Twilio SendGrid sells two products under one name, and confusing them is the most common mistake in a SendGrid price comparison. Email API bills by how many emails you send in a month, the same axis Amazon SES uses. Marketing Campaigns bills by how many contacts you store, the axis EmailFig and most marketing tools use. They’re not two tiers of one plan. They’re two different products with two different price ladders, and a quote for one tells you nothing about the other.
Priced separately, at the volumes each product is actually sold at, one result is unambiguous and one is genuinely mixed. Email API is never cheaper than Amazon SES, at any volume checked here. Marketing Campaigns, priced against EmailFig’s managed plan at EmailFig’s own list sizes, is cheaper at two sizes, tied at a third, and considerably more expensive at a fourth. The fourth isn’t SendGrid charging more for the same thing. It’s where SendGrid’s fixed tiers happen to land.
Key Takeaways
- Email API prices by monthly send volume. Marketing Campaigns prices by contacts stored. They’re separate products, billed separately, and SendGrid’s own FAQ confirms you buy them separately even on one account.
- Email API is never cheaper than Amazon SES. At 50,000 emails a month it’s $19.95 against SES’s à la carte $5.00 (or $8.00 on the Essentials plan new accounts default to). At 2,500,000 emails it’s $1,099 against SES’s $250.
- The gap between Email API and SES isn’t constant. It’s widest at 300,000 emails a month, where Email API’s cheapest plan just stepped up from Essentials to Pro.
- Marketing Campaigns’ Basic plan beats or ties EmailFig managed at 5,000, 10,000 and 50,000 contacts, and costs nearly double EmailFig at 25,000, because Basic has no tier between 20,000 and 50,000 contacts.
Two products, two prices
SendGrid’s own FAQ is direct about the split: “If you want to use Marketing Campaigns and the Email API, you will need to purchase the email plans separately. But once you sign up, you can use the same account to send via the Email API or through Marketing Campaigns.” One login, two bills.
Email API is the transactional product: a delivery endpoint, a dashboard, dedicated IPs on the higher tiers, priced by messages sent. Marketing Campaigns is the marketing product: list management, drag-and-drop design, automation, priced by contacts stored. Pricing “SendGrid” against a marketing tool with the Email API number, or against Amazon SES with the Marketing Campaigns number, compares the wrong thing to the wrong thing. Every figure below is billed monthly, in USD, read from each pricing page in October 2026. Prices on the Twilio pages come from their plan calculators, so each figure is the one the calculator shows for that volume or contact tier.
Email API against Amazon SES, at the same volumes
Both products meter the same way here: dollars per email sent, no contact count involved. Amazon SES prices two ways. À la carte is $0.10 per 1,000 emails, no monthly fee, the rate any account can switch to. Essentials, the plan new SES accounts and idle account-region pairs have defaulted to since July 21, 2026, is $0.16 per 1,000 up to 10 million emails a month. What Amazon SES actually costs covers the rest of that bill.
Email API’s price is the cheapest plan whose included volume covers the month, the same method used to compare SES against Mailgun and Postmark:
| Emails per month | SES à la carte | SES Essentials | SendGrid Email API |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50,000 | $5.00 | $8.00 | $19.95 (Essentials) |
| 100,000 | $10.00 | $16.00 | $34.95 (Essentials) |
| 300,000 | $30.00 | $48.00 | $249.00 (Pro) |
| 700,000 | $70.00 | $112.00 | $499.00 (Pro) |
| 1,500,000 | $150.00 | $240.00 | $799.00 (Pro) |
| 2,500,000 | $250.00 | $400.00 | $1,099.00 (Pro) |
Email API is more expensive than Amazon SES at every volume in this table, against either SES plan. That’s a real result: there’s no volume here, high or low, where sending through Email API instead of raw SES saves money.
The gap isn’t a fixed multiple. At 50,000 emails, Email API’s $19.95 is about 4 times SES’s à la carte rate and 2.5 times Essentials. At 300,000, it widens to roughly 8 times à la carte and 5 times Essentials, because that’s where Email API’s cheapest plan steps up from Essentials to Pro while SES’s rate doesn’t move. By 2,500,000 emails the multiple narrows back to about 4.4 times à la carte and 2.7 times Essentials, since Pro’s price per email keeps falling as its own tiers climb. Redo the arithmetic at your own volume: SES’s rate times your email count, against the cheapest Email API tier whose range covers it.
What Email API’s plan buys over raw SES
SES’s rate buys exactly one thing: a message handed to AWS for delivery. No dashboard beyond delivery, bounce and complaint counts, no dedicated IP without a separate line item.
Email API’s plans bundle more in. Essentials includes analytics and deliverability tooling with two event webhooks. Pro adds dedicated IPs, single sign-on, subuser management, email validation credits, and room for 1,000 teammates against Essentials’ one. SendGrid’s own FAQ states that going over a plan’s included volume adds a per-email overage charge rather than blocking sends, the same shape as Mailgun’s and Postmark’s plans. That’s why the number in the table above isn’t $0.10 per 1,000: Email API is the layer SES doesn’t include, priced as a bundle instead of SES’s separate meters.
