Resend Pricing 2026: Free vs Pro vs Scale, Marketing Plans, and the Limits That Break Automations
Resend is free for 3,000 emails a month (100 a day), then $20 a month for 50,000 on Pro, $35 for 100,000, and Scale from $90, as of October 20, 2026. Extra emails are $0.90 per 1,000 on Pro, marketing plans start at $40 for 5,000 contacts, and the API allows 10 requests a second on every plan. Here is what a service company's booking emails really cost and the limits that break automations.
How much does Resend cost? The short answer
As of October 20, 2026, Resend is free for 3,000 emails a month (capped at 100 a day), then Pro at $20 a month for 50,000 emails or $35 for 100,000, and Scale from $90 a month for 100,000 up to $1,150 for 2,500,000. Extra emails cost $0.90 per 1,000 on Pro. Marketing email is a separate plan priced by contacts, from $40 a month for 5,000. Billing is monthly only, with no annual discount, and the API rate limit is 10 requests a second on every plan.
We read resend.com/pricing, the pricing file Resend publishes for AI agents, and Resend's usage-limits documentation on October 20, 2026. The cost examples below are our arithmetic on those numbers. SuperDupr builds workflow automations for service businesses that send email through APIs like Resend's; we do not resell it.
Resend transactional plans
| Plan | Price a month | Emails a month | Overage per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 3,000 (100 a day) | Not available |
| Pro | $20 | 50,000 | $0.90 |
| Pro | $35 | 100,000 | $0.90 |
| Scale | $90 | 100,000 | $0.90 |
| Scale | $160 | 200,000 | $0.80 |
| Scale | $350 | 500,000 | $0.70 |
| Scale | $650 | 1,000,000 | $0.65 |
| Scale | $1,150 | 2,500,000 | $0.46 |
Pro and Scale at 100,000 emails are $35 and $90. The $55 difference buys features, not volume: 1,000 sending domains instead of 10, 10 webhook endpoints instead of 5, a shared Slack channel, an urgent-response SLA, 500 AI credits instead of 100, and access to the dedicated IP ($30 a month, once you send more than 3,000 emails a day) and single sign-on ($150 a month) add-ons. Pro can add 100 more domains for $20 a month.
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Marketing plans are priced by contacts
| Contacts | Free | 5,000 | 10,000 | 15,000 | 25,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price a month | $0 (1,000 contacts) | $40 | $80 | $120 | $180 | $250 | $450 |
Marketing plans send unlimited broadcasts to the contacts you store, and broadcasts do not count against the transactional quota. Go over your contact limit and Resend still lets you add contacts, but a broadcast returns a 403 error ("You have reached your contacts quota") until you upgrade or remove contacts. That is a failure mode a scheduled newsletter automation needs to catch.
The cheapest newsletter on Resend is not a Resend newsletter plan
Resend's own FAQ says a newsletter can go through the transactional /emails API instead of Broadcasts, where each recipient counts as one email against your transactional quota. On a Pro plan with room to spare, that costs nothing extra. The catch is that you build the unsubscribe handling yourself: a visible unsubscribe link plus the List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post headers, which Broadcasts add for you.
For a 3,000-contact monthly newsletter, that is the difference between $0 extra on an existing Pro plan and $40 a month for Pro marketing, or $480 a year. Worth it if the unsubscribe flow is built once and tested; not worth it if a missing header puts your sending domain on a spam list.
A worked bill: booking emails for a 6-tech service company
Take a home-service company running 400 jobs a month. Each job sends 5 emails (booking confirmation, reminder, on-the-way, invoice, follow-up), and customers reply to an AI-monitored inbox about 300 times a month. The busiest day, Monday, sends about 150 emails. These volumes are illustrative, not Resend's numbers.
| Line | Math | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Outbound job emails | 400 jobs × 5 | 2,000 emails |
| Inbound replies | Received email counts toward the quota | 300 emails |
| Monthly total | 2,300 of Free's 3,000 | |
| Busiest day | 150 sends against Free's 100 a day | Fails on Free |
| Plan needed | Pro, 50,000 emails | $20 |
The month fits on Free; the Monday does not. Free's cap is a UTC calendar day, resetting at midnight UTC (7pm Central in October), and email number 101 returns a 429 daily_quota_exceeded error. An automation that does not catch that error loses the reminder for the rest of the day. At $20 a month, Pro also lifts the cap to no daily limit and adds 4 more webhook endpoints, which a build uses to track bounces and deliveries per job.
Add the 3,000-contact newsletter through the /emails API and the same $20 plan carries 5,300 emails a month. Through Broadcasts it is $60.
The limits that break automations
- 10 requests a second, whatever you pay. The default limit is per team, across every API key, and the FAQ says upgrading does not raise it. Sending 2,000 reminders one call at a time takes 200 seconds. The Batch Email API sends up to 100 emails per request and counts as one request, so the same 2,000 is 20 requests, about two seconds.
