SendGrid alternatives: 8 email APIs compared, at every size.
Every change we logged
- Jun 25, 2026 · Limits cut: Essentials and Pro sending capped at 10× the plan's monthly allotment. SendGrid's support article first gave March 26, 2026 as the start date and now says June 25, 2026.
- Jul 26, 2025 · Free tier cut: Free Email API and Marketing Campaigns plans retired for existing accounts after a May 27 notice.
- Mar 25, 2025 · Free tier cut: New sign-ups got a 60-day trial instead of the free-forever plan.
Sources
Pricing page: twilio.com/en-us/products/email-api/pricing. Prices last checked Oct 16, 2026. Tier prices read from Twilio's volume picker (Oct 16, 2026): Pro is $249 at 300k, $499 at 700k, $799 at 1.5M. Current overage rates aren't published, so 500k and 1M use the next Pro tier up. The last official rates ($0.0009 per email on Essentials 100k, $0.001 on Pro 100k) would put 500k at about $395–$490 if they still apply.