Prices verified against Resend's pricing page on 19 August 2026.

Resend costs nothing for the first 3,000 emails a month, then runs $20 to $35 on Pro and $90 to $1,150 on Scale. Marketing email bills separately, from $40 for 5,000 contacts.

Two things moved recently. Resend switched on pay-as-you-go overage billing in December 2025, and raised data retention to 30 days on every plan in March 2026. Most Resend pricing guides still quote the old limits. This one gives you every official price, the overage rates, and the caps that force upgrades before volume does.

Key takeaways

• The Resend free plan covers 3,000 emails a month, but it also caps you at 100 a day. The daily cap is what most teams hit first.

• Paid transactional pricing starts at $20 for 50,000 emails and tops out at $1,150 for 2.5 million before Enterprise takes over.

• Pro and Scale both sell 100,000 emails. Pro charges $35, Scale charges $90. Most teams at that volume should take Pro.

• Marketing email bills on contacts stored, not emails sent, from $40 for 5,000 contacts to $650 for 150,000. Sending is unlimited.

• Resend only charges overage if you switch it on. Once you do, it bills each extra bucket of 1,000 emails at $0.90 down to $0.46 by tier.

• Two add-ons sit outside every plan price: dedicated IPs at $30 a month and 100 extra domains at $20 a month.

What is Resend

Resend is an email API for developers that handles transactional and marketing sending from one account. You integrate through a REST API, an SMTP relay, or official SDKs, and every plan ships with inbound email, batch sending, scheduled sends, open and link tracking, React Email, webhooks, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR compliance.

The product splits into two separately priced halves. Transactional bills on the volume you send and receive. Marketing bills on the contacts you store. Each has its own quota and upgrade path, which is what makes Resend pricing harder to read than one plan table.

How much does Resend cost

Resend runs two price ladders in parallel, and buying both means paying two subscriptions. Every figure below comes from Resend's official pricing page.

Resend transactional email pricing

The last two columns measure different things. Overage is what you pay beyond your allowance; the effective rate is what the included emails cost. They diverge at 1.5 million, where overage is $0.52 and the plan works out to $0.55, so if you've seen both quoted, neither is wrong.

One counting rule catches people out. Resend counts inbound email against the same quota as outbound, and counts each To, CC, or BCC recipient separately. A notification to a three-person team spends three emails.

Resend free tier limits: 3,000 emails a month, 100 a day

The Resend free tier gives you 3,000 emails a month, but it also caps you at 100 emails per day, and the daily limit is the one that bites. It's a permanent free plan rather than a trial, and it needs no card.

A 3,000-email month averages exactly 100 a day, so the daily cap isn't slack. It's the same ceiling stated twice, and it only holds if traffic arrives perfectly evenly. Real traffic doesn't. A launch or one busy support day burns 100 sends while monthly usage still reads 12%.

Teams leave the free plan because a Tuesday went badly, not because they crossed 3,000. The free tier also gives one verified sending domain, so wanting separate staging and production domains moves you to Pro on its own. Every paid plan drops the daily limit.

Resend marketing email pricing

Marketing bills on contacts stored, and you can send to your list as often as you like.

There's no Scale tier here. Marketing runs Free, Pro Marketing, and Enterprise only, a detail most Resend guides get wrong. Broadcasts also only go to contacts you've already stored.

Resend add-on pricing: dedicated IPs and extra domains

Two things sit outside every plan price. Dedicated IPs cost $30 a month, on Scale and Enterprise only, and only for customers sending more than 3,000 emails a day. 

Resend handles warmup, monitoring, and autoscaling. Pro can't add one at any price. Extra domains cost $20 a month for 100 more, on Pro and Scale, self-serve from the dashboard.

That second one changes the maths. Pro's 10-domain limit isn't really 10, it's 110 for another $20 a month, which matters if you were about to jump to Scale for the domain count alone. These two add-ons are the real upgrade triggers on Resend, because volume rarely forces the move on its own.

What you get on each Resend plan

Pro at $35 or Scale at $90 for the same 100,000 emails

Both plans sell exactly 100,000 emails a month. Pro charges $35, Scale charges $90, and the $55 difference buys 1,000 sending domains instead of 10, Slack support with an urgent-response SLA, 500 AI credits instead of 100, and eligibility to add a dedicated IP for another $30. Nothing else changes.

Most teams at 100,000 emails should take Pro. Scale earns its premium in two situations and no others: you're sending from dozens of domains, or you need reputation control through a dedicated IP, which also requires clearing 3,000 emails a day. 

Without one of those, you're paying $55 a month for a Slack channel. Two tiered pricing plans overlapping at one volume isn't an accident, and the slider on Resend's pricing page hides the comparison rather than making it.

Automations, AI credits, and what every plan includes

Email volume isn't the only meter. Automations give 10,000 runs a month on every plan, then bill $0.0015 per run on paid plans. AI credits run 5, 100, and 500 across Free, Pro, and Scale, reset monthly, and don't roll over.

Much of what teams upgrade for already sits on the free plan. SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, MFA, the REST API, SMTP relay, SDKs, inbound email, batch sending, open and link tracking, multi-region, and DKIM, SPF, and DMARC ship on all four tiers.