- Overage is dearer than the next tier. Sending 80,000 emails on the $20 Pro plan with pay-as-you-go costs $20 plus 30 × $0.90, or $47. The 100,000 Pro tier is $35. Overage is only on if you turn it on; otherwise, you are notified and asked to upgrade.
- Inbound and inbox email use the same quota. Every received email counts, and Resend's inboxes (3 on every plan, $1 a month each after that on paid plans) have no separate allowance. An AI agent that reads and replies to customer email spends quota both ways.
- Automation runs are metered after 10,000. Resend's built-in automations include 10,000 runs a month, then $0.0015 a run on paid plans. 25,000 runs is $22.50 extra.
- Logs last 30 days. Data retention is 30 days on Free, Pro and Scale. If you need a record of which customer got which invoice email six months ago, your own system has to keep it.
Resend vs Brevo and Twilio on price
Resend is an email API: cheap per email, no contact list unless you buy marketing, and no SMS. An all-in-one marketing tool such as Brevo prices the other way: its pricing page lists 50,000 emails a month at $56 on Starter (read October 20, 2026), but that includes campaigns, a contact list and a drag-and-drop editor. For texts, you still need a carrier; our Twilio pricing breakdown has the per-segment US rates. Picking an email API is a builder's call, and it usually comes with the platform that triggers the sends: see what that costs on Zapier, Make and n8n in our automation platform pricing guide, or the self-hosted option in n8n pricing.
Is Resend worth it?
For a developer or a builder wiring email into an app or a workflow, Pro at $20 for 50,000 emails is one of the cheaper ways to send from your own domain with webhooks, inbound email and SDKs included. It is not a marketing tool for an owner who wants to design a newsletter without code, and it does not send texts. Nonprofits can apply for 50% off paid plans.
Who can build email automation on Resend for my business?
If you only need password resets or order confirmations from an app you already run, a developer can wire Resend in with its official SDKs. Bring in a builder when the email is one step of a bigger system: booking confirmations that change with the schedule, a missed-call text back that also follows up by email, an AI inbox that answers customers and logs every reply to your CRM. That is the kind of work SuperDupr, Justin McKelvey's company, builds as AI workflow automation, published at $10,000 to $25,000 with $200 to $2,000 a month ongoing, and most AI systems go live in 2 to 4 weeks. We pick the sender by what it costs at your volume, and the first step is a free 30-minute strategy session.
Sources
- Resend pricing page (resend.com/pricing), read October 20, 2026: Free, Pro, Scale and Enterprise features, the daily limit, domains, webhook endpoints, AI credits, data retention, add-ons (domains $20, dedicated IP $30, SSO $150), pay-as-you-go automations ($0.0015 a run) and inboxes ($1), and the FAQ on annual billing, nonprofits, overage, broadcasts vs /emails, inbound counting and the rate limit.
- Resend pricing for agents (resend.com/pricing.md), read October 20, 2026: every transactional tier from $20 for 50,000 to $1,150 for 2,500,000 with overage rates, and the marketing tiers by contact count.
- Resend usage limits (resend.com/docs/api-reference/rate-limit), read October 20, 2026: 10 requests a second per team, the UTC daily quota on Free, 429 daily_quota_exceeded and monthly_quota_exceeded, and the 403 contact-quota error.
- Brevo figure ($56 a month for 50,000 emails on Starter): brevo.com/pricing and its pricing file, read October 20, 2026.
- Worked example: SuperDupr's arithmetic on the published prices above for an assumed 400-job month with 5 emails a job and 300 inbound replies.
Frequently Asked Questions
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As of October 20, 2026, Resend's transactional email is free for 3,000 emails a month with a 100-a-day cap. Pro is $20 a month for 50,000 emails or $35 for 100,000, and Scale runs from $90 a month for 100,000 to $1,150 for 2,500,000. Plans are billed monthly only, with no annual discount.
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Yes. The Free plan sends 3,000 emails a month but no more than 100 in a UTC calendar day, with 3 domains, 1 webhook endpoint and 30-day logs. Free marketing covers up to 1,000 contacts. There is no free trial of paid plans.
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With pay-as-you-go turned on, Resend bills extra emails in buckets of 1,000 at your plan's overage rate: $0.90 on Pro and from $0.90 down to $0.46 on Scale tiers. Without it, you are notified and asked to upgrade. Moving to the next tier is often cheaper than paying overage.
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The default is 10 requests a second per team, across all API keys, on every plan; upgrading does not raise it. The Batch Email API sends up to 100 emails in one request that counts once against the limit, and Resend can raise the limit for trusted senders on request.
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No. Broadcasts sent to your contacts are covered by a marketing plan priced by contact count, from $40 a month for 5,000 contacts. A newsletter sent through the /emails API instead counts one email per recipient against the transactional quota, and you must add your own unsubscribe link and List-Unsubscribe headers.
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SuperDupr, Justin McKelvey's company, builds AI workflow automations that send booking, invoice and follow-up emails through APIs like Resend's and log every message to your systems, published at $10,000 to $25,000 with $200 to $2,000 a month ongoing. Most AI systems go live in 2 to 4 weeks. SuperDupr does not resell Resend.