Mailgun vs Resend
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Both sides assessedMailgun compared with Resend
Resend is nicer to integrate, cheaper at volume (about $80 versus about $145 at 150,000 emails), and has a far better console and log viewer. Mailgun's inbound routing is more mature than Resend's newer inbound support. If your application needs to receive and route mail, or you want address validation from the same vendor, Mailgun wins outright. If you only send, Resend is the better product on almost every axis except institutional longevity.
Resend compared with Mailgun
Mailgun offers more infrastructure primitives than Resend: full inbound routing, email validation as a metered service, longer log retention on Scale, and dedicated IPs from the 50,000 volume tier. It is also owned by Sinch and feels it, with a heavier console and an enterprise sales motion layered over the self-serve plans. Resend is cheaper at comparable volume, far nicer to integrate, and now receives inbound email too, though with a newer feature set. Pick Mailgun when you need to receive and route mail programmatically; pick Resend when you only need to send.
Choose Mailgun if
Development teams that need transactional sending plus real inbound mail routing, particularly applications that receive and process email as a core feature, and anyone who wants list validation and sending from the same vendor.
Choose Resend if
Software teams that need reliable, well-instrumented transactional email from their own code, especially JavaScript and TypeScript shops that want React Email, and anyone leaving SendGrid or Mailgun because the console and the support got worse.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Mailgun | Resend |
|---|---|---|
| Category | ESPs | ESPs |
| Starting price | $15 a month for 10,000 emails (Basic) (free plan available) | $0 for 3,000 emails a month, then $20 a month for 50,000 emails |
| Pricing model | Volume-metered on emails sent, with four tiers that differ mainly in included volume, log retention, inbound route allowance, and dedicated IP availability. Email validation is metered separately. | Two separate meters. Transactional email is billed on monthly send volume with per-thousand overage. Marketing email is billed separately on contact count. Neither meter charges for team seats. |
| Free plan | 100 emails a day, one inbound route, and one day of log retention. No dedicated IP option. | 3,000 transactional emails a month capped at 100 per day, 3 sending domains, 30-day logs, plus 1,000 marketing contacts. No credit card required. |
| Free trial | One free month on Foundation and Scale | No |
| Best for | Development teams that need transactional sending plus real inbound mail routing, particularly applications that receive and process email as a core feature, and anyone who wants list validation and sending from the same vendor. | Software teams that need reliable, well-instrumented transactional email from their own code, especially JavaScript and TypeScript shops that want React Email, and anyone leaving SendGrid or Mailgun because the console and the support got worse. |
| Setup time | Half a day for outbound: add the domain, publish the SPF, DKIM, and tracking DNS records, wait for verification, and drop in the SDK or SMTP credentials. Inbound takes longer because MX changes need planning and routes need designing. | Under an hour for a first send, and typically a day to be fully in production. Verifying a domain takes as long as your DNS propagates; the SDK integration itself is a handful of lines. |
| Learning curve | Moderate. The sending API is conventional, but Mailgun's route expression syntax, the distinction between sandbox and verified domains, and the interaction between suppression lists and your own database all take a session to understand properly. | Very low for anyone who has used an HTTP API. The genuinely new skill for most teams is email authentication, and Resend's domain screen teaches it as you go rather than assuming you already know. |
| Platforms | Web console, REST API, SMTP relay, Inbound routes and webhooks, Official SDKs for 7 languages | Web dashboard, REST API, SMTP relay, CLI, MCP server, SDKs for 13 languages and frameworks |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 through Sinch, GDPR with a data processing agreement, HIPAA arrangements available on enterprise terms | SOC 2, GDPR with a data processing agreement |
| Founded | 2010 | 2022 |
| Headquarters | San Antonio, Texas, United States, as part of Sinch (Stockholm, Sweden) | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Ownership | Owned by Sinch AB (STO: SINCH) since December 2021 | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Mailgun
Strengths
- The best inbound email handling in the category: pattern-matched routes with forward, store, and post actions, priority ordering, full MIME parsing, and retrievable message storage.
- Email Address Validation from the same vendor, which removes a separate tool and a separate contract for list hygiene.
- Volume-based pricing means dormant contacts are free, which is structurally cheaper than any contact-priced marketing platform for product notification traffic.
