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Free tiers

Free Resend alternatives

Resend's free plan is 3,000 emails a month — but only 100 a day, from one domain. Several alternatives give you more, and a couple give you much more.

Ranked below by what you can actually ship on, with the limit that stops you first named in every row. It's almost never the number in the headline.

12 free tiers Checked 2 August 2026 Trials marked as trials
Side by side

The limit that bites first

Headline volume is the number vendors advertise. The daily cap, the log retention and the footer branding are the numbers that decide whether you can use it.

ProviderFree tierWhat stops you firstType
Email Bump5,000 contacts + 5,000 emails/moA 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers. No daily cap, and domains and seats are unlimitedPermanent
Mailtrap4,000 emails/mo150 emails a day, and logs disappear after 3 daysPermanent
Loops1,000 contacts + 4,000 sends/moA 'Powered by Loops' footer on every email, and 10 emails/secondPermanent
Resend3,000 emails/mo100 emails a day, 1 sending domain; marketing is a separate 1,000-contact free planPermanent
AhaSend1,000 emails/moVolume — but unlimited sending domains, which most free tiers don't give youPermanent
MailerSend500 emails/mo1 domain, 1 template, 100 API requests a dayPermanent
Scaleway TEM300 emails/moVolume, and marketing email is prohibited by policyPermanent
Mailgun100 emails/dayLogs are kept for 1 day, which makes debugging genuinely hardPermanent
Postmark100 emails/moVolume. It's an evaluation allowance, not a plan to ship onPermanent
ZeptoMail10,000 emails, onceThe free credit expires after one monthTrial
Amazon SESUp to $200 in AWS creditsNew AWS accounts only, spread over the first 6 months, and you're in a sandbox until reviewedTrial
useSend, Plunk, listmonk, PostalFree software, paid sendingThe code costs nothing; SES or your SMTP provider still bills you, and you operate itSelf-hosted

From each vendor's own pricing page on 2 August 2026. Free tiers change more often than paid ones — check before you commit a launch to one.

How to read these

Four things worth checking before the volume

The daily cap. A monthly allowance with a daily ceiling is a different product. Resend's free plan is 3,000 a month at 100 a day; Mailtrap's is 4,000 a month at 150 a day. Import a contact list or launch on Product Hunt and the daily number is the one you meet.

Log retention. This is where free tiers are quietly stingy — Mailgun keeps one day, Mailtrap three. The whole value of a hosted provider is being able to answer "what happened to this email", and a log that expired yesterday can't.

Branding and domains. Loops adds a "Powered by Loops" footer on free. MailerSend allows one domain and one template. Resend allows one sending domain. If you run more than one product from one account, that's the constraint.

Whether it's really free. ZeptoMail's 10,000 emails expire after a month, and Amazon SES's free-tier credits are a new-account promotion over six months. Both are worth taking; neither is a plan.

In detail

The providers with a free tier worth using

01Hosted service

Email Bump

Best for: Teams paying twice — once for the transactional API, again for the newsletter

Marketing and transactional email in one product, billed on contacts rather than sends. The transactional API takes the same field names most developer email APIs use, so the migration is a base URL and a key. Also the only one on this list with a first-class CLI and MCP server, so an agent can run the whole account without a browser.

Starts at
$19/mo at 10,000 contacts
Free tier
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month
Marketing
Included — campaigns, flows, segments and the API share one bill
Data region
United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
What it does well
  • One price covers campaigns, automated flows, segments and the transactional API.
  • Sending is uncapped on paid plans under fair use — a viral week doesn't produce an overage bill.
  • Unsubscribed and bounced contacts stop counting, so the bill tracks your real audience.
  • Unlimited team seats and unlimited sending domains on every plan, including free.
  • CLI, MCP server and agent skills cover the same surface as the API, including creating the account itself.
  • Inbound email, SMTP on the same key, and webhooks are part of the plan, not upsells.
What to watch for
  • Sending is US-only today — there is no EU data region.
  • Not open source, and there's no self-hosted build.
  • The free plan puts a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers. Transactional sends never carry it.
  • Younger than Postmark or SendGrid, without their decade-plus of public deliverability history.
02Hosted service

Loops

Best for: SaaS teams who want lifecycle email without assembling it

Contact-priced like Email Bump, with transactional sending folded in at no extra charge. Opinionated and pleasant; less of an infrastructure product than Postmark or SES.

