SendGrid email marketing pricing is straightforward on the surface but easy to misread. The platform splits into two separate products with two separate billing structures, and many buyers only discover this after signing up. This guide breaks down every plan, the real costs including hidden fees, and which tier fits which type of business.
Key Takeaways
SendGrid offers two main service categories: Email API for developers and Marketing Campaigns for marketers, each priced and sold separately.
SendGrid's permanent free plan was replaced with a 60-day trial in 2025. After the trial expires, you must upgrade to a paid plan.
Unlike most email marketing tools that charge by subscriber count, SendGrid prices by email volume, meaning your bill depends on how many emails you send, not how many contacts you have.
Budget for extras: dual subscriptions for API and Marketing, $30 per month per additional IP, overage charges, and contact storage overages.
Committing to an annual plan rather than paying month-to-month can reduce your overall costs by 10 to 20%.
What Is SendGrid and How Does Its Pricing Work?
Twilio SendGrid is a cloud-based SMTP provider that acts as an email delivery engine, allowing you to send email without the cost and complexity of maintaining your own email servers. SendGrid manages the technical details of email delivery, including infrastructure scaling, ISP outreach, reputation monitoring, and real-time analytics.
SendGrid structures pricing around two primary products: Email API for transactional emails and Marketing Campaigns for promotional emails. These are not bundled; teams pay separately based on what they need.
Costs depend on monthly email volume and feature requirements. The platform calculates pricing in tiers, with per-email costs dropping as volume increases.
This volume-based model differs from most competitors. Unlike most email marketing tools that charge by subscriber count, SendGrid prices by email volume, meaning your bill depends on how many emails you send, not how many contacts you have. That matters a lot if you have a large list you email infrequently.
The Free Trial: What You Actually Get
SendGrid changed its free plan structure in March 2025. The permanent free tier was replaced with a 60-day free trial, which affects how developers test and evaluate the platform. Starting March 25, 2025, new SendGrid accounts receive a 60-day timed free trial instead of the previous permanent free tier.
Once you create a sender identity, you can send up to 100 emails per day and store up to 100 contacts on both the Email API and the Marketing Campaigns trial. The trial lasts for 60 days, after which you can upgrade to a paid plan after completing account setup.
SendGrid email marketing pricing is straightforward on the surface but easy to misread. The platform splits into two separate products with two separate billing structures, and many buyers only discover this after signing up. This guide breaks down every plan, the real costs including hidden fees, and which tier fits which type of business.
Key Takeaways
SendGrid offers two main service categories: Email API for developers and Marketing Campaigns for marketers, each priced and sold separately.
SendGrid's permanent free plan was replaced with a 60-day trial in 2025. After the trial expires, you must upgrade to a paid plan.
Unlike most email marketing tools that charge by subscriber count, SendGrid prices by email volume, meaning your bill depends on how many emails you send, not how many contacts you have.
Budget for extras: dual subscriptions for API and Marketing, $30 per month per additional IP, overage charges, and contact storage overages.
Committing to an annual plan rather than paying month-to-month can reduce your overall costs by 10 to 20%.
What Is SendGrid and How Does Its Pricing Work?
Twilio SendGrid is a cloud-based SMTP provider that acts as an email delivery engine, allowing you to send email without the cost and complexity of maintaining your own email servers. SendGrid manages the technical details of email delivery, including infrastructure scaling, ISP outreach, reputation monitoring, and real-time analytics.
SendGrid structures pricing around two primary products: Email API for transactional emails and Marketing Campaigns for promotional emails. These are not bundled; teams pay separately based on what they need.
Costs depend on monthly email volume and feature requirements. The platform calculates pricing in tiers, with per-email costs dropping as volume increases.
This volume-based model differs from most competitors. Unlike most email marketing tools that charge by subscriber count, SendGrid prices by email volume, meaning your bill depends on how many emails you send, not how many contacts you have. That matters a lot if you have a large list you email infrequently.
