Free SendGrid alternatives
SendGrid's permanent free plan is gone. What's offered now is a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day, which is the single most important thing to know if you last evaluated it a few years ago.
Permanent free transactional tiers below, ranked by what you can actually ship on — including three that are considerably larger than SendGrid's ever was.
The limit that bites first
SendGrid's row is here for reference. Everything marked Permanent renews every month for as long as you stay inside it.
| Provider | Free tier | What stops you first | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| EmailLabs | STARTUP — up to 9,000 emails a month, capped at 300 a day | 300 a day, on a shared IP | Permanent |
| Mailjet | 6,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day, 1,000 contacts | 200 a day, which bites long before the 6,000 a month | Permanent |
| Email Bump | 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month | A 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers. No daily cap; domains and seats unlimited | Permanent |
| Mailtrap | 4,000 emails a month, capped at 150 a day, 3 days of logs | 150 a day, and logs disappear after 3 days | Permanent |
| Maileroo | 3,000 emails and 1,000 inbound a month, 2 domains, free dedicated IP | 2 domains — but a free dedicated IP with automatic warm-up | Permanent |
| Elastic Email | 1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a month | Volume, and support is a paid add-on | Permanent |
| Resend | 3,000 emails a month capped at 100 a day, 1 domain — plus a separate 1,000-contact marketing free plan | 100 a day and 1 sending domain; marketing is a separate free plan | Permanent |
| AhaSend | 1,000 emails a month, unlimited domains, no card required | Volume — but unlimited sending domains, which is rare | Permanent |
| SMTP2GO | 1,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day and 25 an hour until your domain is verified | 25 an hour until you verify a domain, and 5 days of logs | Permanent |
| Lettermint | 300 emails a month, 1 sending domain, 1 project | 1 sending domain and 1 project | Permanent |
| Scaleway TEM | 300 emails a month, every month | Volume, and marketing email is prohibited by policy | Permanent |
| Sweego | 100 emails a day, unlimited domains, 7 days of logs | 100 a day, with 7 days of log retention | Permanent |
| MailerSend | 500 emails a month, 1 domain, 1 template | 1 domain, 1 template and 100 API requests a day | Permanent |
| Mailgun | 100 emails a day, with 1-day log retention | Logs are kept for 1 day, which makes debugging genuinely hard | Permanent |
| Postmark | 100 emails a month | Volume. It's an evaluation allowance, not a plan | Permanent |
| SendGrid | None any more — a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day | 60 days, then it stops. The permanent free tier was withdrawn | Trial |
| UniOne | 4 months free at 6,000 emails a month, plus 100 address validations | Four months, then $4/mo for the same allowance | Trial |
| Zoho ZeptoMail | First credit free — 10,000 emails, valid for one month | The free credit expires after one month | Trial |
| Amazon SES | Up to $200 in AWS free-tier credits for new accounts, over the first 6 months | New AWS accounts only, spread over six months, sandboxed until reviewed | Trial |
From each vendor's own pricing page. Free tiers change more often than paid ones — check before you commit a launch to one.
The free tier became a trial
SendGrid ran a permanent free plan for years — 100 emails a day, forever — and it was how an enormous number of side projects and early-stage products sent their first email. That plan no longer exists. What's offered is 100 emails a day for 60 days.
If your mental model of SendGrid was formed before that change, the practical consequence is that there's nowhere to park a small project any more. Mailjet, from the same corporate family, gives 6,000 emails a month permanently. EmailLabs gives 9,000. Maileroo gives 3,000 plus 1,000 inbound and a free dedicated IP.
Three things to check before the volume
The daily cap. Mailjet's 6,000 a month is 200 a day. EmailLabs's 9,000 is 300 a day. Sweego's is 100 a day. A monthly headline with a daily ceiling behaves very differently the moment you import a list or launch something.
Log retention. This is where free tiers are quietly stingy — Mailgun keeps one day, Mailtrap three, SMTP2GO five. The whole point of a hosted provider is answering 'what happened to this email', and a log that expired yesterday can't.
Whether it's really free. SendGrid's 60 days, UniOne's four months, ZeptoMail's one-month credit and Amazon SES's new-account credits are all trials. Generous, and all of them end.
SendGrid alternatives, asked and answered
Does SendGrid still have a free plan?
Not a permanent one. It's a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day, then you're on a paid plan. Essentials starts at $19.95/mo.
If you remember a free-forever tier, that's what changed.
What is the best free SendGrid alternative?
By raw monthly volume, EmailLabs at 9,000 emails a month, then Mailjet at 6,000. Both are European. Maileroo gives 3,000 plus 1,000 inbound with a free dedicated IP, which is the most complete free transactional tier here.
If you also send campaigns, Email Bump's free plan covers 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails with campaigns, flows and the API on one key.
Which free tiers have no daily cap?
Maileroo's 3,000 a month, Elastic Email's 3,000 and Email Bump's 5,000 are monthly allowances without a daily ceiling. Lettermint's 300 and AhaSend's 1,000 are monthly too.
Mailjet, EmailLabs, Sweego, Mailgun, Mailtrap and Resend all apply a daily limit on top of the monthly one.
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails, permanently
No 60-day clock, no daily cap, unlimited domains and seats — with campaigns, flows, SMTP, inbound and the transactional API all included on the free plan.