Marketing Campaigns against a contact-priced tool
Marketing Campaigns’ Basic plan sells five fixed contact tiers, not a continuous scale: 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 and 100,000 contacts, each with its own send allowance and flat price. Priced against EmailFig’s managed plan at EmailFig’s own five list sizes, rounding up to the smallest Basic tier that covers each one:
| EmailFig list size | SendGrid Basic | Sends included | EmailFig managed | Sends included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,500 | $15 (Basic 5k) | 15,000 | $11 | 25,000 |
| 5,000 | $15 (Basic 5k) | 15,000 | $15 | 50,000 |
| 10,000 | $25 (Basic 10k) | 30,000 | $27 | 100,000 |
| 25,000 | $120 (Basic 50k) | 150,000 | $63 | 250,000 |
| 50,000 | $120 (Basic 50k) | 150,000 | $125 | 500,000 |
This one isn’t a clean sweep either way, and it shouldn’t be flattened into a single verdict. On the monthly fee alone SendGrid ties EmailFig at 5,000 and comes in under it at 10,000 ($25 against $27) and 50,000 ($120 against $125). Those are real results and not close enough to round away.
They also buy different amounts of sending, which is why the fee alone doesn’t settle it. Basic allows three emails per contact a month at every tier, so the $25 plan at 10,000 contacts covers 30,000 emails before an overage charge applies. EmailFig’s managed plan at the same list size covers 100,000. Both prices are flat until you reach that ceiling, so a reader who mails the same list several times a month is comparing the two allowances, not just the two monthly fees.
The exception is 25,000 contacts, where EmailFig’s $63 is roughly half SendGrid’s $120. That gap isn’t SendGrid charging more for the same thing. It’s SendGrid having no tier at that size: Basic’s contact tiers stop at 20,000 and resume at 50,000, so a 25,000-contact list has to buy capacity for twice that many contacts just to be covered at all. At 2,500 contacts, below Basic’s smallest paid tier, the same rounding works the other way, more mildly: $15 against EmailFig’s $11.
Basic’s send allowance is three emails per contact a month at every tier. Advanced roughly doubles Basic’s price at the same contact counts, raises that allowance to five sends per contact, and adds automation and dedicated IP access, neither of which Basic includes. A reader who needs either is really pricing Advanced against EmailFig, not Basic: Advanced runs $60 at 10,000 contacts and $250 at 50,000, well past EmailFig at both sizes.
Neither SendGrid product connects to your own Amazon SES account. Both are fully managed, so there’s nothing on SendGrid’s side to set against EmailFig’s BYOS pricing; the comparison above pairs two fully-hosted plans.
The two free plans
Email API’s free offer is capped at 100 emails a day, no credit card. The pricing page lists it both as a 60-day trial and as a $0 plan at the same cap. Marketing Campaigns’ free plan is separate and ongoing: up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, also no card, with A/B testing, signup forms and automation included at no cost. That 2,000-contact figure comes from the page’s FAQ; its plan table describes the free offer as a trial of 100 contacts, so check the signup screen before relying on it. A reader who signs up expecting one free tier to cover both products will find neither number describes the other.
EmailFig’s free tier is a single plan that covers both: up to 4,000 contacts, no card, on either the managed or BYOS family. Managed caps sending at 10,000 emails a month; BYOS carries no send cap, since Amazon bills the sending directly. Against SendGrid’s 2,000-contact Marketing Campaigns free plan, EmailFig’s free tier holds twice the contacts. Free tiers compared covers this contact-cap-versus-send-cap split across the rest of the category, the same axis this pair of free plans splits on.
How to choose
Match the SendGrid product to the thing you’re actually pricing. Comparing raw sending infrastructure, Email API against Amazon SES, SES wins at every volume checked here, by a margin that moves with volume rather than holding at a flat multiple, widest at 300,000 emails. What Amazon SES actually costs covers the plan and add-on charges on top of the rate used above.
Comparing a marketing tool, Marketing Campaigns against EmailFig, check where your list size falls against SendGrid’s fixed tiers before assuming either side wins by default: the result flips within this table’s own five rows. Contact-based versus send-based pricing works through a related question against a different send-priced tool, and the full comparison across ten tools at every list size sets Marketing Campaigns’ shape against the rest of the category. How EmailFig’s pricing works and the full price list cover EmailFig’s own side of every table above.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Twilio SendGrid’s Email API cost at 100,000 emails a month?
$34.95 a month on the Essentials plan, billed monthly in USD, read from Twilio’s Email API pricing page in October 2026. The same 100,000 emails costs $10.00 on Amazon SES’s à la carte rate, or $16.00 on the Essentials plan new SES accounts default to.
Are Email API and Marketing Campaigns the same plan?
No. They’re separate products with separate pricing, bought separately even on one account, per SendGrid’s own FAQ. Email API bills by emails sent a month; Marketing Campaigns bills by contacts stored, with its own send allowance bundled into each contact tier.
Is Twilio SendGrid’s Email API cheaper than Amazon SES?
No, not at any volume checked here. At 50,000 emails a month, Email API is $19.95 against SES’s à la carte $5.00. At 2,500,000 emails, Email API is $1,099 against SES’s $250. The gap narrows and widens across the range checked but never closes.
Does Twilio SendGrid have a free plan?
It has two, and they’re not the same offer. Email API’s free offer is 100 emails a day, no card. Marketing Campaigns has a separate free plan: up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, also no card, per the FAQ on Twilio’s Marketing Campaigns pricing page.
Is Twilio SendGrid’s Marketing Campaigns plan cheaper than EmailFig?
It depends on the list size. SendGrid’s Basic plan is cheaper than EmailFig’s managed plan at 10,000 contacts ($25 against $27) and at 50,000 ($120 against $125), and ties it exactly at 5,000 ($15 against $15). EmailFig is cheaper at 25,000 contacts ($63 against $120), because SendGrid’s Basic tiers jump straight from 20,000 to 50,000 with nothing in between.