The Free Trial: What You Actually Get
SendGrid changed its free plan structure in March 2025. The permanent free tier was replaced with a 60-day free trial, which affects how developers test and evaluate the platform. Starting March 25, 2025, new SendGrid accounts receive a 60-day timed free trial instead of the previous permanent free tier.
Once you create a sender identity, you can send up to 100 emails per day and store up to 100 contacts on both the Email API and the Marketing Campaigns trial. The trial lasts for 60 days, after which you can upgrade to a paid plan after completing account setup.
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The trial includes basic analytics, deliverability optimization, one additional teammate, and one event webhook. Email validation credits are not included.
The key thing to understand: there is no permanent way to stay on SendGrid for free after the trial ends. If your team has been relying on older articles referencing a free forever plan, those are outdated.
Email API Pricing Plans
The Email API plan caters to developers looking to integrate email functionality directly into their applications or websites, offering maximum flexibility and control. It is priced based on the volume of emails sent, and includes additional tools like Email Validation and Dedicated IPs, to accommodate varying needs from startups to large enterprises.
SendGrid's Email API product has four subscription tiers: Free (trial), Essentials, Pro, and Premier.
Essentials Plan
The Essentials plan is SendGrid's entry-level paid tier. It covers 50,000 to 100,000 emails per month: Essentials 50K at $19.95 per month for up to 50,000 emails, and Essentials 100K at $34.95 per month for up to 100,000 emails. Limitations include no dedicated IP, no sub-user management, only one teammate allowed, and a 100,000 email per month ceiling.
From the Essentials plan upward, all plans offer deliverability optimization and analytics, providing insights into email performance.
Pro Plan
The Pro Plan begins at $89.95 per month, accommodating up to 100,000 emails per month, and offers advanced features like dedicated IPs and subuser management. SendGrid Pro scales to $1,099 per month for 2.5 million emails.
Key features include up to 2,500 email validations, subuser management, single sign-on (SSO), and a single dedicated IP address.
Data retention varies significantly by plan: Free accounts keep just 3 days of history, Essentials plans retain 7 days, and the 30-Day Activity add-on included with Pro gives you a month-long audit trail.
Premier Plan
For enterprises with substantial email needs, the Premier Plan provides custom pricing and tailored features. If you exceed 2.5 million emails per month, need custom SLAs, or require advanced compliance and governance features, you will need to contact sales for SendGrid Premier pricing.
Marketing Campaigns Pricing Plans
Marketing Campaigns is designed for users who need robust, ready-to-use tools for managing email campaigns. It offers features like drag-and-drop design, list management, and comprehensive analytics to monitor campaign effectiveness.
The Marketing Campaigns product has four subscription plans: Free, Basic, Advanced, and Custom. Pricing is determined by monthly contact storage, email volume, and features.
Basic Plan
The Marketing Campaigns Free plan is ideal for small teams with limited contacts (up to 100) and monthly email requirements (up to 6,000 emails). The paid Basic plan, starting at $15 per month billed monthly, offers increased limits on contacts (up to 100,000) and emails (up to 300,000 emails per month).
However, there is a notable catch: the Basic plan actually removes automation that is available in the free trial. If you need automated welcome sequences, dedicated IPs, or team collaboration, you will need to jump to Advanced. This is a frustrating pricing structure that catches many users off guard.
Advanced Plan
The Advanced plan starts at $60 per month billed monthly. In addition to features included in the Free and Basic plans, this plan includes access to dedicated IPs and guaranteed response times on support tickets.
Here is how the Advanced plan scales with contact count, per pricing data from GMass:
SendGrid offers this plan for mid-size to larger marketing teams running complex, multi-touch email marketing campaigns with automation. The Advanced plan unlocks the features most serious marketing teams need: automation, additional teammates, and custom IPs.
Since the Custom plan is a customizable package, you should contact the SendGrid sales team to discuss requirements and pricing. This tier is built for large enterprises that need volume guarantees, advanced SLAs, and dedicated infrastructure.
