Mailgun Pricing: Model the Cost Before Volume Moves

Mailgun publishes four positions from $0 to $90 per month, and the plan that looks correct on message volume is frequently wrong on log retention. Basic covers 10,000 messages for $15 but keeps logs for one day, which means a delivery question raised on Wednesday about Monday's send has no answer inside the platform. Price the tier against the retention window and the overage rate together, because those two lines decide more real cost than the included volume does.

Read the published Mailgun plan structure

The Mailgun pricing page sets out four tiers. The figures below were checked against that page on September 19, 2026.

Foundation includes one dedicated IP and 5,000 email validations. Scale includes one dedicated IP and prices validations at $0.80 per 100. Basic and Foundation buy validations as an add-on at $1.20 per 100, and extra dedicated IPs cost $59 per IP per month on any plan that supports them. Basic lists dedicated IP access at 50,000 messages a month and above.

Free and Basic are limited to one user. Foundation and Scale allow unlimited users, and Scale is the tier where support moves from ticket to phone and chat. Foundation and Scale are advertised with a first month free.

Our view: the jump from Basic to Foundation is usually forced by the dedicated IP and the second user seat, not by the message ceiling. A two-person team on Basic is already paying for the upgrade in workarounds.

Treat log retention as the real tier decision

One day of log retention is shorter than a working week. A question raised on Wednesday about a Monday send cannot be answered from Basic, and a question raised after a weekend cannot be answered from Foundation either, since five days covers the working week but not much beyond it.

This matters more for outbound than for transactional sending. A prospect who replies on day four referencing a message you cannot locate is a routine occurrence in a sequenced program, and the ability to retrieve the exact message sent is what turns a dispute into a conversation.

Three ways to close the gap, priced honestly:

The middle row is the one that survives a vendor change, because the record lives in a system you control rather than in an account you might close.

Model overage before the volume band moves

Mailgun charges overage per 1,000 messages above the included allotment, at rates that fall as the plan rises. The structure creates a crossover point worth calculating rather than guessing.

monthly cost = plan price + ((messages − included volume) ÷ 1,000 × overage rate)

Run the arithmetic at a few volumes. Basic at 30,000 messages costs $15 plus 20 × $1.80, which is $51. Foundation at the same 30,000 messages costs $35 with no overage at all, and includes the dedicated IP, the second user and five days of logs. The cheaper-looking plan is the more expensive one well before the included ceiling is reached.

Repeat the calculation at your realistic twelve month peak rather than today's send. A program that grows through a band mid-year will pay overage for months before anyone reviews the plan.

Price the dedicated IP against the warm-up it requires

Foundation and Scale each include one dedicated IP, and additional IPs are published at $59 per IP per month. The included IP is a genuine benefit and it carries an obligation that the pricing page does not price.

A new IP has no sending history, and email providers treat that absence as a risk signal. Amazon's dedicated IP warm-up documentation describes the ramp as taking around two weeks with some email providers and up to six weeks with others. The range is a property of how receiving systems build trust, so it applies to any platform where you provision a fresh IP.

Budget for the weeks during which volume is constrained, and assign an owner to the ramp schedule before the IP is provisioned. An IP that gets full production volume on day one is worse than no dedicated IP at all.

If your program needs a pool across several IPs, multiply $59 by the pool size and compare that against the plan price. At four extra IPs the add-on line exceeds the Scale subscription.

Count validations against your actual list volume

Foundation includes 5,000 email validations. Basic and Foundation price additional validations at $1.20 per 100, and Scale prices them at $0.80 per 100.

For outbound work those volumes rarely match the requirement. A prospecting list of 20,000 records consumes four times the Foundation allowance in a single pass, and at the Foundation add-on rate the remaining 15,000 records cost $180. That figure is larger than five months of the subscription it sits on.

The decision is usually whether verification belongs in the sending platform at all. Running it upstream in a dedicated tool keeps the policy layer separate from the transport layer, which is the arrangement our email verification API guide sets out.

Confirm the traffic type before approval

Transactional infrastructure providers apply acceptable-use terms to the kind of mail they accept, and the terms differ by vendor. The most expensive outcome in a sending platform purchase is completing the migration and then discovering the platform does not want the traffic.

Describe the traffic in writing before approval. Name the list source, the recipient relationship, the monthly volume, the message type and the expected complaint rate, then keep the written response with the contract. A sales conversation is not a document.

LeadHaste orchestrates 35+ tools for client programs and selects the sending layer against the traffic it has to carry. Our outbound lead generation services explain how domains, mailboxes and sending infrastructure are assembled so the client owns each piece.

Record renewal and exit terms with the price

Capture the plan name, price, included volume, overage rate, log retention window, dedicated IP count and cost, validation rate, user seat count, support tier and downgrade notice period in the approval record. Mark unknown commercial fields as unknown instead of entering zero.

Then write the exit test before you need it. Confirm that suppression data can be exported in a usable format, that event history can be retrieved within the retention window, and that domain authentication can be repointed without a gap in sending.

Approve the total, not the tier

Mailgun pricing is legible at the headline and decided underneath it by retention, overage and the dedicated IP. Run the arithmetic at your forecast peak, check whether your reply cycle fits inside the log window, and price validation where it actually happens.

LeadHaste can turn your volume forecast, retention policy, reputation requirements and exit conditions into one quote-ready operating model. Book your free ICP and campaign-fit discovery call →