Resend vs SendGrid for SaaS: Pricing and Features (2026)

Prices checked 7 October 2026; each price links to the vendor page it came from.

The two come from different corners: SendGrid is a large sending platform with a campaigns product on the side, while Resend presents itself as an API for developers. On their current pricing pages both sell a transactional API and a marketing product, both publish a volume slider, and both include webhooks and SMTP. Resend's pricing page has two tabs, transactional and marketing, and the second one is priced by contacts with unlimited broadcast sending. SendGrid's Email API and Marketing Campaigns sit on separate pricing pages with their own free offers.

What separates them is smaller and more practical: how many domains you can authenticate, how many people can log in, how a dedicated IP is priced, what happens when you hit a daily cap, and how many webhook endpoints you get. Those details are what this page compares.

Sending cost at 50,000, 100,000 and 1.5 million emails a month

Both vendors print a volume slider and show the monthly price for each stop. The table lists the entry plan and the next plan up for each, using the stops each slider displayed on 7 October.

The picture changes when you add the features each team usually needs at that size. A product on Resend Scale that sends 100,000 emails and wants a dedicated IP pays $90 + $30 = $120 a month; on SendGrid Pro the dedicated IPs are already in the $89.95. Add single sign-on for a security review and Resend reaches $90 + $30 + $150 = $270, against $89.95 on SendGrid. At 1.5 million emails the same stack is $825 + $30 = $855 on Resend against $799, a $56 monthly gap or $672 over a year.

Resend's real advantage in the table is what the lower plans allow. The Pro plan has no daily email limit, 10 domains and 5 webhook endpoints for $20 to $35; the Free plan's 100-a-day cap is the only daily limit on the page. Resend also publishes its overage rate, $0.90 per extra 1,000 emails on Pro and Scale at the base stops, falling to $0.80 at 200,000, $0.70 at 500,000, $0.65 at 1 million and $0.52 at 1.5 million. SendGrid's page says taxes and overages may apply and links to a separate overage article, so look that up before sizing a plan close to its limit.

For a team that uses both products, remember that marketing is billed separately in each case. Resend's broadcast emails do not count against the transactional limit, since only sends through its /emails API do, and SendGrid's Marketing Campaigns plans carry their own contact and email allowances.

The marketing side priced against each other

Both also sell a marketing product, priced by contacts. Resend's marketing tab reads Free at 1,000 contacts, then $40 at 5,000, $80 at 10,000, $180 at 25,000, $250 at 50,000 and $450 at 100,000, with unlimited broadcast sending and, from 5,000 contacts, unlimited segments. SendGrid's Marketing Campaigns readouts are Basic $15 at 5,000 contacts (15,000 emails), $25 at 10,000 (30,000 emails), $50 at 20,000, $120 at 50,000 and $200 at 100,000; Advanced is $60 at 10,000 contacts (50,000 emails), $100 at 20,000, $250 at 50,000, $450 at 100,000 and $900 at 200,000.

The tell is the send allowance. At 10,000 contacts, SendGrid Basic at $25 allows 30,000 emails a month, which is three sends to the whole list. A monthly newsletter plus a four-email onboarding drip to the same people would exceed that. Resend's $80 at 10,000 contacts has no send limit at all. At 50,000 contacts the gap closes: SendGrid Advanced is $250 with 250,000 emails and Resend is $250 with unlimited broadcasts. If you send marketing mail rarely, SendGrid's cheaper tiers are a fit; if you send it often, compare the allowance, not the sticker.

Neither is a lifecycle tool in the sense of Customer.io or Loops. Resend lists automations at $0.0015 per run after 10,000 free runs, SendGrid positions campaigns, and both leave account-level logic to you. If your real need is behaviour-triggered onboarding, read Loops vs Resend before choosing either one.

Plan details that decide a SaaS shortlist

On the developer side, Resend lists a REST API, SMTP relay, official SDKs, scheduled sends, batch sending, inbound email, and open and link tracking, with React Email support in the same table, and its FAQ notes that the API rate limit is per team and the same on every plan, with a batch endpoint that sends up to 100 emails per request. Data retention is 30 days on Free, Pro and Scale, and Scale adds a dedicated Slack channel. The site footer links separate SOC 2 and GDPR pages if your review needs them.

SendGrid's feature table lists SMTP and API access, client libraries for Node.js, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP, Java and C#, domain authentication, suppression management, link branding, an inbound parse webhook, an event webhook, dynamic templates and SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliance. Essentials has the dynamic template editor; Pro adds template testing, 1,000 teammates, subuser management, 2,500 email validations a month and the SSO and dedicated IP features already noted. Its feature table also lists EU data residency, though the cell markers did not carry through in the capture used for this page, so ask SendGrid which plan includes it before counting on it.

Teammate limits are the quiet constraint. SendGrid Essentials lists 1 additional teammate, which a three-person team will notice. Resend's pricing page lists no per-seat limit or fee.

Moving traffic from one to the other

SendGrid to Resend: add and verify the sending domain at Resend before touching production, publish the new SPF and DKIM records alongside the old ones, and export your suppression and bounce lists from SendGrid so that recipients who unsubscribed or hard-bounced never receive mail from the new sender. Move the templates next: SendGrid's dynamic templates become components in your own codebase if you adopt React Email, or plain HTML. Point webhook handlers at Resend's endpoints, and remember Free allows 1 endpoint, Pro 5 and Scale 10. If you were on a SendGrid dedicated IP, decide whether the shared pool is acceptable at your volume or whether you need the Scale add-on.

Resend to SendGrid: authenticate the domain, create an API key with only the permissions the application needs, and replace the send call. The point to plan is warm-up: SendGrid lists automated dedicated IP warm-up on its feature table, so on Pro you can ramp traffic to the new IP gradually instead of cutting over at once. Move low-risk mail first, such as receipts, and keep password resets on the old provider until the new one has delivered a full week without complaints.

In both directions, run the two providers in parallel by message type rather than by percentage of users, so that each type has one sender and one set of logs. Related reading: Postmark vs SendGrid and Mailgun vs SendGrid for the other usual rivals, the SendGrid alternatives and Resend alternatives guides, and email platforms for developers.

Which to pick

For most SaaS products under a few hundred thousand emails a month, choose Resend: the monthly price matches SendGrid, the paid plans have no daily cap, domains and webhooks are generous, and a single account covers app mail and the occasional newsletter. Move to SendGrid when the requirement list contains a dedicated IP, SSO, subusers or a validation API, because its Pro column bundles what Resend sells as add-ons, and when you push past a million emails a month and the $26 gap at 1.5 million starts to look like the first of several. The transactional versus marketing email guide explains how to split the two streams whichever you choose.