Hidden Costs to Budget For
SendGrid's advertised prices are the starting point, not the total cost. Several add-ons can push your monthly bill higher than expected.
Dedicated IP addresses cost $30 per month per additional IP beyond the one included in Pro and Advanced plans.
Email testing credits are available as an add-on: 30 credits per month for $18, 60 credits for $30, 100 credits for $40, 500 credits for $200, and 2,000 credits for $800 per month.
If you send more emails than your plan allows within a given billing period, you will be charged a small overage fee on a per-email basis. Any overage fees are added to your invoice for the following billing period.
If you want to use Marketing Campaigns and the Email API, you will need to purchase the plans separately. That means teams needing both transactional and marketing capability face a compounded monthly cost.
While the platform offers a range of plans for businesses of all sizes, more sophisticated features and higher email volume can become expensive. Some users have noted that costs for features like email verification or dedicated IP addresses can quickly add up.
What SendGrid Does Well
The SendGrid Email API leverages advanced infrastructure, authentication standards, and reputation management to land more emails in the inbox.
SendGrid supports email authentication protocols such as SPF and DKIM, which are essential for improving inboxing rates and ensuring email security.
Nextdoor's email volume skyrocketed 50% faster than its membership base, and SendGrid handled rapid growth while maintaining a 99% delivery rate.
Dedicated IPs are included in Pro and Premier Email API plans, and Advanced Marketing Campaigns plans, allowing for better deliverability control. This is particularly valuable if you send at scale and want your sender reputation to depend solely on your own behavior, not shared infrastructure.
SendGrid's drawbacks include a limited and outdated email editor, an interface that can be difficult for non-developers, and basic automation and segmentation tools in lower tiers. Advanced support options like phone assistance are only available on higher-priced plans.
Email automation is a weak point. The trigger and segmentation options are limited, making it hard to create advanced and targeted automation sequences.
Downgrading between paid plans causes feature loss. According to SendGrid's official support documentation, moving from Pro to Essentials removes several capabilities, including dedicated IP addresses, subuser management, bounce and block classifications, email validation API access, SSO, and phone support. Plan for your ceiling before you commit.
Which SendGrid Plan Should You Choose?
Use this as a quick reference:
Your Situation
Recommended Plan
Developer testing API integration
60-day Free Trial
Startup sending transactional emails at low volume
Essentials ($19.95/mo)
SaaS or e-commerce sending 100K+ emails/month
Pro ($89.95/mo)
Marketer running newsletters without automation
Basic ($15/mo)
Marketer running automated campaigns
Advanced ($60/mo+)
Enterprise with 200K+ contacts and compliance needs
Custom/Premier
Volume discounts favor consistent high-volume senders. Businesses with fluctuating sending patterns might find flat-rate alternatives more predictable financially.
SendGrid offers volume pricing, so the more email you send, the lower your rate. Calculate your expected monthly volume and choose the highest pricing tier you will fit within to get the lowest rate per email.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does SendGrid still have a free plan?
SendGrid no longer offers a permanent free plan. Until 2025, SendGrid had a free tier that let you send up to 6,000 emails per month and store 2,000 contacts with no expiration. They replaced it with a 60-day free trial limited to 100 emails per day. After 60 days, you must upgrade to a paid plan.
Do I need to buy both Email API and Marketing Campaigns?
No, not unless you need both. Email API and Marketing Campaigns are separate products with independent pricing. Teams can subscribe to one or both simultaneously. Switching between them is not relevant since each serves different use cases: transactional vs. promotional emails.
What happens if I exceed my plan's email limit?
Each SendGrid plan tier has a monthly email sending limit. If you exceed your plan's email limit during a billing period, SendGrid charges per-email overage fees on your next invoice. The overage rate depends on your plan tier. Proactively upgrading before hitting limits typically costs less than paying overage rates.
Is SendGrid worth the cost compared to alternatives?
