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Mailgun vs Amazon SES

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Mailgun and Amazon SES built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 18 criteria comparedSources last checked

Adoption share

HTTP Archive counts — how much more of the web runs Amazon SES than Mailgun, among the origins HTTP Archive actually detects. Measured . Source: HTTP Archive.

Amazon SES54.1% · 235,936 origins
Mailgun45.9% · 200,548 origins

The short answer

Choose Mailgun if…

Senders who want inbound routing included from the free plan up, and who treat the message log as a debugging tool rather than a record.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Amazon SES if…

High volume where the per-1,000 rate dominates everything else — at $0.10 per 1,000 it is roughly a twentieth of what the managed services charge in overage.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Mailgun: One day of log retention on the entry plan is the shortest here by a wide margin, and the overage rate is quoted as "from", so the number you plan against is a floor.
  • Amazon SES: There is no included allowance, no log retention on the pricing page, and deliverability tooling that the others bundle is metered separately here.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Mailgun alternatives · Amazon SES alternatives

10 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Mailgun documentationVisit Amazon SES documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionMailgunAmazon SES
Pricing
Free tier
Yes
No
Kind of free offerFree tierIntroductory free tier
Entry paid plan$15/month for Basic, described as a starting price.No monthly plan — SES bills per email. Ten thousand emails, the tier Postmark and Mailgun both price at, costs $1.00 at the published $0.10 per 1,000. Our arithmetic on Amazon's rate, not a price Amazon quotes, and attachments add $0.12 per GB.
Pricing modelMonthly plan by volume with per-1,000 overage, and email validations billed separately at around $1.20 per 100.Pure usage billing with no monthly minimum: $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails plus $0.12 per GB of attachments, with dedicated IPs, deliverability tooling and address validation each metered separately on top.
Email
Emails included
10,000 a month on Basic; 50,000 on Foundation at $35. The free plan is capped at 100 a day rather than a monthly figure.
None. There is no included allowance on the pay-as-you-go rate; every email is billed from the first one.
Price per 1,000 over
From $1.80 per 1,000 on Basic and from $1.30 on Foundation. Mailgun writes "from", so these are floors rather than fixed rates.
$0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails, charged per recipient. Mail Manager tiers run $0.16 to $0.23 per 1,000 depending on feature set, and a multi-region endpoint adds $0.03 per 1,000.
Dedicated IP
Limited
Supported
Support
Support on entry paid planTicket support, named on the free plan. The Basic plan's feature list at $15/month does not restate a support level.No support level comes with the service. AWS Support is bought separately as an account-wide plan, and its response times are graded by case severity rather than by product.
Compliance
SOC 2In addition to our partnership with an industry-leading hosting provider, Sinch Mailgun is SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 Certified, as well as  GDPR compliant .Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
GDPR / data residency
In addition to our partnership with an industry-leading hosting provider, Sinch Mailgun is SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 Certified, as well as  GDPR compliant .
AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Free tier

Mailgun
Yes
Amazon SES
No
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Mailgun ↗

    “Free Test us out for $0/mo 100 emails/day included [...] 1 day log retention [...] 1 inbound route”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Amazon SES Pricing — AWS ↗

    “AWS Free Tier [...] New AWS customers will receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, which can be applied towards eligible AWS services, including Amazon Simple Email Service. [...] The free plan will be available for 6 months after account creation.”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Kind of free offer

Mailgun
Free tier
Amazon SES
Introductory free tier
Sources (2) →

Entry paid plan

Mailgun
$15/month for Basic, described as a starting price.
Amazon SES
No monthly plan — SES bills per email. Ten thousand emails, the tier Postmark and Mailgun both price at, costs $1.00 at the published $0.10 per 1,000. Our arithmetic on Amazon's rate, not a price Amazon quotes, and attachments add $0.12 per GB.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Mailgun
Monthly plan by volume with per-1,000 overage, and email validations billed separately at around $1.20 per 100.
Amazon SES
Pure usage billing with no monthly minimum: $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails plus $0.12 per GB of attachments, with dedicated IPs, deliverability tooling and address validation each metered separately on top.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Mailgun ↗

    “Extra emails & validations from $1.80 / 1,000 emails from $1.20 / 100 validations”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Amazon SES Pricing — AWS ↗

    “Outbound email $0.10 / 1,000 emails $0.12 per GB of attachment data sent [...] Email Validation $0.01 per validation [...] Virtual Deliverability Manager – SES deliverability Per-email fee + query fee”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Emails included

Mailgun

10,000 a month on Basic; 50,000 on Foundation at $35. The free plan is capped at 100 a day rather than a monthly figure.

