SendGrid Pricing 2026: Free Trial, Essentials vs Pro, Overage Rates, and How It Compares to Resend
SendGrid's Email API costs $19.95 a month for 50,000 emails or $34.95 for 100,000 on Essentials, and Pro runs from $89.95 to $1,099 a month, as of October 20, 2026. The free option is now a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day. Overage is $1.33 per 1,000 on the smallest plan, so past about 61,300 emails the next tier is cheaper. Here is the full tier table, what Pro adds, and how it compares with Resend and Brevo.
How much does SendGrid cost? The short answer
As of October 20, 2026, Twilio SendGrid's Email API costs $19.95 a month for 50,000 emails or $34.95 for 100,000 on Essentials, and Pro runs from $89.95 for 100,000 to $1,099 for 2,500,000. Premier is custom-priced. There is no longer a free-forever plan on the pricing page: the free option is a 60-day trial capped at 100 emails a day. Extra emails cost $0.00133 each on the 50,000 Essentials tier, or $1.33 per 1,000.
We read Twilio's SendGrid Email API pricing page, the plan-comparison PDF it links, the Marketing Campaigns pricing page and SendGrid's overage support article on October 20, 2026. The pricing page itself shows only "starting at" prices; the per-tier prices below come from Twilio's PDF. The comparisons and cost examples are our arithmetic on those numbers. SuperDupr builds workflow automations for service businesses that send email through APIs like SendGrid's; we do not resell it.
SendGrid Email API plans and prices
| Plan | Price a month | Emails a month | Per extra email | Cost per 1,000 inside the plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial | $0 for 60 days | 100 a day | Cannot exceed | $0 |
| Essentials | $19.95 | 50,000 | $0.00133 | $0.40 |
| Essentials | $34.95 | 100,000 | $0.00088 | $0.35 |
| Pro | $89.95 | 100,000 | $0.00110 | $0.90 |
| Pro | $249 | 300,000 | $0.00091 | $0.83 |
| Pro | $499 | 700,000 | $0.00078 | $0.71 |
| Pro | $799 | 1,500,000 | $0.00059 | $0.53 |
| Pro | $1,099 | 2,500,000 | $0.00047 | $0.44 |
| Premier | Contact sales | 2,500,000+ | Contact sales | Custom |
The last column is the monthly price divided by the included emails, and it shows the odd shape of this ladder: the cheapest email SendGrid sells is the 100,000 Essentials tier at about $0.35 per 1,000. Pro at the same 100,000 emails costs $89.95, roughly 2.6 times more, and Pro does not get back under Essentials' per-email cost even at 2,500,000.
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Is SendGrid free?
Not for long. The plan cards and comparison table on Twilio's pricing pages list a Free Trial at $0 for 60 days, sending up to 100 emails a day, with no credit card, one teammate and one event webhook. SendGrid's overage article adds that the trial stores 100 contacts and cannot go over its limits. After 60 days you choose a paid plan.
One caveat we found on the same day: an FAQ answer further down the Marketing Campaigns pricing page still describes a "Free Marketing Campaigns Plan" with 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month. The plan selector on that page and on the Email API page both show only the 60-day trial. Plan for the trial, and if the larger free plan matters to you, confirm which one your account actually gets at signup.
For comparison, two other senders we priced the same day keep a free tier past 60 days: Resend's free plan sends 3,000 emails a month (100 a day), and Brevo's free plan sends 300 a day. For testing a new automation for a few weeks, SendGrid's trial is fine. For a low-volume app that should run free indefinitely, it is not.
Essentials vs Pro: what the extra $55 buys
At 100,000 emails a month, Essentials is $34.95 and Pro is $89.95. The $55 difference buys features, not volume:
| Feature | Essentials | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated IP | Not included | 1 included, more as an add-on |
| Teammates | 1 | 1,000 |
| Event webhooks | 2 | 5 |
| Email validations included | 0 | 2,500 |
| Searchable email activity | 3 days | 7 days |
| Subusers and single sign-on | No | Yes |
| Email content testing | None | 60 credits a month |
| Support | Ticket and chat | Ticket, chat and phone |
For a small business, the two rows that usually decide it are teammates and activity history. Essentials allows one teammate, so an office manager and the person who built the integration share a login or one goes without. And with 3 days of searchable activity, "did the customer get the invoice email last Tuesday?" can already be unanswerable in SendGrid by Friday unless your own system logs every send.
The dedicated IP matters less than its reputation suggests at this size. A dedicated IP needs steady volume to build a sending reputation, and Twilio's own guidance puts Pro at programs "scaling into the millions." Below that, a shared IP on Essentials is normal.
