Amazon SES alternatives (2026): free tiers & pricing compared

What do you optimize for?

Pick the priority that matters most for your project and we'll point you to the provider that wins on it.

Top Amazon SES alternatives, side by side

Free tier, entry price, dedicated-IP cost and deliverability — pulled from each vendor's own pricing page. Sort any column; star a provider to watch it.

Amazon SES: current pricing

What you actually pay on Amazon SES today, for context. Source: https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/.

Where you should land

Amazon SES is a solid transactional email provider, but teams put it up for comparison for concrete reasons: heavier setup (IAM, verification, warnings) and no permanent free tier; support costs extra. Its strengths are cheapest at scale ($0.10/1,000) and aWS-native, so whether an alternative is worth the switch depends on which trade-off actually affects your project.

Amazon SES is free only for the first 12 months (3,000/mo), then bills usage at $0.10 per 1,000 emails, with a dedicated IP at $24.95/mo. Best when cost is paramount and you are AWS-native. In Next.js, use @aws-sdk/client-ses from a Route Handler.

Among the alternatives, Resend (3,000 emails/mo (100/day) free, from $20/mo) for best-in-class developer experience (React Email, type-safe), Postmark (100 emails/mo (no expiration) free, from $15/mo) for industry-leading deliverability and speed, and Mailgun (100 emails/day (~3,000/mo) free, from $15/mo) for flexible routing and inbound processing. On Next.js specifically, Resend is the smoothest migration thanks to its type-safe SDK and React Email templates.

Pick by priority: Brevo if a generous always-free tier matters most, Postmark if inbox placement for receipts and password resets is critical, and Amazon SES for the lowest per-email cost at scale. All figures were verified against each vendor's pricing page on 2026-06-04.

Swap Amazon SES in one Route Handler

Most migrations are a one-call change. Here's the Next.js Route Handler for each top alternative.

import { Resend } from "resend";

const resend = new Resend(process.env.RESEND_API_KEY!);

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  const { to, subject, html } = await req.json();
  const { data, error } = await resend.emails.send({
    from: "noreply@yourdomain.com",
    to,
    subject,
    html, // was: sgMail.send({ to, from, subject, html })
  });
  if (error) return Response.json({ error }, { status: 500 });
  return Response.json({ id: data?.id });
}

The free tier you're reading will change

It already has. StackPulse records every pricing move so you're never surprised — here's what changed in this category recently.

Questions, answered