Whether SendGrid is worth it depends on your needs and email volume. For small senders, cheaper tools may suffice, but for high-volume businesses needing reliable transactional emails and advanced features, SendGrid offers strong value. SendGrid feels more suited to high-volume sending with a straightforward send-based model, while tools like Mailchimp with its contact-centric structure and advanced marketing features may suit marketers running targeted, feature-rich campaigns better.
The trial includes basic analytics, deliverability optimization, one additional teammate, and one event webhook. Email validation credits are not included.
The key thing to understand: there is no permanent way to stay on SendGrid for free after the trial ends. If your team has been relying on older articles referencing a free forever plan, those are outdated.
Email API Pricing Plans
The Email API plan caters to developers looking to integrate email functionality directly into their applications or websites, offering maximum flexibility and control. It is priced based on the volume of emails sent, and includes additional tools like Email Validation and Dedicated IPs, to accommodate varying needs from startups to large enterprises.
SendGrid's Email API product has four subscription tiers: Free (trial), Essentials, Pro, and Premier.
Essentials Plan
The Essentials plan is SendGrid's entry-level paid tier. It covers 50,000 to 100,000 emails per month: Essentials 50K at $19.95 per month for up to 50,000 emails, and Essentials 100K at $34.95 per month for up to 100,000 emails. Limitations include no dedicated IP, no sub-user management, only one teammate allowed, and a 100,000 email per month ceiling.
From the Essentials plan upward, all plans offer deliverability optimization and analytics, providing insights into email performance.
Pro Plan
The Pro Plan begins at $89.95 per month, accommodating up to 100,000 emails per month, and offers advanced features like dedicated IPs and subuser management. SendGrid Pro scales to $1,099 per month for 2.5 million emails.
Key features include up to 2,500 email validations, subuser management, single sign-on (SSO), and a single dedicated IP address.
Data retention varies significantly by plan: Free accounts keep just 3 days of history, Essentials plans retain 7 days, and the 30-Day Activity add-on included with Pro gives you a month-long audit trail.
Premier Plan
For enterprises with substantial email needs, the Premier Plan provides custom pricing and tailored features. If you exceed 2.5 million emails per month, need custom SLAs, or require advanced compliance and governance features, you will need to contact sales for SendGrid Premier pricing.
Marketing Campaigns Pricing Plans
Marketing Campaigns is designed for users who need robust, ready-to-use tools for managing email campaigns. It offers features like drag-and-drop design, list management, and comprehensive analytics to monitor campaign effectiveness.
The Marketing Campaigns product has four subscription plans: Free, Basic, Advanced, and Custom. Pricing is determined by monthly contact storage, email volume, and features.
Basic Plan
The Marketing Campaigns Free plan is ideal for small teams with limited contacts (up to 100) and monthly email requirements (up to 6,000 emails). The paid Basic plan, starting at $15 per month billed monthly, offers increased limits on contacts (up to 100,000) and emails (up to 300,000 emails per month).
However, there is a notable catch: the Basic plan actually removes automation that is available in the free trial. If you need automated welcome sequences, dedicated IPs, or team collaboration, you will need to jump to Advanced. This is a frustrating pricing structure that catches many users off guard.
Advanced Plan
The Advanced plan starts at $60 per month billed monthly. In addition to features included in the Free and Basic plans, this plan includes access to dedicated IPs and guaranteed response times on support tickets.
Here is how the Advanced plan scales with contact count, per pricing data from GMass:
SendGrid offers this plan for mid-size to larger marketing teams running complex, multi-touch email marketing campaigns with automation. The Advanced plan unlocks the features most serious marketing teams need: automation, additional teammates, and custom IPs.
Since the Custom plan is a customizable package, you should contact the SendGrid sales team to discuss requirements and pricing. This tier is built for large enterprises that need volume guarantees, advanced SLAs, and dedicated infrastructure.
Hidden Costs to Budget For
SendGrid's advertised prices are the starting point, not the total cost. Several add-ons can push your monthly bill higher than expected.
Dedicated IP addresses cost $30 per month per additional IP beyond the one included in Pro and Advanced plans.