What overage costs, and when to move up a tier instead
SendGrid bills each email past your plan's allowance at the tier's per-email rate, on the invoice for the following month. Its support article adds two rules worth knowing: upgrading does not cancel overage already incurred, and accounts created through Heroku or Google Cloud cannot go over at all.
Take a business on the $19.95 Essentials plan that sends 80,000 emails one month:
| Option | Math | Cost that month |
|---|---|---|
| Stay on 50,000 Essentials and pay overage | $19.95 + 30,000 × $0.00133 | $59.85 |
| Move to 100,000 Essentials first | Flat | $34.95 |
Overage costs $24.90 more than the next tier for the same month, and the break-even is low: past about 61,300 emails, the 100,000 tier is cheaper than paying overage on the 50,000 tier. Twilio's FAQ says the same in general terms ("upgrading to the next tier usually beats paying overages"), but the page does not show the math. If your volume swings with the season, set an alert at about 60,000 sends rather than letting a busy month bill at $1.33 per 1,000.
SendGrid vs Resend vs Brevo at the same volumes
Resend, the newer email API, prices almost exactly on top of SendGrid. These are each vendor's published prices as read on October 20, 2026:
| Monthly volume | SendGrid | Resend | Brevo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 100 a day for 60 days | 3,000 a month (100 a day), no end date | 300 a day, no end date |
| 50,000 emails | $19.95 (Essentials) | $20 (Pro) | $56 (Starter) |
| 100,000, entry plan | $34.95 (Essentials) | $35 (Pro) | Not compared |
| 100,000, upper plan | $89.95 (Pro) | $90 (Scale) | Not compared |
| 2,500,000 emails | $1,099 (Pro) | $1,150 (Scale) | Not compared |
| Overage on the 50,000 plan, per 1,000 | $1.33 | $0.90 | Not compared |
| Email history kept | 3 days (Essentials), 7 (Pro) | 30 days | Not compared |
Within a nickel at 50,000 and 100,000, the price is not the decision. The differences are the free tier (SendGrid's ends), overage (SendGrid's 50,000 tier charges 48% more per extra email), and history (Resend keeps 30 days on every plan). SendGrid pulls ahead at very high volume, $51 a month cheaper at 2,500,000 emails, and it comes with Twilio's longer track record and phone support on Pro. Brevo costs more per email because the price includes campaigns, a contact list and a visual editor; see our Brevo pricing breakdown for its contact limits, and our Resend pricing guide for its daily cap and rate limits.
A worked bill: a 6-tech service company
Take a home-service company running 400 jobs a month, with 5 emails per job (booking confirmation, reminder, on-the-way, invoice, follow-up) and a 3,000-contact monthly newsletter. The busiest day, Monday, sends about 150 job emails. These volumes are illustrative, not SendGrid's numbers.
| Line | Math | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Job emails | 400 jobs × 5 | 2,000 a month |
| Newsletter sent through the Email API | 3,000 contacts × 1 | 3,000 a month |
| Free trial | 150 on Monday vs 100 a day, and it ends at day 60 | Does not fit |
| Plan needed | Essentials, 50,000 emails | $19.95 a month, $239.40 a year |
5,000 emails is a tenth of the plan, so this company has room to triple before it thinks about overage. The real costs sit elsewhere: one teammate on Essentials, 3 days of activity history, and building the newsletter's unsubscribe handling yourself if you send it through the API. Marketing Campaigns, SendGrid's newsletter product with an editor and sign-up forms, is a separate purchase (Basic starts at $15 a month, Advanced at $60), not part of the Email API plan.
The same texts on the same jobs would need a carrier such as Twilio itself; our Twilio pricing breakdown has the per-segment SMS and per-minute voice rates. And the sends have to be triggered by something: what that costs on Zapier, Make and n8n is in our automation platform pricing guide.
Marketing Campaigns pricing and overage
Marketing Campaigns is priced by contacts stored and emails sent, from Basic at $15 a month and Advanced at $60, with Custom pricing above that. Its overage is far steeper than the Email API's, and it applies to each extra email or contact:
| Plan | Contacts | Emails a month | Per extra email or contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic 5K | 5,000 | 15,000 | $0.0040 |
| Basic 10K | 10,000 | 30,000 | $0.0030 |
| Basic 50K | 50,000 | 150,000 | $0.0028 |
| Advanced 10K | 10,000 | 50,000 | $0.0075 |
| Advanced 100K | 100,000 | 500,000 | $0.0050 |
$0.0040 per extra email is $4 per 1,000, three times the Email API's highest overage rate. A list that grows 500 contacts past a Basic 5K plan adds $2 a month in contact overage before a single extra email goes out. SendGrid says contacts must be deleted before midnight UTC at month end to drop off the next bill.
