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Resend vs SendGrid

Two sides of the transactional email decision: transactional API and transactional + marketing. When each fits, what it costs, who moves from one to the other, and what makers who chose it say.

ResendTransactional APIllms.txtIn Bolt, Lovable, Replit
SendGridTransactional + marketingllms.txtIn Replit
Ask your AI about this, with this page as the source:ChatGPT ↗Claude ↗Perplexity ↗

Which fits you

Choose Resend if
  • You write React or TypeScript and want email templates as components in the same codebase

Use it whenYou're setting up sign-up and reset emails in a TypeScript app and want templates to live next to your UI code.

Trade-offA younger service than Postmark or SES, and costlier than SES at very high volume.

Choose SendGrid if
  • One vendor for both jobs at large scale.

Use it whenYou want transactional and marketing sending under one account and one dashboard.

Trade-offHeavier than a small team needs.

At a glance

ResendSendGrid
Used by942 makers' products · 54 open-source projects1055 makers' products · 26 open-source projects
Cost at default usageemails 50k emails$20/mo Pro 50k$20/mo Essentials 50k
Moved to it on GitHubpull requests since Oct 202460 from SendGrid17 from Resend
Downloads9.4M/wk4.1× vs npm4.5M/wk−33% vs npm
PricingFree tier for small volume; paid plans by monthly emails. · paid from $20/mo60-day free trial (100 emails/day); paid plans by volume from $19.95/month. · paid from $19.95/mo
Free tierYesNo
Open sourceNoNo
Incidents, 90 daysfrom its status pageno public status feed50+

Cost as you grow

At 1k emails Resend costs less ($0 vs $20); from about 5k emails SendGrid does ($20 vs $20); from about 250k emails Resend does ($170 vs $249). They're different kinds of tool — transactional API and transactional + marketing — so the prices don't buy the same thing.

$0$50$200$500$1,000$2,0001k5k10k25k50k100k250k500k1M5M
SendGridResendx: emails per month (email) · cheapest usable plan at each point, list prices · try your own numbers
The numbers, plan by plan
Emails per monthResendSendGrid
1,000$0 Free$20 Essentials 50k
5,000$20 Pro 50k$20 Essentials 50k
10,000$20 Pro 50k$20 Essentials 50k
25,000$20 Pro 50k$20 Essentials 50k
50,000$20 Pro 50k$20 Essentials 50k
100,000$35 Pro 100k$35 Essentials 100k
250,000$170 Pro 100k$249 Pro 300k
500,000$350 Scale 500k$499 Pro 700k
1,000,000$650 Scale 1M$799 Pro 1.5M
5,000,000$2,300 Scale 2.5Mover plan limits

From each vendor's pricing page: Resend, SendGrid.

Who moves from one to the other

Public pull requests on GitHub since Oct 2024 whose title says "Resend to SendGrid" or the reverse — real code changes, by developers in general rather than makers only.

SendGrid → Resend60 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗
Resend → SendGrid17 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗

What makers say

Makers on using it for transactional email, from Product Hunt and Starter Story interviews, each linked to the source. Products with a page of their own and fuller notes first.

On Resend
SendGrid and Mailgun still work but feel like 2015. Resend has the cleanest API and React-based email templates, so all my transactional mail took an afternoon instead of a sprint.
VC Boom, the makerSep 2026 ↗
Resend handles all of MusicLib's transactional emails — verification, password resets, reservation confirmations. Clean API, great deliverability, took about 15 minutes to integrate.
MusicLib, the makerMar 2026 ↗
Here’s what we use for marketing and operations: Stripe (payments) ConvertKit & Resend (email marketing) Plausible Analytics & Mixpanel (web and product analytics) Senja (testi…
FounderPal, the makerMar 2024 ↗
123 more on the Resend page →
On SendGrid
…downside is that it’s much harder to implement than you might think! We’ve since moved to Sendgrid for delivery, which takes a lot of pain out of the process but it is expensive.…
Construct, the makerSep 2021 ↗
Now for the tools, here on ADYOUNEED we use ClickUp pretty much for all the task management and sprints, Stripe for payment, Segment for tracking, and Sendgrid for emails.
ADYOUNEED, the makerOct 2021 ↗
…eetings, and docs Slack and Loom for internal communication Tawk.to for customer chatbots Sendgrid for mass email comms Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for social media What have been the…
Swift App, the makerSep 2022 ↗
31 more on the SendGrid page →

Loved and watch-outs

Themes that recur in makers' words and Hacker News comments, each linked to what it summarises.

Resend
Most loved
  • The API is clean and TypeScript-first, simple enough to call with a plain fetch and no SDK. PHPH 2
  • Transactional email goes live within a day, with DNS setup and deliverability basics handled. PHPH 2
  • The free tier is generous enough to build and test before paying. PHPH 2HNHN 2
Watch-outs
  • It runs on AWS SES, so an AWS us-east-1 outage stopped both its dashboard and email sending. HNPH
  • API gaps remain, such as the broadcast API not returning email content and no stored copy of sent threads. HNHN 2
On Product Hunt: 4.9★, 252 reviews · mentioned most: easy setup, developer-friendly API, reliable delivery · complaints: slow performance
SendGrid
Most loved
  • Client libraries for JavaScript and Python are easy to use, and the docs are clear. PHPH 2
  • One service covers onboarding, transactional and bulk marketing email at scale. PHPH 2Starter Story
  • It can act as a plain SMTP smarthost behind Postfix, with no API work needed. HNHN 2
Watch-outs
  • Deliverability is poor, and its internal reputation score can look great while Gmail and Microsoft reputation tanks. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • Since the Twilio acquisition the free plan was retired and the product feels neglected. HNHN 2HN 3
  • Its network carries a lot of spam, and phishing emails that pose as SendGrid are common. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
On Product Hunt: 4.7★, 21 reviews · mentioned most: easy integration, scalability, transactional emails

Who uses each

Resend942 makers' products
Actx0AgentcardAirbook AIAnythingApexappdesignsAppReplyAritectArkivAtomic BotBackdropBasedash+930 more
SendGrid1055 makers' products
ADYOUNEEDASOAssemblyBasedLabs.aiBricksBrokeeBrowserlessChat DataClearCheckbook Money ManagementClosing CreditsClosingDealzCognota+1043 more
Used by both — often one replacing the other, or each for a different part of the product
BasedashKit.domainsProductlaneTackly11xAceditalga-psaapideckAshbyBlackbirdBland AIbolna

What makers pair each with

With Resend
Frontend Framework
Database
Hosting
Payments
With SendGrid
Frontend Framework
Payments
Hosting
LLM API

Neither quite right?

See the whole transactional email decision →
PostmarkTransactional APIDeliverability when the mail has to arrive within seconds.vs Resend →vs SendGrid →
MailgunTransactional APIHigh volume and inbound email parsing and routing.vs Resend →vs SendGrid →
Amazon SESRaw infrastructureSending at high volume, where cost per email matters more than tooling.vs Resend →vs SendGrid →