Mailgun Pricing 2026: Free, Basic, Foundation and Scale

Mailgun costs $0 on Free (100 emails a day), $15 a month on Basic for 10,000 emails, $35 on Foundation for 50,000 and $90 on Scale for 100,000, with Scale climbing to $1,250 for 2.5 million. Foundation and Scale start with one free month. All prices are monthly, read on Mailgun's pricing page on October 21, 2026.

The plan names hide the real decision, which is overage. Mailgun bills every email past your allowance, and its help center says extra usage cannot be switched off, so the cheapest plan on paper turns expensive fast once a product grows. Basic stops being the cheap option at roughly 21,000 emails a month, the point where its overage pushes the bill past Foundation.

Toolradar data: on Mailgun's Toolradar profile, Mailgun is listed as an alternative to 22 other tools, #12 of 178 in the email category, and the median entry paid plan among the 84 email tools with a verified entry price is $15/mo, as of October 2026. Developers shortlist Mailgun often, and its Basic plan sits exactly at that median. Dupple's own newsletters are sent on beehiiv, not on Mailgun.

How much does Mailgun cost per plan?

Each paid plan has a fixed allowance and a per-1,000 rate for anything past it. Mailgun's volume selector moves Foundation and Scale through larger steps, while Free and Basic never change.

Plan	Emails included	Price per month	Extra emails per 1,000	Built for
Free	100 a day	$0	None, daily cap	Testing, 1 sending domain, 1 day of logs
Basic	10,000 a month	$15	$1.80	Small apps, no daily cap, 5 inbound routes
Foundation 50k	50,000	$35	$1.30	1,000 domains, template builder, 5 days of logs
Foundation 100k	100,000	$75	$1.10	Same features plus one dedicated IP
Scale 100k	100,000	$90	$1.10	SAML SSO, 5,000 validations, phone and chat support
Scale 250k	250,000	$215	$0.90	Same Scale features
Scale 500k	500,000	$400	$0.75	Same Scale features
Scale 750k	750,000	$550	$0.60	Same Scale features
Scale 1M	1,000,000	$700	$0.50	Same Scale features
Scale 2.5M	2,500,000	$1,250	$0.40	Same Scale features
Enterprise	Custom	Contact sales	Custom	Deliverability services, burst sending SLA

Overage rates come from the pricing page's per-plan rate list and Mailgun's overage help article, both read October 21, 2026. The pricing page lists monthly prices only, so every figure here is a month-to-month charge before tax.

Is Mailgun free?

Yes, but the Free plan is a test bench rather than a production tier. It allows 100 emails a day with no credit card, one custom sending domain, two API keys, one inbound route, ticket support and one day of log retention, according to Mailgun's Free plan article. The account is limited to one user.

The catch is who you can email. Without a card on file, a Free account can only send to authorized recipients on its sandbox domain, capped at five verified addresses. Adding a card unlocks a custom domain and lets you send to anyone, so plan on entering one before the first real user signs up.

At 100 a day, the Free plan tops out near 3,000 emails in a 30-day month, and a busy launch day hits the cap long before the month does. A password reset that fails on day one of a launch is the kind of bug users remember. For a permanent free allowance with more headroom, the best transactional email APIs list compares the free tiers side by side.

Basic: the cheapest paid plan, until it is not

Basic removes the daily cap and includes 10,000 emails a month. It keeps the Free plan's single sending domain and one day of logs, adds up to five inbound routes, and allows overage. For a single product sending receipts and password resets at under 10,000 a month, it is the cheapest paid way onto Mailgun.

Overage is where Basic loses. At $1.80 per 1,000 extra emails, Basic plus overage passes the price of Foundation 50k at about 21,100 emails a month (our arithmetic: 11.1 extra blocks of 1,000 at that rate, on top of the plan). Above that, a Basic account pays more for fewer features. Mailgun's help article adds that upgrading before the billing cycle ends turns the extra emails into part of the new plan's allowance instead of an overage line, which is worth knowing the week a spike happens.

