Amazon SES Pricing (2026)
Amazon SES is the cheapest way to send email at volume. The headline price is $0.10 per 1,000 emails. AWS now also sells three plans on top of that, so the full price list takes some reading. This page puts it in one place and works out what a newsletter actually costs.
Prices below are from the Amazon SES pricing page as of September 2026. AWS changes them from time to time, so check there before you budget.
The short answer
| What you pay for | Price |
|---|---|
| Sending, à la carte | $0.10 per 1,000 emails |
| Attachments | $0.12 per GB |
| Receiving email | $0.10 per 1,000 emails, plus $0.09 per 1,000 incoming chunks |
| Standard dedicated IP | $24.95 per IP per month |
| Managed dedicated IPs | $15 per month per account, plus a per-email fee |
| Email validation | $0.01 per address checked |
| Free tier | New AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits for the first 6 months |
For most senders the à la carte price is the one that matters. A newsletter to 10,000 people costs $1 per send.
À la carte pricing
À la carte is pay as you go. There is no monthly fee and no minimum. You pay $0.10 for every 1,000 emails, and $0.12 per GB if you send attachments. That is the price SES has had for years, and it is still available.
Extras are billed separately when you turn them on:
- Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM). Deliverability dashboards and advice, billed per email ($0.07 down to $0.02 per 1,000 as volume grows) plus query fees. The global deliverability option is $1,250 a month.
- Dedicated IPs. Standard or bring-your-own IPs are $24.95 per IP per month. Managed dedicated IPs are $15 a month per account plus $0.08 down to $0.02 per 1,000 emails.
- Mail Manager. Inbound email processing at $0.15 per 1,000 emails, and $50 a month for an open ingress endpoint.
The Essentials, Pro and Enterprise plans
The plans bundle features for a higher per-email price. All three charge per 1,000 emails in volume tiers each month:
| Plan | Monthly fee | 0 to 10M emails | 10M to 100M | Over 100M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| À la carte | None | $0.10 | $0.10 | $0.10 |
| Essentials | None | $0.16 | $0.14 | $0.11 |
| Pro | $105 per account per region | $0.22 | $0.17 | $0.12 |
| Enterprise | $500 per account per region | $0.23 | $0.18 | $0.13 |
What the plans add:
- Essentials includes Virtual Deliverability Manager for SES deliverability, Mail Manager email processing and an authenticated ingress endpoint.
- Pro adds global deliverability in VDM, one managed dedicated IP for one domain, 5 seedlist tests, 2,500 email validations a month and the Trend Micro add-on.
- Enterprise adds 5 domains, 12 managed dedicated IPs, 25 seedlist tests, 5,000 validations a month, global endpoints, 1,000 tenants and the Trend Micro and Spamhaus add-ons.
Which one should you pick? If you only send, stay on à la carte. Essentials costs 60% more per email for dashboards many senders never open. Pro starts to make sense once you would pay for a dedicated IP and VDM anyway.
What a newsletter costs on SES
Sending four newsletters a month, at à la carte prices:
| Subscribers | Emails a month | SES à la carte | SES Essentials |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | 40,000 | $4 | $6.40 |
| 50,000 | 200,000 | $20 | $32 |
| 250,000 | 1,000,000 | $100 | $160 |
Add $24.95 a month if you want your own dedicated IP. Most lists under a few hundred thousand subscribers do fine on SES’s shared IPs, and a dedicated IP only helps once you send enough to keep it warm.
What SES doesn’t include
SES is a sending service. It has no subscriber list, sign-up forms, unsubscribe handling, templates, segments or automations. You need something on top of it that does those jobs. That is where most of the real cost lives, because hosted email marketing platforms charge by subscriber count whether or not you use SES underneath.
There is also some work that SES leaves to you:
- Production access. New SES accounts start in the sandbox, which only sends to verified addresses. You request production access from the SES console before you can mail a real list. Our guide to getting out of the SES sandbox walks through it.
- Bounces and complaints. SES reports them, but your software has to stop mailing those addresses. If your complaint rate climbs, AWS can pause your sending.
- Authentication. You add the DKIM records SES gives you, plus SPF and DMARC for your domain. Our DMARC checker confirms all three.
Running a newsletter on SES with Broadcast
Broadcast is self-hosted email marketing software that sends through SES. It handles the list, the forms, one-click unsubscribes, bounce and complaint processing, segments and sequences. You pay $250 once for Broadcast, a few dollars a month for a small server, and SES at the prices above.
For a 50,000-subscriber list sending weekly, that is about $20 a month in SES. There is no per-subscriber fee on top. Use the pricing calculator to compare that with Mailchimp, Klaviyo or Kit at your list size.
Frequently asked questions
Is Amazon SES free?
Not permanently. New AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits for their first 6 months, and SES is one of the services those credits cover. After that you pay the prices above. At $0.10 per 1,000 emails, many small senders pay less than a dollar a month.
How much does Amazon SES cost per email?
$0.0001 per email at à la carte prices, or $0.10 per 1,000. On the Essentials plan it is $0.16 per 1,000 for the first 10 million emails each month.
Is SES cheaper than SendGrid or Mailgun?
For sending alone, usually yes. SES charges per email with no monthly minimum, while most sending services sell monthly plans with an email allowance. The trade-off is that SES gives you fewer tools out of the box. See Postmark vs Mailgun vs Amazon SES for a closer comparison.
Does SES charge for bounced emails?
Yes. You pay for every email SES accepts for delivery, whether it is delivered, bounces or is marked as spam. Removing bad addresses quickly keeps both your bill and your complaint rate down.
Do I need a dedicated IP on SES?
Usually not. Shared IPs work well for most senders. A dedicated IP is worth it when you send consistent high volume, several hundred thousand emails a month or more, and want your reputation separate from other SES customers.