Is SendGrid worth it?
For a business that sends 50,000 to 100,000 transactional emails a month and wants a long-established sender, Essentials at $19.95 or $34.95 is fairly priced and on par with Resend. It is a weaker fit if you want a free tier that lasts, more than one login without paying for Pro, or email history longer than 3 days. If you are paying overage two months running, the next tier is almost always cheaper.
Who can build email automation on SendGrid for my business?
If you only need password resets or order confirmations from an app you already run, a developer can wire SendGrid in with its official client libraries. Bring in a builder when the email is one step of a bigger system: confirmations that change with the schedule, a reminder that falls back to a text when an email bounces, an invoice email that is logged to your CRM so the 3-day history limit stops mattering. 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
- Twilio SendGrid Email API pricing (twilio.com/en-us/pricing/email-api), read October 20, 2026: the 60-day free trial at 100 emails a day, "starting at" prices for Essentials ($19.95) and Pro ($89.95), Premier custom pricing, teammates, event webhooks, email validations, dedicated IPs on Pro and Premier, and the FAQ on overage and upgrades.
- Twilio SendGrid pricing PDF (linked from that page, twi121 sendgrid-pricing-pdf), read October 20, 2026: every Email API tier from $19.95 for 50,000 to $1,099 for 2,500,000 with per-extra-email rates, activity history (3 and 7 days), content-testing credits and support levels.
- Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns pricing (twilio.com/en-us/products/marketing-campaigns/pricing), read October 20, 2026: Basic from $15, Advanced from $60, the overage table, the separate-purchase FAQ and the FAQ answer describing a free plan with 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails.
- SendGrid support, "Twilio SendGrid Overage Rates" (support.sendgrid.com), read October 20, 2026: overage billed the following month, upgrades do not cancel incurred overage, Heroku and Google Cloud accounts cannot go over, trial limits.
- Resend figures (free 3,000 a month, $20, $35, $90, $1,150, $0.90 overage, 30-day retention): resend.com/pricing and resend.com/pricing.md, read October 20, 2026. Brevo figures (300 a day free, $56 for 50,000 on Starter): brevo.com/pricing, read October 20, 2026.
- Per-1,000 costs, the overage break-even and the worked bill: SuperDupr's arithmetic on the published prices above.
Frequently Asked Questions
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As of October 20, 2026, Twilio SendGrid's Email API is $19.95 a month for 50,000 emails or $34.95 for 100,000 on Essentials. Pro is $89.95 for 100,000, $249 for 300,000, $499 for 700,000, $799 for 1,500,000 and $1,099 for 2,500,000. Premier is custom-priced. Marketing Campaigns is a separate product starting at $15 a month.
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Only for 60 days. Twilio's pricing pages list a free trial that sends up to 100 emails a day for 60 days with no credit card, one teammate and one event webhook, and it cannot go over those limits. After that you need a paid plan. One FAQ on the Marketing Campaigns page still mentions a free plan with 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, so confirm what your account gets at signup.
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Each email past your plan's allowance is billed at the tier's rate on the next month's invoice: $0.00133 an email on the 50,000 Essentials tier, $0.00088 on 100,000 Essentials, and $0.00110 down to $0.00047 on Pro tiers. Upgrading does not cancel overage already incurred. On the 50,000 tier, the 100,000 tier becomes cheaper than overage at about 61,300 emails.
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At 100,000 emails, Essentials is $34.95 and Pro is $89.95. Pro adds a dedicated IP, up to 1,000 teammates instead of 1, 5 event webhooks instead of 2, 2,500 email validations, 7 days of searchable email activity instead of 3, subusers, single sign-on and phone support.
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They are priced almost identically: $19.95 vs $20 for 50,000 emails, $34.95 vs $35 and $89.95 vs $90 for 100,000 on the entry and upper plans. SendGrid is $51 a month cheaper at 2,500,000 emails. Resend keeps a free tier of 3,000 emails a month with no end date, charges $0.90 per 1,000 extra on Pro against SendGrid's $1.33 on its 50,000 tier, and keeps 30 days of logs.
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SuperDupr, Justin McKelvey's company, builds AI workflow automations that send booking, invoice and follow-up emails through APIs like SendGrid'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 SendGrid.