Costs

What 100,000 emails really cost across providers

The bill for 100,000 emails a month at six providers, from $10 to $126, with the plan, the overage and the extras behind each number. List prices checked on 20 October 2026.

Every provider below can send 100,000 emails a month. The cheapest bill is $10 and the dearest is $126 for the same mail, before any extras. Each number is worked out from the provider's own price list, and then the same volume is priced three more ways: with a dedicated IP, in a month that swings between 60,000 and 140,000, and over a year.

US list prices in USD, checked on 20 October 2026, before tax and negotiated discounts. Where a provider has no plan at exactly 100,000, the cheapest way to reach it is shown with the sum.

The bill at 100,000 emails a month

Provider and plan	How the bill is made	Month	Per 1,000
Amazon SES, pay as you go	100 × $0.10	$10.00	$0.10
Amazon SES, Essentials plan	100 × $0.16, no fixed fee, deliverability dashboard included	$16.00	$0.16
ZeptoMail (Zoho)	10 credits × $2.50 (1 credit = 10,000 emails)	$25.00	$0.25
SendGrid Essentials 100K	Fixed plan	$34.95	$0.35
Resend Pro	Fixed plan, 100,000 included	$35.00	$0.35
Mailgun Scale	Fixed plan, 100,000 included	$90.00	$0.90
Mailgun Foundation	$35 for 50,000 + 50 × $1.30 overage	$100.00	$1.00
Postmark Basic	125,000 tier (the 50,000 tier + overage would be $55 + 50 × $1.80 = $145)	$115.00	$1.15
Postmark Pro	50,000 tier $60.50 + 50 × $1.30 overage (the 125,000 tier is $126.50)	$125.50	$1.26
Postmark Platform	50,000 tier $66 + 50 × $1.20 overage (the 125,000 tier is $138)	$126.00	$1.26

Three things stand out:

The spread is twelve times. Amazon SES at $10 and Postmark at $115 to $126 send the same 100,000 messages. The difference pays for work SES leaves to you (see "Over a year" below).
The smaller plan can cost more than the bigger one. At Mailgun, Foundation plus overage is $100, while Scale, which includes 100,000, is $90 and keeps logs for 30 days instead of 5. At Postmark, Basic's 125,000 tier is $30 cheaper than its 50,000 tier plus overage.
SES is no longer one price. Since 21 July 2026, new SES accounts start on the Essentials plan at $0.16 per 1,000. The old $0.10 pay-as-you-go rate is still there, but you have to switch to it. SES Pro adds a fixed $105 a month per account and region: $105 + 100 × $0.22 = $127 at this volume.

With a dedicated IP

A dedicated IP means your sending reputation is yours alone instead of shared with other senders. One IP at 100,000 emails a month:

Provider	How the bill is made	Month
Amazon SES pay as you go + managed dedicated IP	$10 + $15 account fee + 100 × $0.08	$33.00
Amazon SES pay as you go + standard dedicated IP	$10 + $24.95 per IP	$34.95
SendGrid Pro 100K	One IP included in the plan	$89.95
Mailgun Scale	One IP included from 100,000 a month; more at $59 each	$90.00
Resend Scale + IP add-on	$90 + $30 (only for senders above 3,000 emails a day)	$120.00
Postmark	Not sold below 300,000 a month (from $50 per IP, Pro and up)	n/a

Postmark's 300,000 minimum is a hint worth taking. 100,000 a month is about 3,300 emails a day. Mailbox providers judge an IP by its steady volume, and a lone IP sending a few thousand a day with quiet weekends can end up with a weaker reputation than a well-run shared pool. At this volume a dedicated IP is often money spent on a worse result.