Seats are the other limit. Mailgun lets every plan except Free and Basic add unlimited users at no cost, so a team that wants a separate login for each engineer, instead of a shared password, has a second reason to skip Basic.

Foundation: the plan most apps land on

Foundation is the first plan that looks like a production email platform. It adds 1,000 custom sending domains, the email template builder and API, full inbound routing, 5 days of log retention and one day of message retention. Both steps start with a free month.

The two steps price very differently. The 100,000-email step costs $75, so doubling the volume adds $40 rather than doubling the bill, and it adds one dedicated IP. Foundation 50k gets access to a dedicated IP rather than including one, per the plan comparison on the pricing page.

The break-even between the steps is near 80,800 emails a month (our arithmetic from the $1.30 overage on the 50k step). Below that, Foundation 50k plus overage is cheaper. Above it, the 100k step wins, and it brings the IP with it.

Devshot's free daily email flags price changes across email, SMS and hosting APIs, so a change to these steps reaches you the week it ships. Join at devshot.co.

Scale: what the higher price buys at 100,000 emails

At 100,000 emails, Scale costs a fifth more than Foundation's matching step. That gap buys SAML SSO, 5,000 email validations a month, dedicated IP pools, send time optimization, live phone and chat support, 30 days of log retention, up to 7 days of message retention and scheduled analytics reports.

The validations alone can pay for the difference. Foundation charges $1.20 per 100 validations for the first 5,000, according to Mailgun's validations help article, so a team that validates 5,000 signup addresses a month would pay $60 for them on Foundation. On Scale they are included, which makes Scale 100k the cheaper plan for that team, with SSO thrown in.

If you validate nothing and do not need SSO or 30-day logs, Foundation 100k is the better buy. Larger Scale steps also lower the overage rate, from $1.10 per 1,000 at 100,000 down to $0.40 at 2.5 million, so high-volume senders who overshoot pay less per extra email than small accounts do.

Add-ons and billing rules

• Dedicated IPs. One is included on Foundation 100k and Scale. Each additional IP costs $59 per month, per the pricing page FAQ, added from the control panel or through support.
• Email validations. Validation overage on Foundation and Scale steps down by volume: $0.80 per 100 for the next 45,000, then $0.50, $0.35 and $0.25 per 100 at higher tiers.
• Proration and timing. The first month is prorated. After that, the plan fee and the previous month's extra emails and validations are billed at the start of each month, per the pricing page FAQ.
• Downgrades wait. A downgrade is scheduled and takes effect just before the next billing cycle on the 1st of the month, according to Mailgun's downgrade article.
• Cancelling deletes data. Account cancellation is immediate and irreversible, and all account data is deleted, so export logs and suppression lists first.

Older accounts may still sit on Flex, a retired pay-as-you-go plan that Mailgun's help center now lists as deprecated. New sign-ups choose from the plans in the table above.

Five monthly Mailgun bills

These use Mailgun's list prices and overage rates, billed monthly, before tax. The cheapest plan for each volume is our arithmetic, not a quote.

Monthly volume	Cheapest Mailgun plan	Monthly cost	Next-best option
8,000 emails	Basic	Plan price, no overage	Free cannot cover it at 100 a day
30,000 emails	Foundation 50k	Plan price, no overage	Basic plus 20,000 overage: $51
150,000 emails	Foundation 100k plus 50,000 overage	$130	Scale 100k plus overage: $145
400,000 emails	Scale 250k plus 150,000 overage	$350	Scale 500k: $400
1,000,000 emails	Scale 1M	$700	Foundation 100k plus overage: $1,065

The 400,000 row is the trap. Foundation 100k plus 300,000 extra emails comes to $405, more than the Scale 500k step, so a growing app that stays on Foundation out of habit overpays for less. Recheck the plan every time volume doubles.

How Mailgun compares on price

At 50,000 emails a month, Mailgun Foundation is mid-pack among managed APIs and well above the cheapest. The figures below come from each vendor's pricing page, read October 21, 2026, with Postmark's 50,000 figure computed from its 10,000-email plans plus published overage.

