The short answer
- Moving from Mailgun Basic to Resend (free tier) saves $130 in the first year, after setup and upkeep time (Stackcut's model: modeled, not measured).
- Resend's official migration guide moves 2 partly; 2 things stay behind. What moves
- 3 public accounts of making this switch: 2 evaluated, 1 switched. Read them
- Switching help: Resend for YC Startups: current YC batch founders receive $25,000 in Resend credits valid 12 months, and YC alumni receive $15,000 in credits, plus a dedicated Slack channel with Resend's team. Not conditioned on switching from any specific vendor. resend.com
What Mailgun and Resend cost
List prices from each vendor's pricing page, as stored in the Stackcut catalog. Each price links its source.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly (per month) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailgun Basic | $15/mo | not shown | 10,000 emails/mo; overage from $1.80 per 1,000; 1 custom sending domain |
| Mailgun Foundation | $35/mo | not shown | 50,000 emails/mo; overage from $1.30 per 1,000; 1,000 custom sending domains; 5-day log retention |
| Mailgun Scale | $90/mo | not shown | 100,000 emails/mo; overage from $1.10 per 1,000; 1,000 domains; 1 dedicated IP; 30-day log retention |
| Resend Pro | $20/mo | not shown | 50,000 emails/mo, no daily limit, 10 domains, 5 webhook endpoints; overage $0.90 per 1,000 |
| Resend Scale | $90/mo | not shown | 100,000 emails/mo, 1,000 domains, 10 webhook endpoints; overage $0.90 per 1,000; SSO and dedicated IP add-ons |
| Resend Pro 100k | $35/mo | not shown | 100,000 emails/mo, 10 domains; overage $0.90 per 1,000 |
| Resend Scale 200k | $160/mo | not shown | 200,000 emails/mo, 1,000 domains; overage $0.80 per 1,000 |
- Mailgun free plan: 100 emails/day, 1 custom sending domain, 1 user, 1-day log retention mailgun.com
- Resend free plan: 3,000 emails/mo, 100 emails/day, 3 domains, 30-day data retention; no pay-as-you-go on Free resend.com
Moving from Mailgun to Resend
What Resend's importer carries over, what it leaves behind, and any help it offers switchers.
To Resend
Official guide resend.com · Tools: Resend official migration guide (Mailgun), Resend SDKs / Resend SMTP relay
Moves: Suppression list (bounces, complaints) (partial); Send integration code (partial). resend.com
Doesn't move: Mailgun per-message metadata (Resend has no metadata field, per email-sdk.dev); Mailgun inbound routing (Resend has no inbound handling, per email-sdk.dev). resend.com
Watch out for:
- Migration is manual: the guide walks DNS, credentials and code changes and offers no Mailgun importer resend.com
- Webhook taxonomies differ (Mailgun has a combined Failure category; Resend logs webhook request status) resend.com
- Message size limits differ: 25MB on Mailgun vs 40MB on Resend resend.com
Community guide billnalen.beehiiv.com · Tools: Resend SMTP relay (nodemailer EMAIL_SERVER), resend npm package
Moves: Magic-link and transactional sending config (partial). billnalen.beehiiv.com
Doesn't move: Templates / libraries; Inbound email forwarding; Inbound email routing/forwarding (Resend is send-only at the time of the post); Mailgun routes (pay-as-you-go accounts limited to 5 routes). billnalen.beehiiv.com
Watch out for:
- Resend does not receive or forward email (at post time), so forwarding addresses stop working billnalen.beehiiv.com
- One Resend account per domain billnalen.beehiiv.com
- Mailgun pay-as-you-go plan caps accounts at 5 routes billnalen.beehiiv.com
Switching help: Resend for YC Startups: current YC batch founders receive $25,000 in Resend credits valid 12 months, and YC alumni receive $15,000 in credits, plus a dedicated Slack channel with Resend's team. Not conditioned on switching from any specific vendor. resend.com
Switching help: Resend Insiders, an ambassador program for content creators, power users and open-source contributors, gives members a free Resend Pro subscription plus early access, swag and direct access to the Resend team; the first cohort is a small group and requires applying. resend.com
Switching help: Resend's Enterprise (Custom) plan includes 'Personalized migration support' alongside a 99.99% uptime SLA, guaranteed response times and a dedicated CSM. Not specific to Mailgun switchers. resend.com
From each destination's own migration docs and switching pages, plus community write-ups where no official guide exists, each checked against its page. Confirm terms on the linked page before you rely on an offer.
People who moved from Mailgun to Resend
3 public accounts of leaving Mailgun: 2 evaluated, 1 switched. Summaries are ours; each links the original, and each was checked against its page before it appeared here.
An independent practitioner evaluated both among six providers (May 2026). Resend is the developer-first default for React/Next.js stacks; Mailgun is kept only where EU data residency or accumulated history demands it, and is called out as feeling stagnant with drifting shared-IP reputation. youngju.dev
A solo developer replaced Mailgun with Resend across four domains to escape the 'mg' sender subdomain and the 5-route cap on the pay-as-you-go plan. Switch took ~15 minutes per domain: new API key, SMTP env var, config change, DNS swap, deploy; Resend's lack of inbound receiving was the accepted trade-off. beehiiv (billnalen)
LaunchDarkly's team wired Mailgun and Resend side by side into one ExpressJS password-reset service behind a feature flag, demonstrating a dual-run migration pattern: identical sends from both providers, toggled per request, with Mailgun's sandbox domain and Resend's test domain both usable for free. LaunchDarkly
FAQ
Is Resend cheaper than Mailgun?
Modeled, not measured: moving from Mailgun Basic to Resend (free tier) saves $130 in the first year, after setup and upkeep time at $50/hour. It depends on your plan, seats and usage. the math
Can I move my Mailgun data to Resend?
Resend's official guide moves: Suppression list (bounces, complaints); Send integration code. It doesn't move: Mailgun per-message metadata (Resend has no metadata field, per email-sdk.dev); Mailgun inbound routing (Resend has no inbound handling, per email-sdk.dev). resend.com
Does Resend help people switch from Mailgun?
Resend for YC Startups: current YC batch founders receive $25,000 in Resend credits valid 12 months, and YC alumni receive $15,000 in credits, plus a dedicated Slack channel with Resend's team. Not conditioned on switching from any specific vendor. resend.com
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find_alternatives({"vendor": "Mailgun"})