Resend vs SendGrid (2026): pricing, free tier & developer experience

Resend vs SendGrid: 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.

Resend: current pricing

What you actually pay on Resend today, for context. Source: https://resend.com/pricing.

SendGrid: current pricing

What you actually pay on SendGrid today, for context. Source: Twilio changelog (twilio.com/en-us/changelog/sendgrid-free-plan): free plan retired 2025-05-27; new accounts 60-day trial (100/day); Email API from $19.95/mo.

Resend or SendGrid?

The headline difference in 2026 is the free tier. Resend keeps a usable 3,000 emails per month at no cost, while SendGrid discontinued its permanent free plan on 2025-05-27, leaving a 60-day trial and then a $19.95/mo Essentials plan for 50,000 emails. For a product that sends transactional email in low volume — sign-up confirmations, password resets — that difference decides the matchup for many teams.

On developer experience, Resend is purpose-built for modern JavaScript: a type-safe SDK, React Email for templating, and documentation oriented around frameworks like Next.js. SendGrid is older and broader; it covers marketing campaigns, advanced suppression management, and deep analytics, which matter more to larger senders than to a small engineering team shipping a SaaS.

At scale the comparison narrows. SendGrid's Pro tier ($89.95/mo for 100,000 with a dedicated IP) brings mature deliverability controls and a long operational track record, while Resend's Scale plans ($90/mo and up, dedicated IP $30/mo) are newer but improving quickly. If you are starting today on Next.js and want the lowest-friction path from zero to production, Resend is the default; if you need enterprise marketing features alongside transactional email, SendGrid still earns its place.

Switch to Resend 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