- Mature API primitives including batch sending with per-recipient variables, versioned templates, tags for reporting, and a queryable Events API rather than only webhooks.
Limitations
- One day of log retention on Free and Basic is close to indefensible, and even Foundation's five days is short against Postmark's 45-day default (extendable to 365 days as a paid add-on).
- No marketing capability whatsoever; Sinch's answer to that is Mailjet, a separate product with a separate account and no shared contact base.
- The console is heavier and slower than Resend's, and the overall experience reads as enterprise software rather than a developer tool despite the developer positioning.
- Support quality is a common complaint, particularly on lower tiers, and the enterprise support organisation is slower than a small vendor's.
Resend
Strengths
- The best developer experience in transactional email by a wide margin: small API, thirteen first-party SDKs, readable docs, and a dashboard that loads instantly.
- React Email is a genuine ecosystem contribution and makes building branded transactional templates in a JavaScript codebase pleasant rather than miserable.
- Volume-based pricing means dormant users cost nothing, which is structurally cheaper than contact-priced marketing platforms for product notification traffic.
- Domain authentication is guided rather than left to you, and the verification status screen catches the SPF and DKIM mistakes that quietly send transactional mail to spam.
Limitations
- It is not a marketing platform. No automation builder, no behavioral segmentation, no branching lifecycle flows, no ecommerce integration, no landing pages, no CRM.
- Message log retention is capped at 30 days outside Enterprise, well short of Postmark's 45-day default and its paid add-on up to 365 days, which is awkward for chargeback disputes and compliance evidence.
- Inbound email is newer here than at Postmark or Mailgun, and each received email counts against the transactional quota, so a reply-heavy product should model inbound volume into the plan size.
- Dedicated IPs are Scale-only and gated at 3,000 emails a day, so a small sender who wants IP isolation cannot have it.
Pricing compared
Mailgun
Volume-metered on emails sent, with four tiers that differ mainly in included volume, log retention, inbound route allowance, and dedicated IP availability. Email validation is metered separately.
- Free$0
- BasicFrom $15
- Foundation$35
- Scale$90
- CustomQuoted
Modelled at this directory's three reference points, Mailgun is mid-market on price and top of the category on inbound capability. A product with 1,000 users receiving three emails each sends 3,000 a month and fits inside Basic at $15, or the free tier if the daily cap allows. Ten thousand users at three emails each is 30,000 sends, still inside Basic at $15 but far better served by Foundation at $35 for the log retention and the inbound routes. Fifty thousand users at three emails each is 150,000 sends, which is Scale at $90 plus roughly $55 of overage, about $145 a month. That sits between Resend at around $80 and Postmark at around $199 for the same volume, and it is roughly ten times Amazon SES. What separates Mailgun from the cheaper options is inbound routing with rules rather than a single webhook, and validation from the same vendor. What separates it from the more expensive ones is that Postmark keeps a year of full message content where Mailgun keeps 30 days of events. Buy Mailgun for inbound; buy something else if outbound is all you do.
Resend
Two separate meters. Transactional email is billed on monthly send volume with per-thousand overage. Marketing email is billed separately on contact count. Neither meter charges for team seats.
- Free$0
- Pro$20 for 50,000 emails, $35 for 100,000 emails
- Scale$90 for 100,000 rising to $1,150 for 2.5M emails
- Marketing Pro$40 to $650
- EnterpriseCustom
Modelled at the three volumes this directory uses, Resend's transactional meter behaves nothing like a contact-priced ESP. A product with 1,000 users sending each of them roughly three notifications a month is inside the free tier at zero. Ten thousand users at three emails each is 30,000 sends, comfortably inside the $20 Pro plan. Fifty thousand users at three emails each is 150,000 sends, which is $35 for the first 100,000 plus $45 of overage, or about $80 a month. Against Postmark that is roughly half the price at volume, against SendGrid it is competitive, and against Amazon SES it is about five times more expensive. You are paying a modest premium over the raw infrastructure price for a console you can navigate, docs you can read, and support that answers. For most small software businesses that trade is obviously worth it.