Amazon SES

None. There is no included allowance on the pay-as-you-go rate; every email is billed from the first one.

Sources (2) →

Price per 1,000 over

Mailgun
From $1.80 per 1,000 on Basic and from $1.30 on Foundation. Mailgun writes "from", so these are floors rather than fixed rates.
Amazon SES
$0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails, charged per recipient. Mail Manager tiers run $0.16 to $0.23 per 1,000 depending on feature set, and a multi-region endpoint adds $0.03 per 1,000.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated IP

Mailgun
Limited
Amazon SES
Supported
Sources (2) →

Support on entry paid plan

Mailgun
Ticket support, named on the free plan. The Basic plan's feature list at $15/month does not restate a support level.
Amazon SES
No support level comes with the service. AWS Support is bought separately as an account-wide plan, and its response times are graded by case severity rather than by product.
Sources (2) →
  • Mailgun Pricing ↗

    “100 emails per day ticket support restful email apis and smtp relay 1 custom sending domain tracking, analytics, and webhooks”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • AWS Support Plans ↗

    “human response times business/mission-critical system down production system down production system impaired system impaired general guidance < 30 mins 2 < 1 hour < 4 hours < 12 hours < 24 hours”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction

SOC 2

Mailgun
In addition to our partnership with an industry-leading hosting provider, Sinch Mailgun is SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 Certified, as well as  GDPR compliant .
Amazon SES
Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Mailgun
In addition to our partnership with an industry-leading hosting provider, Sinch Mailgun is SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 Certified, as well as  GDPR compliant .
Amazon SES
AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.
Sources (2) →
  • Mailgun’s Commitment to Security and Compliance | Mailgun ↗

    “In addition to our partnership with an industry-leading hosting provider, Sinch Mailgun is SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 Certified, as well as  GDPR compliant .”

    Read 2026-09-21 · official site · Report a correction

  • GDPR — Amazon Web Services ↗

    “AWS customers can use all AWS services to process personal data [...] in compliance with the GDPR. [...] Customers have control of their customer data. With AWS, customers can: Determine where their customer data will be stored, including the type of storage and geographic region of that storage.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

What the free plan includesMailgun: Limited to one user per account; Mailgun states the per-user cap on the free plan rather than a volume on this page.
When the free offer endsAmazon SES: 6 months after account creation; Free Tier credits expire 12 months after that date.
Log retentionMailgun: 1 day on Free and Basic; 5 days of logs and 1 day of message retention on Foundation.
Inbound emailMailgun: Supported
ISO 27001Amazon SES: Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.Mailgun: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Mailgun.
HIPAAAmazon SES: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.Mailgun: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Mailgun.
PCI DSSAmazon SES: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.Mailgun: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Mailgun.
Encryption at restMailgun: AES-256 encryption-at-rest for all customer dataAmazon SES: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Amazon SES.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Mailgun or Amazon SES?

Mailgun: $15/month for Basic, described as a starting price.

Amazon SES: No monthly plan — SES bills per email. Ten thousand emails, the tier Postmark and Mailgun both price at, costs $1.00 at the published $0.10 per 1,000. Our arithmetic on Amazon's rate, not a price Amazon quotes, and attachments add $0.12 per GB.

Free tier: Mailgun or Amazon SES?

Mailgun: Yes

Amazon SES: No

Should I choose Mailgun or Amazon SES?

Pick Mailgun if Senders who want inbound routing included from the free plan up, and who treat the message log as a debugging tool rather than a record.

Pick Amazon SES if High volume where the per-1,000 rate dominates everything else — at $0.10 per 1,000 it is roughly a twentieth of what the managed services charge in overage.

Provider pages

MailgunEmail API priced by monthly volume, with short log retention on entry plans and inbound routing.Amazon SESUsage-billed email sending from AWS, with no monthly plan and per-1,000 pricing an order of magnitude below the managed services.

Related comparisons

AhaSend vs Amazon SESAhaSend vs MailgunAmazon SES vs MailerSendMailerSend vs MailgunPostmark vs Amazon SESPostmark vs MailgunResend vs Amazon SESResend vs Mailgun

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.