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SendGrid alternatives with a free tier (2026)

SendGrid replaced its free plan with a 60-day trial. Compare Resend, Postmark, Mailgun, Brevo, Mailtrap and Couryo, with verified pricing.

Comparisons8 min read

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Your side project's confirmation email stopped going out, and it wasn't a bug: SendGrid's free plan is gone. If you relied on those 100 emails a day for a hobby app, an MVP or a staging environment, you now have to pay or move.

This guide covers what changed, the criteria that actually matter, a table of six alternatives (with facts checked on each vendor's official pages) and how to move your code in about an hour. It's useful even if you never pick Couryo.

What changed in SendGrid's free plan#

Twilio, which owns SendGrid, announced in its official changelog that it was retiring the free Email API and Marketing Campaigns plans, starting May 28, 2025. According to the notice:

  • existing free users kept access for 60 days;
  • after that, sending was paused on free plans and a paid plan was required to keep going;
  • accounts with more than 100 stored contacts had them deleted, with no recovery even after upgrading.

Today, SendGrid's pricing page offers a 60-day free trial with 100 emails per day, and the first paid plan (Essentials) starts at US$ 19.95 per month. There is no permanent free plan anymore. (Verified on October 20, 2026.)

If SendGrid works well for you and the price fits, staying and paying is a perfectly reasonable choice: it scales, its reporting is detailed and the Pro plan (from US$ 89.95) includes a dedicated IP. This guide is for people who want to compare first.

The criteria that matter#

Price is only one of them. Decide what weighs most for you before looking at the table:

  1. A real free tier. Permanent or a trial? A daily cap or only a monthly one? How many domains?
  2. First paid plan and overage. The jump from free to paid is usually where the bill hurts.
  3. Currency. Paying in a foreign currency adds card fees and exchange swings every month.
  4. Support. Tickets only, chat, phone? From which plan?
  5. Pause and suspension policy. Are the bounce and complaint thresholds public? What happens when you cross them: a warning, a partial pause or a full shutdown? Is there a human review? This is the market's biggest complaint: see our guide email provider suspended your account: what to do in the first 24 hours.
  6. Transactional and marketing. Does the same service send password resets and newsletters? In separate streams, so a marketing problem can't take down transactional email?
  7. MCP and AI. If you work with Claude, Cursor or another AI agent, is there an official MCP server? Does it run on your machine, or is it remote with OAuth login?

Comparison: 6 alternatives side by side#

Facts verified on October 20, 2026 on each service's official pricing, limits and MCP pages (links below the table). Prices change: check before you subscribe.

Service Free tier First paid plan Currency Marketing Published pause rule Official MCP
Resend 3,000 per month, up to 100 per day, 3 domains Pro: US$ 20 for 50,000 USD yes, contact-based marketing plans (free up to 1,000 contacts) bounce rate under 4% and spam rate under 0.08%; above that, a temporary pause remote and local
Postmark 100 per month, never expires Basic: US$ 15 for 10,000 USD yes, in a separate broadcast stream complaint rate under 0.1% and bounce rate under 10%; above that, the account is paused with messages queued local
Mailgun 100 per day, 1 domain, 1 day of logs Basic: US$ 15 for 10,000 USD bulk sending through the same API thresholds that temporarily disable the domain, numbers not published local
Brevo 300 per day (campaigns and transactional), after account approval Starter: from US$ 9 per month, from 5,000 emails USD, EUR, GBP and others its main focus on campaigns, a hard bounce rate above 2%, unsubscribe rate above 1% or complaint rate above 0.2% can suspend; transactional can be suspended too remote
Mailtrap 4,000 per month, up to 150 per day Basic: US$ 15 for 10,000 USD yes, in a separate bulk stream the dashboard flags bounces above 5% and spam above 0.1% as critical; we did not find a published pause rule local
Couryo 3,000 per month, up to 100 per day, 1 domain, 7 days of logs Pro: US$ 19 for 50,000 USD and BRL yes: contacts, campaigns and sequences gradual and public: reduced limit, marketing paused, and only then a full pause, always with the reason and the numbers; instant automated review and a person within 1 business day remote, with OAuth

Sources (all checked on October 20, 2026):

"Local" means the MCP server runs on your machine (usually through npx, with the API key in an environment variable). "Remote" means your agent connects to a URL run by the service, with nothing to install.

Who each one is best for#

There is no single best option. There is the one that fits your case.