When the volume swings: 60,000 one month, 140,000 the next

Few apps send exactly 100,000 every month. The same plans for a quiet month and a busy one, staying on the plan chosen above:

Plan	60,000 emails	140,000 emails	Both months
Amazon SES, pay as you go	$6.00	$14.00	$20.00
Resend Pro	$35.00	$35 + 40 × $0.90 = $71.00	$106.00
Postmark Pro	$60.50 + 10 × $1.30 = $73.50	125,000 tier $126.50 + 15 × $1.30 = $146.00	$219.50
Mailgun Scale	$90.00	$90 + 40 × $1.10 = $134.00	$224.00

Per-message pricing follows your volume down. A fixed plan charges in full in the quiet month and adds overage in the busy one, so an app with swings pays more than its average suggests: Resend's two months cost $106, against $70 for two steady months of 100,000. ZeptoMail also bills only what you send, but its credits expire 6 months after purchase.

SendGrid is left out of this table: its pricing page no longer publishes overage rates ("overages may apply"), and accounts are stopped at 10 times the plan allowance.

Over a year, and what the difference buys

Plan	12 months at 100,000	More than SES pay as you go
Amazon SES, pay as you go	$120	–
Amazon SES, Essentials	$192	$72
ZeptoMail	$300	$180
SendGrid Essentials 100K	$419.40	$299.40
Resend Pro	$420	$300
Mailgun Scale	$1,080	$960
Postmark Basic	$1,380	$1,260

The gap between cheapest and dearest is about $1,260 a year. Whether that is a saving depends on what SES leaves to you:

The sandbox. A new SES account can only send to addresses and domains you have verified, at most 200 messages in 24 hours and 1 per second, until AWS approves a production access request. AWS answers within 96 hours, and asks you to confirm you have a process for bounces and complaints.
Bounces and complaints. SES reports them, but your code has to receive the events (SNS or event destinations), stop mailing bad addresses and keep the rates low, or AWS can pause your sending.
Logs. SES has no message history page out of the box. Resend keeps 30 days on every plan, Mailgun Scale 30 days, SendGrid 3 days on Essentials and 7 on Pro; Postmark sells longer history from $5 a month.
Templates, inbound mail and a dashboard a non-developer can read come with the hosted plans and are your own build on SES.

At $50 an hour for a developer, $1,260 is about 25 hours a year. Bounce handling and logging on SES take someone who has done it before a day or two, and then mostly run. So SES wins on cost when someone on the team knows AWS. When nobody does, the hours, and the first paused account, usually cost more than the fee.

Small extras that add up

Extra	Price	At 100,000 emails a month
SES attachments	$0.12 per GB sent	100,000 emails with a 100 KB PDF is about 10 GB: $1.20
SES deliverability dashboard on pay as you go	$0.07 per 1,000	$7.00, which is why Essentials (dashboard included) is only $6 more than pay as you go
Postmark longer activity history	from $5 a month	$5 or more (Pro and up)
Postmark DMARC monitoring	$14 per domain a month	$14 per sending domain
Extra Mailgun dedicated IP	$59 per IP a month	$59 each

Free allowances at this volume

Resend free: 3,000 a month, 100 a day. Mailgun free: 100 a day. Postmark free: 100 a month. SendGrid: a 60-day trial at 100 a day, then paid. None of them comes near 100,000; they are for testing.
Amazon SES: new AWS customers get up to $200 in free-tier credits, to be used within 12 months of opening the account. At $10 a month that covers the whole first year of 100,000 emails, if nothing else on the account uses the credits.
ZeptoMail: the first credit (10,000 emails) is free.

Which one, for 100,000 a month

Someone on the team knows AWS: SES pay as you go, $10 a month. Switch off the Essentials default if you don't need its dashboard.
Lowest price without building bounce handling: SendGrid Essentials 100K ($34.95) or Resend Pro ($35). Resend publishes its overage rate ($0.90 per 1,000); SendGrid doesn't.
Volume that swings a lot: SES or ZeptoMail, which bill per message.
You want a dedicated IP at this volume: SES ($33 to $35), or SendGrid Pro or Mailgun Scale ($90). Read the dedicated IP section first.
Postmark costs the most at this volume ($115) and sells delivery speed and support; its price per 1,000 drops from 300,000 a month.

US list prices on 20 October 2026 from each provider's pricing page, except SendGrid's per-tier amounts and ZeptoMail's credit price, which those pricing pages no longer show (third-party sources below). Prices change often and vary by region and contract.

Sources

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