Starts at
Paid plans are priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email
Marketing
Included — that's the core of the product
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Transactional sending is included rather than billed as a second subscription.
  • Free plan is generous enough to run a small product on.
  • Genuinely quick to set up.
What to watch for
  • The free plan puts Loops branding in your footer and caps you at 10 emails/second.
  • Paid pricing lives behind a slider, which makes budgeting a guess until you sign up.
  • Thinner on raw email infrastructure — inbound, SMTP nuance, deep log retention.
03Hosted service

Mailtrap

Best for: Teams who want the test sandbox and production sending from one vendor

Best known for its email-testing sandbox, which catches staging mail before it reaches a real inbox. The sending product grew out of that and keeps the same debugging bias.

Starts at
$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)
Free tier
4,000 emails a month, capped at 150 a day, 3 days of logs
Marketing
Bulk stream on Business and above; no journey builder
Data region
United States, with EU sending available
What it does well
  • The staging sandbox has no real equivalent at Resend.
  • Free tier is 4,000 emails/month against Resend's 3,000.
  • Bounce categorisation and per-domain debugging are unusually good.
What to watch for
  • Log retention is short on cheaper plans: 3 days free, 5 days on Basic.
  • Dedicated IP and bulk stream only arrive on Business, which starts at $85/mo.
  • Two products in one console takes a minute to get used to.
04Hosted service

MailerSend

Best for: Small teams who want the cheapest paid tier with a template builder

From the MailerLite family. Drag-and-drop templates non-engineers can edit, an inexpensive entry plan, and SMS bolted on for the same money.

Starts at
$5.60/mo for 5,000 emails (Hobby)
Free tier
500 emails a month, 1 domain, 1 template
Marketing
Templates and basic automation; MailerLite is the sibling product for campaigns
Data region
United States and European Union
What it does well
  • $5.60/mo for 5,000 emails is the cheapest real paid plan here.
  • Non-developers can edit templates without a pull request.
  • 100 SMS a month included on every plan.
What to watch for
  • Free plan is 500 emails/month — a sixth of Resend's free tier.
  • Hobby caps you at 1 domain, 3 templates and 1,000 API requests a day.
  • API log retention is 7 days even on Professional.
05Hosted service

Zoho ZeptoMail

Best for: Low, spiky transactional volume you'd rather not subscribe for

Pay-as-you-go credits instead of a monthly plan. One credit is 10,000 emails and lasts six months, which suits products that send in bursts.

Starts at
Credits, where 1 credit = 10,000 emails, valid 6 months
Free tier
First credit free — 10,000 emails, valid for one month
Marketing
None. ZeptoMail is transactional-only by policy; Zoho Campaigns is the other product.
Data region
Multiple, including EU data centres
What it does well
  • No subscription: buy credits, use them within six months.
  • 10,000 free emails to evaluate with is the largest trial on this list.
  • Backed by Zoho, with EU data-centre options.
What to watch for
  • Strictly transactional — marketing sending will get the account closed.
  • Being inside the Zoho console is a taste thing.
  • Credits expire; unused volume is money gone.
06Hosted service

AhaSend

Best for: EU teams who want a modern developer API with the data kept in Europe

The closest thing to a European developer email API: the same shape of REST endpoint and SMTP relay you already use, multi-region EU infrastructure, and a free tier you can actually ship on.

Starts at
Paid tiers start at 25,000 emails/mo (Pro); the rate isn't published as a flat figure
Free tier
1,000 emails a month, unlimited domains, no card required
Marketing
Transactional focus; no campaign builder
Data region
European Union, multi-region
What it does well
  • Data stays in Europe, not just the sending — the usual gap in 'EU-friendly' claims.
  • Unlimited sending domains even on the free plan.
  • USD and EUR billing, OIDC SSO on the top tier.
What to watch for
  • Smaller company; fewer public deliverability case studies.
  • No marketing or automation side at all.
  • Retention is 14 days on Pro, 30 on Max.
07Hosted service

Scaleway TEM

Best for: French and EU public-sector-adjacent teams who need sovereignty on paper

European cloud infrastructure rather than a developer-experience product. Cheap per email, GDPR-clean by construction, and deliberately narrow.

Starts at
€0.25 per 1,000 emails after the first 300 a month (Essential)
Free tier
300 emails a month, every month
Marketing
Prohibited by policy — TEM is transactional only
Data region
European Union (multi-region, France-headquartered)
What it does well
  • €0.25 per 1,000 undercuts every hosted SaaS here except SES.
  • European sovereignty story is the strongest on this list.
  • Scale plan at €80/mo includes 100,000 emails, a managed dedicated IP and a 99.9% SLA.
What to watch for
  • Marketing email is against the acceptable-use policy — this is not a newsletter tool.
  • No inbound email support.
  • Billing counts recipients, so one message with three CCs is four emails.
08Hosted service

Mailjet

Best for: Small teams who want unlimited contacts alongside a send allowance

Sinch's other email product, sitting between a transactional API and a light marketing tool. Metered on emails, and unlimited contacts from the Essential plan — an unusual combination in this category.

