Amazon SES vs. Resend

At a glance

Best for

Best for engineering teams already running on AWS that want high-volume email billed per message and are willing to build the surrounding tooling themselves.

Freelancers
Small and mid-sized
Enterprise

Resend

Best for

Best for product and engineering teams that want transactional email, broadcasts and templates in the same codebase as the application that sends them.

Freelancers
Small and mid-sized
Enterprise

Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.

Full Comparison

Criterion	Amazon SES	Resend
Starting price	lower value From $0.10 / 1,000 emails À la carte sending is $0.10 per 1,000 emails with no monthly fee. The tiered plans are Essentials at $0.16 per 1,000 and no fixed fee, Pro at $105 per month per account and region plus $0.22 per 1,000, and Enterprise at $500 per month plus $0.23 per 1,000. Rates fall above 10 million and again above 100 million emails. Attachment data is charged at $0.12 per GB.	Free tier; Pro from $20 / month Transactional and marketing volume are billed separately. The transactional ladder runs Free, Pro from $20 per month and Scale from $90 per month, priced in bands by monthly email volume; marketing runs Free, Pro Marketing from $40 per month and Enterprise, priced by contact count.
Free trial	New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months	Free tier: 3,000 emails per month, 100 per day, 3 domains, plus 1,000 marketing contacts
API	Yes, the SES v2 API and an SMTP interface, called from the AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI	Yes, REST API with official SDKs for Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust, Elixir, Java and .NET, plus a CLI, webhooks and an official MCP server
Hosting	Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region	Cloud (SaaS)
Campaign types	Marketing, transactional and newsletter sending through the console, the SMTP interface or the SES v2 API, plus inbound receiving that can store mail in Amazon S3, publish it to Amazon SNS or trigger AWS Lambda	Transactional email over the API, broadcasts to contacts and segments, and inbound email by pointing MX records at Resend
Automation and journeys	No journey builder. Sending is driven by your own application or by other AWS services, and received mail can trigger Lambda functions, which is how autoresponders and unsubscribe systems are built on it.	Yes, flows triggered by custom events from your own application, built from condition, delay, wait for event, send email, contact update, contact delete and add to segment steps, with a Runs view for debugging
Segmentation and personalisation	Per-recipient personalisation through template replacement data, with SendBulkEmail taking up to 50 destination objects per call, each carrying its own values and falling back to defaults where none are supplied	Yes, contacts with custom properties grouped into segments, plus Topics so recipients can opt in or out of individual categories
Templates and editor	Stored templates created through the API, up to 20,000 per region and 500 KB each, or inline templates supplied with the request; both substitute placeholder tags in the subject, HTML and text parts. There is no drag-and-drop builder.	React Email, a component-based template system written in code; there is no drag-and-drop builder
Deliverability and testing	Easy DKIM authentication, bounce and complaint notifications through Amazon SNS, rendering failure notifications, and event publishing to CloudWatch or Amazon Data Firehose. Virtual Deliverability Manager is priced separately, from $0.02 to $0.07 per 1,000 emails, with global deliverability at $1,250 per month. IPs can be shared, managed dedicated, or brought from your own range at $24.95 per month per IP.	Domain verification with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, delivery event webhooks and event monitoring in the dashboard; dedicated IPs are a $30 per month add-on on Scale and above
Ecommerce and CRM data	No ecommerce or CRM connectors. SES keeps one contact list per AWS account, with up to 20 topics, a subscription status per topic and a free-form attributes field on each contact; contacts are imported from an Amazon S3 object in CSV or JSON, up to one million per import job. Order and customer data stay in your own systems and travel with the send request.	Contacts are created and updated over the API or bulk-imported by CSV up to 200 MB, with custom properties carrying the data used for personalisation
Integrations and API	Yes, the SES v2 API and an SMTP interface, called from the AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI, with IAM for access control and CloudTrail for API call logging. Integrates with S3, SNS, Lambda, CloudWatch, Data Firehose, KMS, Route 53 and Elastic Beanstalk.	Yes, REST API with bearer key authentication, a batch endpoint for up to 100 messages per request, SDKs for nine languages, a CLI, webhooks and an official MCP server
MCP-ready	No	stated Yes
Deployment	Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based	Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based
Support	more entries Email helpdesk, Phone, Chat, 24/7, Community forum	Email helpdesk
Onboarding	Documentation and knowledge base	Documentation and knowledge base
Company size	Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise	Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
Integrations	Amazon S3, Amazon SNS, AWS Lambda, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Data Firehose, AWS KMS, AWS IAM, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon Route 53, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon EC2	Not stated

Compare more tools

Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.

