Overview

SendGrid and Mailgun are the two giants of developer email. Both offer excellent APIs, reliable delivery, and powerful features. SendGrid (acquired by Twilio) tends toward enterprise scale and marketing features. Mailgun (acquired by Sinch) tends toward developer-focused tools like validation and routing.

API and Developer Experience

Both have excellent APIs with comprehensive documentation. SendGrid has more official SDKs (7+ languages). Mailgun's API is equally powerful with particularly good support for complex routing and validation use cases.

Email Validation

Mailgun's email validation is a standout feature - check if addresses are valid before sending. This reduces bounces and protects sender reputation. SendGrid offers validation as an add-on, but Mailgun has it more tightly integrated.

Scale Differences

SendGrid handles the largest enterprise volumes - billions of emails monthly. Mailgun handles hundreds of millions well but SendGrid has more headroom at extreme scale. For most companies, both are more than sufficient.

Marketing Capabilities

SendGrid has evolved into a full marketing platform with campaigns, automation, and visual editors. Mailgun remains primarily transactional-focused. If you need marketing features, SendGrid is more complete.

Pricing

Mailgun is slightly cheaper at the Scale tier ($75 vs $89.95 for 100k emails). But both have add-ons that affect total cost. SendGrid's dedicated IPs and Mailgun's validation are extra.

Making the Choice

For enterprise scale and marketing needs, SendGrid is the more complete platform. For developer tools like validation and routing, Mailgun has the edge. Both are excellent choices for transactional email.