Resend pricing: what each email volume costs

Resend has a $0 Free plan for 3,000 emails per month, a $20 Pro plan for 50,000, and a $90 Scale plan for 100,000. The free allowance is also capped at 100 emails per day and three domains. Those figures are from Resend’s public pricing page checked October 7, 2026. See the Resend pricing source and our Resend alternatives guide.

Plans at a glance

Arithmetic for real workloads

A small product sending 900 password resets in a month can stay on Free at $0, provided the daily pattern never exceeds 100 and the three-domain ceiling is enough. A launch with 3,000 messages still costs $0 if spread across at least 30 days; 3,000 on one busy day cannot fit the daily cap.

At 10,000 messages, Pro is the first paid fit: the bill is $20 because the plan includes 50,000. At 50,000, the same $20 covers the full allowance. At 75,000, Pro is $20 plus 25,000 overage messages: 25 × $0.90 = $22.50, or $42.50 before tax. Scale changes that calculation to $90 for 100,000 included, so it becomes the simpler choice when 75,000 is a normal month and headroom matters.

At 125,000, Scale is $90 plus 25 × $0.90 = $22.50, for $112.50. This is a quota model, so a quiet month on Pro remains a $20 subscription. Forecast the busiest normal month rather than multiplying one unusually low month.

Free plan reality

Free is useful for a development project, a low-volume internal tool, or a production service whose traffic is both modest and evenly distributed. The 100-per-day limit is the practical constraint: a weekly digest or incident storm can exhaust it even when the monthly total looks small. Three domains can cover local, staging, and production, but not a larger portfolio of customer-facing brands.

Billing details that change the decision

Resend’s paid plans list a monthly allowance and an overage rate, so set an alert before a traffic spike becomes an invoice. The $0.90 rate applies to the additional thousand, not to the whole month. Keep automation runs separate in your forecast: the pricing page lists 10,000 automation runs on Free, while webhook endpoints are a paid-plan feature.

Resend’s developer-friendly presentation can make the plan look like a pure API meter. It still has account-level constraints: domains, daily throughput, and the plan boundary. A team with many preview domains should count domains before choosing Free, even if its message volume is tiny.

Choose the right tier

Choose Free when you can enforce the daily ceiling and want to validate an integration. Choose Pro for a steady application below 50,000 monthly messages that needs paid webhooks and more room. Choose Scale when 100,000 included messages, larger operational headroom, or a predictable overage calculation is worth the $90 base.

If your primary requirement is a durable message archive or strict stream separation, compare Postmark. If you are already deep in AWS and want a usage-led service, read Amazon SES pricing. For a staging inbox rather than production delivery, Mailtrap is a different category.

Migration and ownership notes

Before moving to Resend, export templates, suppression decisions, domain records, and the event fields your application stores. Add SPF and DKIM for a separate sending subdomain, then send one low-risk notification class. Map Resend message IDs into your own audit table so retries remain idempotent. Keep the previous provider available until bounce and complaint webhooks are being consumed and alerts are tested.

Forecasting a noisy month

Separate expected product traffic from operational traffic before selecting a tier. A failed job that retries five times can turn a 40,000-message plan into a 60,000-message month without adding a single new customer. Keep a daily ceiling alert alongside the monthly budget, and make the alert owner part of the on-call rotation. If the product has three brands today and a fourth is planned, include that domain decision in the Free-versus-Pro review rather than treating it as a later DNS task.

Document the assumptions behind every arithmetic example: message count, plan allowance, overage units, and whether a domain or webhook limit is binding. That note lets finance reproduce the number and lets engineering challenge it when traffic changes.

Renewal note

For finance review, retain a copy of the pricing page with the check date. When traffic grows, revisit daily distribution, domain count, automation runs, and webhook requirements together. A plan change that solves one limit can expose another.

Competitor cost check

At 10,000 emails, Postmark Basic is $15 on its pricing page (its slider reads $55 at 50,000), Mailgun Basic starts at $15, and Amazon SES Essentials is 10 × $0.16 = $1.60. At 50,000, Mailgun Foundation is $35 and SES is 50 × $0.16 = $8.00; at 100,000, Mailgun Scale is $90 and SES is 100 × $0.16 = $16.00. Resend’s matching paid allowances are $20 for 50,000 and $90 for 100,000. These are screening figures; retention, support, and implementation work still belong in the comparison.

What the plan does not include

Resend's pricing page lists the email allowance, domains, daily Free cap, automation runs, and paid webhook endpoints. It does not state that dedicated IPs, long message retention, extra seats, inbound routing, or a separate support tier are included. Treat those as procurement questions. A team needing durable archives should ask how long events remain searchable; a team sending from many brands should verify the domain ceiling; and a team requiring SMTP should confirm protocol support before estimating migration effort.

Annual billing is not discounted on Resend's pricing page: Free, Pro, and Scale show the same monthly and annual-per-month figures. Pro is the economical choice when 50,000 covers traffic; Scale removes that boundary at $90 when six-figure volume is routine. If a contract quote adds support or dedicated infrastructure, compare that written total with the public base rather than treating the public card as an all-in price.

FAQ

Is Resend free?

Yes. The Free plan is $0 and includes 3,000 emails per month, with a 100-email daily cap and three domains.

How much is 50,000 email on Resend?

Pro costs $20 per month and includes 50,000 emails. A month above that allowance adds $0.90 per extra 1,000.

What happens after 100,000 emails?

Scale is $90 for 100,000 included emails. Additional volume is listed at $0.90 per 1,000, so 25,000 extra is $22.50.

Does Resend charge by contact?

No. These plans are based on email volume, not stored contacts. Domain and daily limits still affect whether Free is practical.