Starts at
Starter $9/mo for 8,000 emails
Free tier
6,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day, 1,000 contacts
Marketing
Campaigns and an editor; automation and landing pages arrive on Premium
Data region
European Union (France)
What it does well
  • Unlimited contacts from Essential at $17/mo — you're billed on sends, not list size.
  • A 6,000-a-month free tier with the API, SMTP relay and webhooks included.
  • $9/mo for 8,000 emails is among the cheapest entry plans anywhere here.
  • French company, so EU data handling comes as standard.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's 200-a-day cap bites long before the monthly one.
  • Automation, landing pages and team management only arrive on Premium at $27/mo.
  • Essential and Premium both include 15,000 emails — you pay for features, not volume, between them.
  • Deliverability reports are mixed, as with most generous free tiers.
09Hosted service

SMTP2GO

Best for: Reliable SMTP relay with 30 days of logs on every paid plan

Deliberately unglamorous relay infrastructure. Nothing here is fashionable and the thing people actually praise is that the logs go back thirty days on the $10 plan, which several better-known providers don't manage at ten times the price.

Starts at
Starter $10/mo for 10,000 emails ($100/year)
Free tier
1,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day and 25 an hour until your domain is verified
Marketing
None — it's a relay
Data region
Servers worldwide, with location-specific options
What it does well
  • 30 days of log retention on every paid plan, including the $10 one.
  • $1 per extra 1,000 on Starter, dropping to $0.85 on Professional.
  • Professional at $75/mo includes a dedicated IP and email testing tools.
  • Straightforward SMTP relay that works with anything.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's hourly cap of 25 emails makes testing awkward until you verify a domain.
  • Free keeps only 5 days of logs and limits you to 2 team members.
  • No marketing side at all.
  • Phone and live chat support on free lasts 14 days.
10Hosted service

Elastic Email

Best for: High volume at a low flat rate, if you can live with the reputation risk

One of the cheapest ways to send a lot of email through a hosted product. $19/mo for 50,000 emails is roughly half what most of this list charges, and the trade is a shared sending reputation across a very price-sensitive customer base.

Starts at
Starter $19/mo for up to 50,000 emails
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a month
Marketing
An email designer and contact management; not a full automation platform
Data region
United States and European Union
What it does well
  • $19/mo for 50,000 emails undercuts almost every hosted competitor.
  • Pro at $49/mo adds inbound email processing, webhooks, sub-accounts and custom rDNS.
  • Reseller features and sub-accounts make it popular with agencies.
  • Private IPs from $40/mo, cheaper than most.
What to watch for
  • Low prices attract senders whose reputation you share; warm up carefully and watch your own numbers.
  • The free plan is 1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails.
  • Starter and Pro both cap at 50,000 emails — the difference is features, not volume.
  • Support is a paid add-on for prioritised assistance.
11Hosted service

MailPace

Best for: EU-hosted transactional email where every plan has every feature

Made in the UK, hosted in the European Union, and structured so there's nothing to unlock — unlimited domains, unlimited team members, inbound email and 30-day retention on every plan, with only volume changing.

Starts at
Priced on monthly volume via a slider, in your choice of currency
Free tier
A 100-emails-a-month plan, available on request
Marketing
None — transactional only
Data region
European Union
What it does well
  • Every feature is on every plan: unlimited domains, team members and webhooks.
  • 30-day email retention regardless of what you pay.
  • Inbound email, bounce management and anti-spam included.
  • Billing in USD, GBP, EUR and several other currencies.
What to watch for
  • The free plan isn't advertised — you have to ask for it.
  • No marketing side at all.
  • A small team, so no enterprise procurement story.
  • Pricing is a slider rather than a published table.
12Hosted service

Lettermint

Best for: European teams who want a modern transactional API priced in euros

EU infrastructure, GDPR-native, and priced so you can dial the included volume to match what you actually send rather than jumping between fixed tiers.