Email testing credits are available as an add-on: 30 credits per month for $18, 60 credits for $30, 100 credits for $40, 500 credits for $200, and 2,000 credits for $800 per month.
If you send more emails than your plan allows within a given billing period, you will be charged a small overage fee on a per-email basis. Any overage fees are added to your invoice for the following billing period.
If you want to use Marketing Campaigns and the Email API, you will need to purchase the plans separately. That means teams needing both transactional and marketing capability face a compounded monthly cost.
While the platform offers a range of plans for businesses of all sizes, more sophisticated features and higher email volume can become expensive. Some users have noted that costs for features like email verification or dedicated IP addresses can quickly add up.
What SendGrid Does Well
The SendGrid Email API leverages advanced infrastructure, authentication standards, and reputation management to land more emails in the inbox.
SendGrid supports email authentication protocols such as SPF and DKIM, which are essential for improving inboxing rates and ensuring email security.
Nextdoor's email volume skyrocketed 50% faster than its membership base, and SendGrid handled rapid growth while maintaining a 99% delivery rate.
Dedicated IPs are included in Pro and Premier Email API plans, and Advanced Marketing Campaigns plans, allowing for better deliverability control. This is particularly valuable if you send at scale and want your sender reputation to depend solely on your own behavior, not shared infrastructure.
SendGrid's drawbacks include a limited and outdated email editor, an interface that can be difficult for non-developers, and basic automation and segmentation tools in lower tiers. Advanced support options like phone assistance are only available on higher-priced plans.
Email automation is a weak point. The trigger and segmentation options are limited, making it hard to create advanced and targeted automation sequences.
Downgrading between paid plans causes feature loss. According to SendGrid's official support documentation, moving from Pro to Essentials removes several capabilities, including dedicated IP addresses, subuser management, bounce and block classifications, email validation API access, SSO, and phone support. Plan for your ceiling before you commit.
Which SendGrid Plan Should You Choose?
Use this as a quick reference:
Your Situation
Recommended Plan
Developer testing API integration
60-day Free Trial
Startup sending transactional emails at low volume
Essentials ($19.95/mo)
SaaS or e-commerce sending 100K+ emails/month
Pro ($89.95/mo)
Marketer running newsletters without automation
Basic ($15/mo)
Marketer running automated campaigns
Advanced ($60/mo+)
Enterprise with 200K+ contacts and compliance needs
Custom/Premier
Volume discounts favor consistent high-volume senders. Businesses with fluctuating sending patterns might find flat-rate alternatives more predictable financially.
SendGrid offers volume pricing, so the more email you send, the lower your rate. Calculate your expected monthly volume and choose the highest pricing tier you will fit within to get the lowest rate per email.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does SendGrid still have a free plan?
SendGrid no longer offers a permanent free plan. Until 2025, SendGrid had a free tier that let you send up to 6,000 emails per month and store 2,000 contacts with no expiration. They replaced it with a 60-day free trial limited to 100 emails per day. After 60 days, you must upgrade to a paid plan.
Do I need to buy both Email API and Marketing Campaigns?
No, not unless you need both. Email API and Marketing Campaigns are separate products with independent pricing. Teams can subscribe to one or both simultaneously. Switching between them is not relevant since each serves different use cases: transactional vs. promotional emails.
What happens if I exceed my plan's email limit?
Each SendGrid plan tier has a monthly email sending limit. If you exceed your plan's email limit during a billing period, SendGrid charges per-email overage fees on your next invoice. The overage rate depends on your plan tier. Proactively upgrading before hitting limits typically costs less than paying overage rates.
Is SendGrid worth the cost compared to alternatives?
Whether SendGrid is worth it depends on your needs and email volume. For small senders, cheaper tools may suffice, but for high-volume businesses needing reliable transactional emails and advanced features, SendGrid offers strong value. SendGrid feels more suited to high-volume sending with a straightforward send-based model, while tools like Mailchimp with its contact-centric structure and advanced marketing features may suit marketers running targeted, feature-rich campaigns better.
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