Editorial verdict on each
Mailgun
Mailgun is the right purchase when your application receives email as well as sending it. The routing engine, with pattern matching, priority ordering, and forward, store, and post actions, is meaningfully better than the single inbound webhook every competitor offers, and having address validation on the same account removes a whole separate vendor from the list-hygiene problem. The EU sending region is a real advantage for European buyers. The problem is the retention ladder: one day of logs on Basic is not a debugging surface, five days on Foundation is barely one, and only Scale at $90 gets you the 30 days that a support team actually needs. Price it as Foundation or Scale from the start and the value looks reasonable, sitting between Resend and Postmark at around $145 for 150,000 messages a month. Price it as the $15 Basic plan and you will be disappointed the first time a customer asks about an email from last week. If you only send outbound mail, Resend is a better product; if you receive mail, Mailgun is still the one to buy.
Read the full Mailgun profileResend
InnovationResend is the best transactional email API to integrate today, and the reason is unglamorous: the docs are correct, the SDKs are first-party across thirteen stacks, the domain verification screen tells you exactly which DNS record is wrong, and the message log answers the support ticket in ten seconds. React Email alone has saved more engineering hours than the subscription costs. Buy it for product notification traffic, receipts, and authentication email, where volume-based pricing means dormant users are free. Do not buy it as a marketing platform: Broadcasts is a newsletter tool, not an automation engine, and you will end up paying for a second product anyway. The genuine cautions are the fixed 30-day log retention, an inbound feature that is newer than its rivals', and the fact that a four-year-old startup now holds your password reset pipeline. At Resend's price and quality those are acceptable trades for most small software businesses, but abstract your sending behind an interface so switching stays a one-day job.
Read the full Resend profileMailgun profile last reviewed 2026-09-26; Resend last reviewed 2026-09-26. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
The best in Email Service Providers
22 trackedEmail service providers are the platforms that store an audience and send it email at scale: list management, campaign editors, automation, and the sending infrastructure underneath.
Still the default small-business ESP, with the broadest template, integration, and education ecosystem in email marketing.
The most generous free tier in email marketing, from a bootstrapped Lithuanian team that undercuts everyone above it.
Made monetization the product and became the platform serious newsletters migrate to.
Rebuilt email sending around developer experience and React components, making the transactional API something engineers actually enjoy.
Under an hour from signup to a published newsletter, with no domain authentication, no templates, and no deliverability setup exposed to the writer.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Mailgun and Resend?
Resend is nicer to integrate, cheaper at volume (about $80 versus about $145 at 150,000 emails), and has a far better console and log viewer. Mailgun's inbound routing is more mature than Resend's newer inbound support. If your application needs to receive and route mail, or you want address validation from the same vendor, Mailgun wins outright. If you only send, Resend is the better product on almost every axis except institutional longevity.
Is Mailgun or Resend cheaper?
Mailgun starts at $15 a month for 10,000 emails (Basic) (free plan available). Resend starts at $0 for 3,000 emails a month, then $20 a month for 50,000 emails. The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Mailgun pricing model: Volume-metered on emails sent, with four tiers that differ mainly in included volume, log retention, inbound route allowance, and dedicated IP availability. Email validation is metered separately. Resend pricing model: Two separate meters. Transactional email is billed on monthly send volume with per-thousand overage. Marketing email is billed separately on contact count. Neither meter charges for team seats.
Does Mailgun or Resend have a free plan?
Mailgun has a free plan. 100 emails a day, one inbound route, and one day of log retention. No dedicated IP option. Trial terms: One free month on Foundation and Scale. Resend has a free plan. 3,000 transactional emails a month capped at 100 per day, 3 sending domains, 30-day logs, plus 1,000 marketing contacts. No credit card required.
Who should choose Mailgun?
Development teams that need transactional sending plus real inbound mail routing, particularly applications that receive and process email as a core feature, and anyone who wants list validation and sending from the same vendor.
Who should choose Resend?
Software teams that need reliable, well-instrumented transactional email from their own code, especially JavaScript and TypeScript shops that want React Email, and anyone leaving SendGrid or Mailgun because the console and the support got worse.
What are the best alternatives to Mailgun and Resend?
SaaSTracker profiles 22 products in Email Service Providers. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Mailchimp (Category Leader), Sender (Best Value), beehiiv (Momentum). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