Starts at
Starter from €10/mo for 10,000 emails
Free tier
300 emails a month, 1 sending domain, 1 project
Marketing
Broadcast emails on paid tiers, alongside transactional
Data region
European Union
What it does well
  • EU-based infrastructure with GDPR compliance as the default, not an add-on.
  • Volume is adjustable within a plan, so you're not paying for a tier you half-use.
  • Broadcasts and inbound email on paid tiers, not just transactional.
  • Priced in euros, which removes a currency conversion from procurement.
What to watch for
  • The free plan is 300 emails a month with one domain.
  • A young company with a short public track record.
  • Inbound email needs a paid tier.
  • No campaign builder, segments or automation.
13Hosted service

Maileroo

Best for: The most generous free transactional tier, dedicated IP included

3,000 free emails a month plus 1,000 inbound, with a free dedicated IP and automatic warm-up — an unusually complete free plan for a transactional provider.

Starts at
Paid plans start above the free 3,000 emails a month
Free tier
3,000 emails and 1,000 inbound a month, 2 domains, free dedicated IP
Marketing
A separate campaign product; the API plans are transactional
Data region
Multiple
What it does well
  • A free dedicated IP with automatic warm-up on the free plan, which nobody else does.
  • 1,000 inbound emails a month included free.
  • Email verification API, sandbox domain and a WordPress plugin included.
  • SMTP relay and REST API with webhooks and full authentication support.
What to watch for
  • Small and young — fewer public deliverability references than the incumbents.
  • The free plan allows 2 domains.
  • Marketing lives in a separate product rather than the same plan.
  • Paid tiers aren't laid out as a simple published table.
14Hosted service

SendLayer

Best for: WordPress sites that need reliable SMTP for not much money

A no-frills transactional provider popular in the WordPress world, with a $5 entry plan and log retention that climbs quickly as you move up.

Starts at
Starter $5/mo for 1,000 emails, billed annually
Free tier
A 200-email trial, plus a 14-day money-back guarantee
Marketing
None — transactional only
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • $5/mo is the cheapest paid transactional plan in this comparison.
  • Log retention reaches 30 days on Growth at $25/mo.
  • Suppression, bounce and blocklist management included on every plan.
  • A 14-day, no-questions money-back guarantee.
What to watch for
  • Starter keeps only 3 days of logs.
  • 1,000 emails a month on the entry plan is small.
  • No marketing side at all.
  • Headline prices are annual; monthly costs more.
15Hosted service

Sweego

Best for: French and EU teams who want email and SMS on European infrastructure

A European multichannel provider with a free tier, retention that climbs from 7 to 90 days with the plan, and SMS bought as credits rather than a second subscription.

Starts at
Individual €10/mo for 20,000–50,000 emails (€8 billed annually)
Free tier
100 emails a day, unlimited domains, 7 days of logs
Marketing
Transactional and inbound routing; SMS via credits
Data region
European Union (France)
What it does well
  • €10/mo for 20,000–50,000 emails is excellent value at that volume.
  • Unlimited sending domains even on the free plan.
  • Log retention of 30 days on Individual, 60 on Startup and 90 on Scaleup.
  • SMS bought as credits valid for 12 months, with no setup fees.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's 100-a-day cap is a daily ceiling, not a monthly allowance.
  • 7 days of log retention on free.
  • A dedicated IP needs Startup at €79/mo or above.
  • Small and French-market-focused; documentation is thinner in English.
16Hosted service

UniOne

Best for: The cheapest way to send serious volume from a hosted provider

$6 a month for 50,000 emails, and a four-month free trial at 6,000 a month before that. Nothing else in this comparison is close on price per email from a hosted service.

Starts at
Standard from $6/mo for 50,000 emails
Free tier
4 months free at 6,000 emails a month, plus 100 address validations
Marketing
Bulk sending alongside transactional; no campaign builder or segments
Data region
Multiple
What it does well
  • $6/mo for 50,000 emails works out at about $0.12 per 1,000 — SES territory, from a hosted product.
  • A four-month free trial is by far the longest here.
  • Web API, SMTP, templates and analytics included on the paid plan.
  • Overage drops to $0.30 per 1,000 at very high volume.
What to watch for
  • Very low prices attract a broad sender base on shared infrastructure; watch your own placement.
  • A dedicated IP is $40/mo plus a $20 setup fee.
  • No campaign builder, segments or automation.
  • Less well known in Western markets, with fewer public deliverability references.
17Hosted service

EmailLabs

Best for: European teams who need certifications on the contract, not just EU servers

Polish infrastructure with European servers, ISO 27001 and 27018, and Certified Senders Alliance membership — the compliance paperwork most providers make you ask for.

