The most generous free transactional email tier in 2026 is Brevo at 300 emails/day (~9,000/mo), followed by Mailtrap (4,000/mo) and Resend (3,000/mo). SendGrid no longer has a permanent free tier, and Amazon SES is only free for the first 12 months, so neither suits a long-lived free project.
Pick the priority that matters most for your project and we'll point you to the provider that wins on it.
A 3,000/mo free tier, a type-safe SDK and first-class React Email templates make Resend the fastest migration for most JavaScript stacks.
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.
| Provider | Free tier | Entry paid | Dedicated IP | Deliver. | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
B BrevoTop pick www.brevo.com | 300 / day ~9,000 / mo | $9/mo plan-dependent | Higher / enterprise tiers | Most generous no-expiry free tier | ||
T Mailtrap mailtrap.io | 4,000 / mo 150 / day | $15/mo 10,000 / mo | Higher tiers | Unifies testing and production sending | ||
M Mailgun www.mailgun.com | 100 / day ~3,000 / mo | $15/mo 10,000 / mo | 1 included on Foundation 100k / Scale; extra IPs $59/IP/mo | Closest operational match to SendGrid | ||
R Resend resend.com | 3,000 / mo 100 / day | $20/mo 50,000 / mo | $30/mo (Scale) | Best-in-class DX for Next.js | ||
P Postmark postmarkapp.com | 100 / mo no expiry | $15/mo 10,000 / mo | From $50/mo (requires 300,000+/mo) | Industry-leading deliverability | ||
S SendGrid (Twilio) sendgrid.com | Trial only 60-day, 100/day | $19.95/mo 50,000 / mo | Included on Pro and above | Mature breadth, but no free tier | ||
a Amazon SES aws.amazon.com/ses | 3,000 / mo 12 months only | usage usage-based | $24.95/mo (Standard) | Lowest cost once you scale |
Deliverability is StackPulse's editorial estimate, not a measured score. Pricing and free-tier figures are read from each vendor's own pricing page.
"Free" means different things across these providers, so rank by what your project actually needs. If you want the largest no-expiry allowance, Brevo's 300 emails/day is the clear leader, though that quota is shared with marketing campaigns. Mailtrap's 4,000/mo pairs sending with built-in email testing, which is handy while you build. Resend's 3,000/mo is the sweet spot for Next.js projects that value developer experience over raw volume.
Two providers look free but are not for the long run. SendGrid removed its permanent free tier on 2025-05-27 and now offers only a 60-day trial, so it is a poor choice for a hobby project that must stay at $0. Amazon SES gives 3,000 message charges per month, but only for the first 12 months — after that it is pay-as-you-go at $0.10 per 1,000 emails, which is cheap at scale yet no longer free.
For deliverability-critical mail such as password resets and receipts, Postmark is worth considering even though its free tier is only 100 emails per month: its transactional stream and inbox-placement reputation reduce the risk of a lost critical email. A common pattern is to start on a generous free tier (Brevo, Mailtrap, or Resend) for low-stakes notifications and route the handful of must-arrive emails through a deliverability-focused provider as volume grows.
It already has. StackPulse records every pricing move so you're never surprised — here's what changed in this category recently.