SendRaven vs SendGrid
SendGrid is two products. SendRaven is one.
SendGrid is the largest email API by volume and it carries the integrations to prove it.
If you are already on Twilio, or you need a marketing designer your non-technical team will use, it is a reasonable home.
Twilio's email platform: an Email API sold by volume and Marketing Campaigns sold by contacts. Last verified 16 September 2026 against sendgrid.com’s own pricing and documentation.
Where SendGrid is the better choice
- Scale and integrations. Almost everything has a SendGrid connector.
- A drag-and-drop marketing designer and a large template library.
- Dedicated IPs and sub-user accounts for large organisations.
Feature by feature
What each one does when you ask it to.
It is also the clearest example of the split we built against: the Email API is priced by volume, Marketing Campaigns by contacts, and they are different products with different feature sets. Inbound Parse posts each message to a webhook, raw or split into fields, with no thread and nothing stripped. The free plan became a 60-day trial.
| Edge |  | SendGrid |
|---|---|---|
| Priced per email sent, never per contactPricing by list size charges most to the customer whose list is growing, which is the point of the product. | YesOne meter. A contact is free. | PartlyEmail API by volume; Marketing Campaigns by contacts |
| Transactional, campaigns and automations on one planTwo products means two suppression lists that disagree and a price gap that rewards mislabelling campaigns as transactional. | YesOne key, one plan, one dashboard, one suppression list. | Notwo products |
| The reply is a thread, not a webhookA webhook hands you a raw message and leaves you to work out which conversation it belongs to. | YesJoined on Message-ID to the message it answers. | NoInbound Parse posts to a webhook |
| Quoted history stripped from repliesThe third reply in a thread is mostly the first two quoted back. A model reading it pays for that and gets confused by it. | Yestext is what they typed; raw_text is the whole body. | No |
| One query for what is awaiting a replyThis is the poll an agent actually runs. Without it you build a state machine over inbound events. | YesGET /v1/threads?awaiting_reply=true | No |
| Per-key daily cap and recipient allowlistA workspace quota trips after an agent has mailed thousands of people. A key limit trips before. | Yesdaily_send_limit and allowed_recipients on the key, checked on every send. | Partlykey permissions; no cap or allowlist |
| Human approval hold on a keyThe only way to let an agent write mail without letting it send mail. | Yesrequires_approval drafts the message and waits for a person. | No |
| Campaign refused before it starts on bounce or complaint rateReputation dashboards report the damage. A gate prevents it. | YesChecked in the send path; the preview call says whether it will be allowed. | No |
| Unsubscribe cancels queued sends and ends the sequenceDoing only the first is how a working unsubscribe still delivers day three of a welcome series. | YesTwo writes: suppress the address, cancel what is scheduled for it. | Nonot documented |
| Opt down by topic, per personGiven only all-or-nothing, people press spam instead, and a complaint costs the domain far more than an opt-out. | YesPreferences on (email, topic), not on a contact row. | Yesunsubscribe groups |
| Remote MCP server with no stored credentialsA server that holds its own database credentials is a shared identity for every caller. | Yesmcp.sendraven.ai, OAuth or a Bearer key, reaches exactly what the key can. | NoTwilio's official server reads the docs; it does not call the API |
| llms.txt and an unauthenticated OpenAPI documentA model decides what it is holding from the description document. Generated ones say what, not which. | YesBoth public, written by hand, so an agent can read them before it has a key. | Yesa section in Twilio's llms.txt; OpenAPI on GitHub |
| Errors written for an agentA client that backs off on 429 retries a payment problem forever. A model that sees an error retries a held draft. | Yes402 for out of plan, not 429. pending_approval is a status, not an error. | No |
| Inbound included and freeCharging for the reply discourages the half of email that makes it a conversation. | YesReplies cost nothing and land in the thread. | YesInbound Parse on every plan |
| Free tier that does not expire or throttle by the dayA trial that expires is a deadline, not a tier, and a 100-a-day cap is a tier you cannot test a campaign on. | Yes3,000 emails a month, inbound included, no daily cap. | No60-day trial, 100 a day |
| Rate per 1,000 past the entry paid tierThe rate past the allowance is the real price for anyone who grows. | Yes$0.50, and it stops applying at each published price. | Partlytiered, $0.0013 to $0.0005 per email by plan |
| Usage pricing without tier cliffsTiers do not hurt at the boundaries. They hurt in the middle, which is where most senders live. | YesOne curve, applied to what you actually sent. No tier to choose and none to outgrow. | No |
SendRavenPrice
What the same month costs.
Published list prices. The Email API page gives each plan a starting price rather than a price per volume, so we compare only the entry tier and have not guessed the rest. Marketing Campaigns is priced separately by contacts.
| Per month | | SendGrid |
|---|---|---|
| 50,000 emails | $19.00 | $19.95 on Essentials |
| Marketing Campaigns, priced by contacts | $0 | Basic from $15 a month; contact tiers 5K to 100K |
Published list prices, last verified 16 September 2026. Ours is what the Standard curve charges at that volume — there is no tier to pick. Full pricing.
Questions
Asked by people choosing between the two.
Is SendGrid still free?
The permanent free tier was replaced by a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day. SendRaven's free plan is 3,000 emails a month, permanent and never converted to a paid plan on its own. We do ask for a payment method before the first send, to keep spam off a shared sending reputation, and it is not charged on Free.
Try it on one domain first.
3,000 emails a month, inbound included, and no charge until you switch paid sending on. Already decided? The migration guide from SendGrid covers the export, the column mapping and the opt-outs. The other comparisons are on the compare page.