Starts at
Essential 30 at €23/mo for up to 100,000 emails
Free tier
STARTUP — up to 9,000 emails a month, capped at 300 a day
Marketing
None — transactional and bulk relay
Data region
European Union (Poland), on European servers
What it does well
  • 9,000 free emails a month is one of the largest permanent free allowances here.
  • €23/mo for up to 100,000 emails is excellent value at volume.
  • ISO 27001 and ISO 27018 certified, with Certified Senders Alliance membership.
  • PRO at €69/mo includes a dedicated IP and unlimited daily sending.
What to watch for
  • The free plan is capped at 300 emails a day.
  • Log retention is 7 days on Essential and 15 on PRO.
  • Support packages run up to €1,800/mo for the top tier.
  • No marketing side: no contacts, segments or campaigns.
18AGPL-3.0

useSend (formerly Unsend)

Best for: Self-hosters who want a modern dashboard on top of their own SES account

The best-known open-source answer to this search. It wraps Amazon SES with a dashboard, contacts, campaigns and webhooks, so you pay AWS rates and keep the UI.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay Amazon SES for the sending
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Included: contacts, campaigns and transactional in one app
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • SES pricing with a real interface on top.
  • Transactional and marketing, REST API and SMTP, webhooks and inbound.
  • Docker images and a one-click Railway deploy.
What to watch for
  • Still described as beta by its own maintainers.
  • Bring your own AWS account, DNS, Postgres and Redis — and your own on-call.
  • AGPL-3.0 has real obligations if you build a product on top of it.
The other kind of free

Free software is not free sending

A lot of the results for this search are open-source projects — useSend, Plunk, listmonk, Postal, FreeResend. They are free in the sense that matters to a licence and not in the sense that matters to a bill: every one of them still needs a sending provider underneath, and Amazon SES is the usual answer at $0.16 per 1,000 emails.

At small volume, self-hosting is more expensive than a free tier, not less — you're paying for a server to send a few hundred emails that Mailtrap or Email Bump would have sent for nothing. Self-hosting pays off at volume or when data ownership is the actual requirement. The self-hosting comparison works through which project fits which reason.

FAQ

Free email tiers, asked and answered

Is there a free alternative to Resend?

Yes — several free tiers are larger than Resend's 3,000 emails a month. Mailtrap gives 4,000, Loops gives 4,000 sends against 1,000 contacts, and Email Bump gives 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails covering campaigns and the API together.

Compare the daily cap rather than the monthly one. Resend's free plan allows 3,000 a month but only 100 a day, so a single import or a burst of sign-ups hits the wall long before the month does.

What is the best free Resend alternative?

For a product that also sends a newsletter, Email Bump's free plan is the largest usable one here: 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month, no daily cap, and unlimited sending domains and team seats. The trade is a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers until you're on a paid plan — transactional sends don't carry it. For pure transactional testing, Mailtrap: the sandbox that catches staging mail is worth more than the extra thousand emails. For European teams, AhaSend, which also gives unlimited sending domains at 1,000 emails a month.

Which free tiers are permanent and which are trials?

Permanent: Email Bump, Resend, Mailtrap, Loops, AhaSend, MailerSend, Scaleway TEM, Mailgun and Postmark. These renew every month for as long as you stay inside them.

Trials dressed as free tiers: ZeptoMail's 10,000 emails expire after a month, and Amazon SES's free-tier credits apply to new AWS accounts across the first six months. Both are generous and both end.

Can I send marketing email on a free plan?

Sometimes, and read the policy before you assume. Scaleway TEM prohibits marketing email outright, and ZeptoMail is transactional-only — sending a newsletter through either can cost you the account.

Email Bump's free plan does include campaigns, flows and segments, which is the main reason it's on this list. Like Loops, it adds a badge: marketing footers carry 'Powered by Email Bump' until you move to a paid plan. Transactional sends never carry it.

Is a free tier enough to launch on?

For a side project or a private beta, usually. For anything with paying customers, look at retention before volume: Mailtrap keeps 3 days of logs on free, Mailgun keeps 1. When a customer says they never got the receipt, a log that expired yesterday is the difference between an answer and an apology.

The largest usable one here

5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails, free

No card, no daily cap, unlimited sending domains and team seats — and campaigns, flows, segments, SMTP and the transactional API are all on the free plan rather than sold separately. Marketing footers carry a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge until you upgrade.

Start free Read the API docs

Keep reading

All Resend alternativesThirty-one options, what each costs, and who each one is actually for.Open source & self-hostedThe AGPL and MIT projects, and what running one really costs you.Email Bump vs ResendThe head-to-head, including the numbers that don't flatter us.Postmark alternativesThe same treatment for Postmark: pricing, overage, EU, and who fits.Every comparisonAll the platforms we've priced and compared, in one index.Email Bump pricingWhat contact-based pricing costs at every list size.