  • Resend: for teams that want a top-tier developer experience, React Email and SDKs in many languages. Its free tier is the closest to SendGrid's old one (100 per day), with 3 domains. A natural fit for Next.js projects.
  • Postmark: for teams that put transactional deliverability above everything and are happy to pay for it. The free tier (100 a month) is only for testing your integration, but it never expires. Its bounce and complaint limits are public, and a pause holds messages in a queue instead of dropping them.
  • Mailgun: for technical teams that want a mature API, inbound routing and high volume. The free tier's 1 day of logs makes investigating problems harder.
  • Brevo: for anyone who wants marketing (campaigns, automation, CRM) and transactional in one place. Its 300 per day is the largest daily free allowance of the six, counting campaigns and transactional together. Read its suspension rules first: they are strict with campaigns sent to new contacts.
  • Mailtrap: for teams that want safe email testing (its testing inbox is what it's best known for) and sending from the same service. It has the largest monthly free volume on this list (4,000, up to 150 per day).
  • Couryo: for teams that don't want to be caught off guard by a pause. The pause rule is public and gradual, password and billing emails keep going out while marketing is paused, every bounce is explained in plain words, and the MCP server is remote with OAuth. Companies in Brazil pay in reais. Honest downsides: it's a new service, official SDKs are Node, PHP and Python for now, and the free tier includes 1 domain.

How to move off SendGrid in an hour#

Changing the code takes an afternoon, often an hour. Volume is a different story: every serious provider ramps new accounts up gradually. Plan the two separately.

1. Export what's yours first#

In the SendGrid dashboard, under Suppressions, export Bounces, Spam Reports, Invalid Emails, Blocks and Unsubscribes. Sending again to people who already bounced or complained is the fastest way to ruin your reputation on the new provider. If you used Marketing Campaigns, export your contacts as CSV.

2. Publish the new provider's DNS next to the old one#

SendGrid's records (the em…, s1._domainkey and s2._domainkey CNAMEs) don't conflict with another provider's. Publish the new ones, wait for verification and don't delete anything from SendGrid yet. If DNS is new to you, our SPF, DKIM and DMARC guide explains each record.

3. Swap the send call#

The biggest difference is that SendGrid uses personalizations, while most newer services use one plain object per email. With Couryo it looks like this:

Couryo: POST /v1/emails
curl https://api.couryo.com/v1/emails \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COURYO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: order-1042-confirmation" \
  -d '{
    "from": "Shop <orders@example.com>",
    "to": "jane@example.com",
    "subject": "Order 1042 confirmed",
    "text": "Thanks, Jane!",
    "html": "<p>Thanks, Jane!</p>"
  }'

If you use SendGrid's SMTP relay (smtp.sendgrid.net, user apikey), you only change the server, user and password. With Couryo: smtp.couryo.com, port 587, user couryo and your key as the password.

4. Test without delivering#

Use a test key (with Couryo, ck_test_) to run the whole flow in staging: the email is captured and shown in the dashboard, and never reaches anyone.

5. Update your webhooks#

Event names change (spamreport becomes complained, bounce becomes bounced) and so does the signature. The SendGrid migration guide has the full mapping of fields, events, templates and suppressions.

6. Move traffic gradually#

Start with the emails people wait for (login, password reset, order confirmation) and keep SendGrid running for at least 7 days after all traffic has moved. On Couryo, a new account moves up trust levels on its own: with a verified domain, level 1 sends up to 100 per day, and the dashboard shows what's missing for the next level (trust levels). The safe migration order covers every step.

FAQ#

Does SendGrid still have a free plan?#

Not a permanent one. Since 2025, Twilio offers a 60-day trial with 100 emails per day and no card required. After that you need a paid plan, starting at US$ 19.95 per month (verified on October 20, 2026 on the pricing page).

Which SendGrid alternative has the biggest free tier?#

Per month, Mailtrap (4,000, up to 150 per day). Per day, Brevo (300, campaigns and transactional combined). Resend and Couryo give 3,000 per month with up to 100 per day. Also compare included domains, log retention and the pause rule: they matter more than a few hundred emails.

Can I use the same service for transactional email and newsletters?#

Yes, all six in the table do both. The key is keeping the streams apart: a newsletter unsubscribe must not block password resets, and a bad campaign must not take down transactional email. With Couryo, each send declares its stream (stream: "marketing" or transactional) and suppressions are per stream.

How long does it take to migrate from SendGrid?#

The code takes an hour to an afternoon, depending on how many templates and webhooks you have. DNS verifies in minutes or a few hours. Full volume takes longer, because every provider ramps new accounts gradually: move transactional first and the rest over the following weeks.

Do I need to delete SendGrid's DNS records to use another service?#

No. The records coexist. Remove SendGrid's CNAMEs only after all traffic has moved and 7 days have passed, and never touch the MX or SPF records of your mailboxes.