Service	Cost for 50,000 emails	Free option
Amazon SES	About $5 at $0.10 per 1,000	Not listed in this comparison
SendGrid	Essentials, from $19.95	60-day trial, 100 a day
Resend	Pro, $20	3,000 a month, 100 a day
Mailgun	Foundation 50k, $35	100 a day
Postmark	Platform, $66 ($18 plus 40,000 extra at $1.20)	100 emails a month

Prices read on Amazon SES pricing, SendGrid's Email API pricing, Resend pricing and Postmark pricing.

Mailgun's case is features per dollar, not the sticker. Resend Pro at $20 caps you at 10 domains, while Foundation includes 1,000, which matters for agencies and multi-tenant SaaS products sending from customer domains. SES is cheapest by far but leaves bounce handling and reputation work to you. Postmark Basic shares Mailgun Basic's $1.80 overage rate, so at small volumes the two cost the same.

The Resend vs SendGrid breakdown covers the other two big developer picks volume by volume. Product records sit on Resend, SendGrid, Postmark and Amazon SES on Toolradar.

Email is rarely the only API on the bill. The cheapest SMS APIs cover the other channel most apps add for one-time codes, and authentication pricing compared prices the login providers that trigger many of those emails. For the hosting side of the same budget, see cloud free tiers compared, Supabase pricing and Vercel pricing. Early teams picking a whole stack can start with best dev tools for startups and best backend-as-a-service platforms.

How we checked these prices

Plan prices, allowances, features and every volume step come from Mailgun's pricing page, read on October 21, 2026 with each step of its volume selector. Overage and validation rates, Free plan limits, authorized recipients and downgrade timing come from Mailgun's help center articles linked above, read the same day. Competitor prices come from the vendors' own pricing pages the same day. Break-even volumes and monthly bills are our arithmetic from those listed rates. The alternatives count and email-category median come from Mailgun's Toolradar profile, October 2026. Mailgun's help center notes that the billing page inside each account is the final word on that account's prices.

FAQ

How much does Mailgun cost in 2026?

Mailgun Basic costs $15 a month for 10,000 emails, Foundation costs $35 for 50,000 or $75 for 100,000, and Scale runs from $90 for 100,000 emails to $1,250 for 2.5 million. Free allows 100 emails a day. Prices are monthly, as listed on Mailgun's pricing page on October 21, 2026.

Does Mailgun have a free plan?

Yes. The Free plan sends 100 emails a day with no credit card, one custom domain and one day of logs. Without a card on file, though, you can only send to up to five authorized recipients on the sandbox domain, so real users need a card or a paid plan.

What happens if I go over my Mailgun plan?

Mailgun bills each extra 1,000 emails at your plan's rate, from $1.80 on Basic down to $0.40 on the largest Scale step. Extra usage cannot be turned off. Upgrading before the billing cycle ends folds the extra emails into the new plan's allowance instead of billing them as overage.

Is Mailgun Foundation or Scale better at 100,000 emails?

Foundation 100k is the cheaper of the two and includes a dedicated IP. Scale adds SSO, 5,000 email validations, 30-day logs and phone support. If you validate around 5,000 addresses a month, Scale costs less overall, because those validations would cost $60 on Foundation.

Does Mailgun include a dedicated IP?

One dedicated IP is included on Foundation 100k and on every Scale step. Foundation 50k can access one but does not include it. Extra IPs cost $59 a month each, per Mailgun's pricing page.

Does Mailgun offer annual billing?

The pricing page lists monthly prices only and shows no yearly option. Enterprise contracts are negotiated with sales, so any commitment discount belongs in that conversation.

Is Mailgun cheaper than SendGrid?

Not at 50,000 emails: SendGrid Essentials starts at $19.95 a month there, and Mailgun Foundation costs about 75% more. Mailgun includes 1,000 sending domains and unlimited users on Foundation, which narrows the gap for teams with several products or customer domains.

Cite this: Devshot, "Mailgun Pricing 2026: Free, Basic, Foundation and Scale", October 2026.

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