Work out your monthly Amazon SES bill on à la carte, Essentials, Pro and Enterprise, with attachments, dedicated IPs and more than one region. Then see the same volume on SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, Resend, Mailtrap and Mailchimp Transactional. Every price is linked to the vendor's own page.
By Junaid KhalidAWS prices checked Runs in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere
The short answer
Amazon SES costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails on à la carte pricing. Since 21 July 2026, new accounts start on the Essentials plan at $0.16 per 1,000. Pro is $0.22 per 1,000 plus $105 a month and Enterprise $0.23 plus $500, per region. Data costs $0.12 per GB, a standard dedicated IP $24.95 a month, and the price is the same in every region. 100,000 emails a month come to about $10.16 à la carte or $16.16 on Essentials.
Cheapest on Amazon SES: À la carte
$10.16a month
$0.10 per 1,000 emails, 100,000 emails, 1.3 GB, us-east-1
Cheapest published plan that covers your volume, overage included where the vendor publishes a rate. Free plans are left out. “Quote” means the vendor only prices this volume through sales.
What the numbers say
10,000 to 10 million emails
On à la carte and Essentials, Amazon SES is cheaper than all six email APIs at every volume from 10,000 to 10 million emails a month. At 1 million 13 KB emails it costs $101.56 to $161.56, against $650 or more on the cheapest published API plan.
Monthly cost for a 13 KB email with no attachments and shared IPs, on log scales. Lines stop where a vendor stops publishing prices. Hover or tap a volume to read every price.
Effective 21 July 2026
In July 2026 AWS split SES into three plans on top of the old pay-per-use price, which it now calls à la carte. New accounts, and any account and region with no metered SES use since 1 June 2025, start on Essentials from 21 July 2026. Upgrades apply immediately. Volume tiers are marginal: each rate applies only to the emails inside its band.
“If you did not explicitly choose a plan and were defaulted to the Essentials plan, your first downgrade or cancellation to à la carte pricing also takes effect immediately.”
| À la carte | Essentials | Pro | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per 1,000 emails, first 10M a month | $0.10 | $0.16 | $0.22 | $0.23 |
| Per 1,000, 10M to 100M | $0.10 | $0.14 | $0.17 | $0.18 |
| Per 1,000, above 100M | $0.10 | $0.11 | $0.12 | $0.13 |
| Monthly fee, per account per region | none | none | $105 | $500 |
| Data (message + attachments) | $0.12 / GB | $0.12 / GB | $0.12 / GB | $0.12 / GB |
| Virtual Deliverability Manager (SES) | $0.07 / 1,000 | included | included | included |
| Managed dedicated IPs | $15 + $0.08 / 1,000 | $15 + $0.08 / 1,000 | included | included |
| Standard dedicated IP | $24.95 / IP | $24.95 / IP | $24.95 / IP | $24.95 / IP |
| Validation API checks included | 0 | 0 | 2,500 | 5,000 |
| Global deliverability (VDM) | $1,250 / month | $1,250 / month | 1 domain, 1 IP | 5 domains, 12 IPs |
Source: aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing and the SES pricing plans guide, checked 7 October 2026. Managed IP per-email rates fall to $0.04 from 10M and $0.02 from 50M.
Our own data
Most emails weigh under 20 KB, so the SES data charge is close to nothing. The median email sent through Meisa is 7 KB, which adds $0.0008 per 1,000 emails at $0.12 per GB. Only attachments move the number.
AWS prices its examples at 32 KB and 50 KB per message. We measured the body (HTML plus plain text) of every email sent through Meisa on Amazon SES from 3 March to 7 October 2026: product emails, onboarding sequences and newsletters from several SaaS products. Headers and encoding add a little on top. Not one was over 100 KB.
Light band: 10th to 90th percentile (2.1 to 16.5 KB). Solid box: middle half (4.9 to 13 KB). 99th percentile: 20.9 KB. Largest: 55.3 KB.
So for most senders the data line is a rounding error: $0.0008 per 1,000 emails at the median size. It only matters once files ride along. Use the size presets in the calculator above, or type your own, and set the share of emails that carry an attachment.
All regions checked
We pulled AWS's machine-readable price list for SES (published 11 September 2026) and compared every region. Outbound email, data, standard and managed dedicated IPs, Virtual Deliverability Manager and the three plans cost the same everywhere. Two regions, Middle East (Bahrain) and Middle East (UAE), carry no plan prices in the list, so the calculator shows à la carte only there. Global deliverability monitoring is not offered in GovCloud. The region you pick is highlighted below.
Prices shown: à la carte, Essentials, Pro and Enterprise per 1,000 emails. Source: AWS Price List API, AmazonSES offer file.
Checked 7 October 2026
We compare Amazon SES with six email APIs: SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, Resend, Mailtrap and Mailchimp Transactional, at the list prices each one published on 7 October 2026.
Each vendor's own pricing page, read on 7 October 2026, in US dollars, monthly billing, without taxes, discounts or free plans. For each volume the calculator picks the cheapest published plan, and adds overage where the vendor publishes a rate. Vendors change these pages often, so treat the comparison as a snapshot and follow the links before you decide.
SendGrid (Twilio)pricing page
Essentials 50k and 100k, Pro from 100k to 2.5M. Dedicated IPs come with Pro. No overage rate is published, so we pick the plan that covers your volume.
Mailgunpricing page
Basic, Foundation and Scale with published overage rates. One dedicated IP is included from Foundation 100k; extra IPs are $59 per IP per month.
Postmarkpricing page
Basic tiers from 10k to 1.5M with overage, priced up to 3M on the slider. Dedicated IPs start at $50 per IP per month, on Pro or higher, from 300k emails a month.
Resendpricing page
Pro 50k and 100k, Scale from 100k to 2.5M, overage billed per 1,000. Dedicated IPs are $30 per month on Scale, above 3,000 emails a day.
Mailtrappricing page
Basic up to 100k, Business up to 750k, Enterprise 1.5M and 2.5M. Business and above come with a dedicated IP.
Mailchimp Transactionalpricing page
Sold in blocks of 25,000 emails; the per-block rate drops as your block count grows. A dedicated IP is $29.95 per month. It also needs a paid Mailchimp marketing plan, which is not included here.
1 to 20 blocks: $20 per block21 to 40 blocks: $18 per block41 to 80 blocks: $16 per block81 to 120 blocks: $14 per block121 to 160 blocks: $12 per block161+ blocks: $10 per block
Method
Everything runs in your browser. The model is open in the page source, and it reproduces AWS's own four pricing examples to the cent; those checks run as automated tests.
FAQ
Sources
Cite this page
Khalid, J. (2026). Amazon SES cost calculator: SES plans, attachments, dedicated IPs and regions compared with six email APIs. Meisa. https://meisa.io/tools/amazon-ses-cost-calculator (prices checked 7 October 2026).
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Before you send at volume, check your domain with the email blacklist checker, test copy with the spam word checker, and read how Meisa handles transactional email on SES.
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