SendGrid (by Twilio) is a popular API for transactional and marketing email — sign-up confirmations, password resets, receipts and newsletters. Here's the pricing, the free tier, and how to get started.
| Plan | Price | Emails |
|---|---|---|
| Free free tier | $0 | 100 / day, forever |
| Essentials | from ~$19.95/mo | up to 50k / mo |
| Pro | from ~$89.95/mo | 100k+ / mo, more features |
SendGrid's free plan sends up to 100 emails per day, indefinitely — no credit card required to start. That's plenty for a small app's transactional email (confirmations, resets, alerts). When you outgrow it, the paid tiers scale by monthly volume.
1. Sign up at sendgrid.com and complete onboarding.
2. Verify a sender — either a single sender email or (better) your whole domain via DNS. Email won't send until this is done.
3. Go to Settings → API Keys → Create API Key.
4. Choose Full Access or Restricted Access (Mail Send only is safest), name it, and copy the key once.
Send a test email:
Resend is a popular modern alternative with a clean API and a free tier (~3,000 emails/month). Amazon SES is the cheapest at scale (~$0.10 per 1,000 emails) but is more bare-bones. Mailgun and Postmark (great deliverability for transactional) are also worth comparing. For SMS instead of email, see Twilio.
Twilio SendGrid applies rate limits per endpoint rather than one global number, and it exposes the current state in response headers you should read on every call: X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, and X-RateLimit-Reset. The Mail Send endpoint is provisioned for high throughput, while management endpoints (contacts, templates, stats) have their own, lower ceilings.
Separate from API request rate, your plan sets an email sending volume. Free plans are the most constrained and higher tiers raise both monthly volume and burst allowances:
Exceed a rate limit and SendGrid returns HTTP 429 Too Many Requests, usually with a Retry-After header telling you how long to wait; the correct pattern is to honor that header and back off. If you are looking up SendGrid rate limits, remember there are two limits to design for: the per-endpoint API request rate and your plan's email sending quota.
Compare SendGrid with our Mailgun, Amazon SES, and Postmark API guides to weigh sending limits against per-email pricing.
Yes — 100 emails/day forever, no credit card to start. Good for low-volume transactional email.
Sign up, verify a sender (single sender or domain), then Settings → API Keys → Create API Key, choose access level, and copy it once.
Amazon SES is cheapest at scale (~$0.10/1,000 emails) but more bare-bones. Resend has a generous free tier and a nicer developer experience. SendGrid sits in between with strong features.
Not affiliated with SendGrid/Twilio. Prices are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.