Amazon SES pricing
Every published tier, with the effective cost per 1,000 emails calculated from the list price. Transcribed from Amazon SES's own pricing page, not from a vendor summary.
The free tier, and what it actually allows
- › Credits are available for 6 months after account creation and must be used within 12 months
- › This is account credit, not a recurring monthly email allowance
Every paid tier
| Plan | Price | Included | Overage | Per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A la carte | $0.10 per 1,000 | any volume | billed per email, no plan | $0.10 |
| Essentials | $0.16 per 1,000 | 0 to 10M/mo | billed per email, no plan | $0.16 |
| Essentials | $0.14 per 1,000 | 10M to 100M/mo | billed per email, no plan | $0.14 |
| Essentials | $0.11 per 1,000 | over 100M/mo | billed per email, no plan | $0.11 |
Per-1,000 figures are list price divided by included volume. They ignore overages, which are billed separately at the rate shown.
What the headline price does not show
- › There is no monthly subscription, so the unit price is the whole story on sending. The cost that surprises teams is operational: bounce handling, complaint processing, warmup, and monitoring are yours to build.
- › A la carte at $0.10 per 1,000 is cheaper per email than Essentials at $0.16. Essentials bundles features rather than discounting volume.
- › Attachments are billed separately by the gigabyte, which matters for receipts and reports.
add-ons
- Dedicated IP (standard): $24.95/mo per IP
- Dedicated IP (managed): $15/mo per account plus $0.08 to $0.02 per 1,000
- Attachment data: $0.12 per GB sent
- Inbound email: $0.10 per 1,000 plus $0.09 per 1,000 chunks
Entry price against the alternatives
| Provider | Free tier | Paid entry |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon SES | Up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts | $0.10 per 1,000 emails |
| SendGrid | 60-day free trial only (permanent free tier was removed May 2025) | $19.95/mo for 50,000 emails |
| Postmark | 100/mo developer plan | $15/mo for 10,000 emails |
| Mailgun | 100/day permanent free plan | $15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic) |
| Resend | 3,000/mo permanent, capped at 100/day, one domain | $20/mo for 50,000 emails |
Each figure carries a last-checked date on that provider's profile. See Amazon SES alternatives for a ranked view.
Common questions
How much does Amazon SES cost?
Amazon SES starts at $0.10 per 1,000 for any volume emails a month, which works out to $0.10 per 1,000. The published tiers run up to $0.11 per 1,000 for over 100M/mo. Rates verified 2026-08-06 against https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/.
Is Amazon SES free?
There is a free tier at $0 covering Up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts, but Credits are available for 6 months after account creation and must be used within 12 months.
Is Amazon SES cheaper than SendGrid?
At the entry tier, Amazon SES is $0.10 per 1,000 for any volume against SendGrid at $19.95/mo for 50,000 emails. The free tiers differ too: Amazon SES offers Up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts, SendGrid offers 60-day free trial only (permanent free tier was removed May 2025).
What is the cheapest Amazon SES tier per email?
The $0.10 per 1,000 tier at any volume emails, which is $0.10 per 1,000. Note that cost per 1,000 does not fall monotonically as you move up the plans.
reading this as developers picking email infrastructure
The question here is which one a backend engineer would rather operate. That means SDK depth in the language already in use, whether a retry can safely be replayed, how much the event log tells you when a customer says the email never arrived, and whether the pricing curve stays sane as volume grows.
Applied to Amazon SES pricing, that means weighing developer experience, SDK breadth, idempotency keys, and operating track record ahead of the rest, against password resets, receipts, and magic links shipped from application code.