The short version

Key Differences

Starting price Amazon SES From $0.10 / 1,000 emails Resend Free tier; Pro from $20 / month
Free trial Amazon SES New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months Resend Free tier: 3,000 emails per month, 100 per day, 3 domains, plus 1,000 marketing contacts
Hosting Amazon SES Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region Resend Cloud (SaaS)
Support Amazon SES Email helpdesk, Phone, Chat, 24/7, Community forum Resend Email helpdesk
MCP-ready Amazon SES No Resend Yes

Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

Amazon SES

Strengths

Per-message pricing with no seat licence and no monthly fee on the à la carte rate
SMTP interface and SES v2 API, callable from the AWS SDKs and the CLI
Inbound mail can land in S3, publish to SNS or trigger Lambda functions
Up to 20,000 stored templates per region, or inline templates supplied per request
Shared, managed dedicated or bring-your-own IP addresses
Sending rates fall at 10 million and 100 million emails per month

Limitations

No campaign editor, journey builder or drag-and-drop template designer
The Pro and Enterprise fixed fees are charged per account and per region
Deliverability tooling is a separately priced add-on, Virtual Deliverability Manager
Running it in practice means operating SNS, Lambda, CloudWatch and IAM alongside it
A failed call to a multi-recipient message rejects the whole email, so AWS recommends one recipient per call
Attachment data is billed separately at $0.12 per GB

Resend

Strengths

Transactional sending, broadcasts, contacts and automations on one API and one account
Official SDKs for Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust, Elixir, Java and .NET, plus a CLI
Standing free tiers on both ladders rather than a time-limited trial
Inbound email by pointing MX records at Resend, delivered as webhooks
Official MCP server, so the platform can be driven by AI agents

Limitations

Templates are React components, so building an email needs a developer
Two separate price ladders, one for sending volume and one for contacts
Dedicated IPs, extra domains and SSO are priced as add-ons on top of the plan
SSO and dedicated IPs require the Scale plan or above
The free tier caps sending at 100 emails per day

Plans

Pricing

Amazon SES

À la carte $0.10 Per 1,000 emails sent, with no fixed monthly fee.
Essentials $0.16 Per 1,000 emails up to 10 million per month and no fixed fee. $0.14 per 1,000 from 10 to 100 million, $0.11 above 100 million.
Pro $105 Per month per account and region, plus $0.22 per 1,000 emails up to 10 million, $0.17 from 10 to 100 million and $0.12 above.
Enterprise $500 Per month per account and region, plus $0.23 per 1,000 emails up to 10 million, $0.18 from 10 to 100 million and $0.13 above.

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Resend

Free $0 3,000 emails per month, capped at 100 per day, 3 domains, 10,000 automation runs and 30-day data retention. Marketing side is free up to 1,000 contacts.
Pro $20 Per month, 50,000 emails and 10 domains, no daily limit, 5 webhook endpoints. $35 per month for 100,000 emails. Overage $0.90 per 1,000 emails.
Scale $90 Per month, from 100,000 emails and 1,000 domains, 10 webhook endpoints and a dedicated Slack channel. Rises through $160, $350, $650, $825 and $1,150 per month up to 2.5 million emails, with the overage rate falling from $0.90 to $0.46 per 1,000.
Pro Marketing $40 Per month for 5,000 contacts, rising to $650 per month for 150,000 contacts.
Enterprise Not stated Custom volume and contact limits, a 99.99% uptime SLA, a dedicated customer success manager, migration support and flexible AI credits.

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What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

Amazon SES

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

Resend

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

How we check reviews

Before sending, the author has to confirm three things: that they have used the product themselves, that they work neither for the vendor nor for a competitor, and that nobody is paying them for the review. We also ask whether the vendor invited them to write it. That answer is required, either answer is accepted, and it stays with the review.

Every review is read by a person before it appears. An email address is required and is confirmed: we send a link to it, and a review does not reach us until the author opens that link, so a review has a sender who was reachable at least once rather than being anonymous. Where what somebody writes needs backing, we ask them for evidence that they used the product, and a review that does not get it is not published. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.

What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on their own declaration, on whatever we ask them for, and on the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.

A vendor cannot buy a review, and cannot have one removed or changed because they dislike it. We remove or edit a review only if it breaks our rules or the law, for example a false statement of fact. Paid placement has no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.

Read the full version on our methodology page

Where this comes from

Amazon SES https://aws.amazon.com/ses/ · checked against the official source on 2026-09-09

Resend https://resend.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-07

This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.