What does Amazon SES really cost beyond $0.16 per 1,000?

At 100,000 emails a month, Amazon SES costs $16.00 on its Essentials plan or $10.00 à la carte (checked 2026-11-03). Small messages add about $0.38. Large attachments change the answer: past roughly 1.6 MB per email, SES Essentials costs more than Resend's $35 plan, if Resend adds no attachment fee (its pricing page lists none, checked 2026-11-03).

All four rows leave out message data, dedicated IPs and taxes. Source: Amazon SES pricing↗, checked 2026-11-03. The page opened in Korean for us, so we read the Korean figures and translated the labels. The sums are ours.

SES labels outbound email as billed per recipient (same page, checked 2026-11-03). Our reading: one message sent to three people counts as three emails, so count recipients, not messages, when you estimate volume.

New accounts start on Essentials. The page says accounts with no metered SES activity since 2025-06-01 start on Essentials from 2026-07-21, per account and region, and can switch to à la carte at any time (checked 2026-11-03).

Is Essentials really cheaper than à la carte?

Not for sending alone: à la carte is $0.10 per 1,000 emails, Essentials is $0.16 (checked 2026-11-03). But the plan table lists the "SES deliverability" part of Virtual Deliverability Manager as included in Essentials, and the à la carte table sells it for $0.07 per 1,000 emails (checked 2026-11-03). With it, à la carte costs $0.17, so Essentials is $1 a month cheaper at 100,000 emails (our calculation).

What this means (prices of 2026-11-03): if you do not need that deliverability feature, à la carte saves $6 a month at 100,000 emails, or $72 a year. If you want it, take Essentials. Our earlier email API article used $0.16 and said we had not checked what the $0.10 rate leaves out. Now we know: it leaves out that feature.

How much do message size and attachments add?

SES charges $0.12 per GB of attachment data sent, on top of the per-email rate (Amazon SES pricing↗, checked 2026-11-03). The page's own examples apply the fee to whole 32 KB messages, written as 0.000032 GB. We use the same units: 1 MB is 0.001 GB, and the table assumes every email has that average size. If your emails are mostly text with small attachments, this over-counts the data fee. The last column compares with Resend's Pro plan at $35 for 100,000 emails (Resend pricing↗, checked 2026-11-03).

Three things follow from the same arithmetic (our calculation, rates of 2026-11-03):

• The data fee equals the sending fee at about 1.33 MB per email ($0.16 ÷ $0.12, rates of 2026-11-03). Below that size, sending is the bigger part of the bill. Above it, data is.
• SES Essentials reaches Resend's $35 at ($35 − $16) ÷ $12 = about 1.6 MB per email (rates of 2026-11-03). À la carte reaches it later, at ($35 − $10) ÷ $12 = about 2.1 MB.
• This is a price-only marker. Resend's pricing page shows no attachment fee, and its attachments doc↗ mentions a 40 MB email limit but no fee (checked 2026-11-03). The two plans also include different features, and we did not map Resend's plan features. For an app that mails PDF invoices or reports, this line matters more than the headline rate.

The page also says that using EC2 can bring extra data transfer fees. It gives no number for them, so we did not add any (checked 2026-11-03).

What does a dedicated IP cost at 100,000 emails?

A dedicated IP gives you your own sending reputation. SES sells it two ways, in its à la carte table (Amazon SES pricing↗):

• Standard: $24.95 per IP per month (checked 2026-11-03). With Essentials that is $16 + $24.95 = $40.95; à la carte it is $10 + $24.95 = $34.95. We assume Essentials pays the same $24.95; the page does not say otherwise.
• Managed: $15 per account per month, plus $0.08 per 1,000 emails for the first 10 million a month (checked 2026-11-03). At 100,000 emails that is $15 + $8 = $23, so $33.00 with à la carte sending.

The page shows these prices in the à la carte table. It does not say whether Essentials pays the same rate for a managed IP, so we priced the managed IP only à la carte.

For comparison, our earlier article priced one dedicated IP at 100,000 emails on 2026-11-01 as $90 on Mailgun Scale (IP included) and $120 on Resend Scale. We did not re-read those add-on prices today. On those numbers, SES is about $33 to $41 for the same job.

The managed fee grows with volume. The page's own example, 2 million emails a month, shows $15 + 2,000 × $0.08 = $175 for the managed IP alone (Amazon SES pricing↗, checked 2026-11-03).

When does the Pro plan make sense?

Pro is $105 a month plus $0.22 per 1,000 emails, so $127 at 100,000 emails (checked 2026-11-03). That is $111 more than Essentials. The per-email rate is also $0.06 higher, not lower.

What you get: the plan table shows Pro includes the global deliverability feature, a managed dedicated IP and email validation. Essentials lists those as paid extras. A footnote says Pro's global deliverability covers one domain, one dedicated IP and five seed-list tests, and that Essentials customers who buy global deliverability pay $1,250 a month for five domains, 12 dedicated IPs and 25 seed-list tests. Another footnote says Pro includes the Trend Micro email add-on, and other add-ons cost extra (Amazon SES pricing↗, checked 2026-11-03).

Our reading (prices of 2026-11-03): the two global deliverability offers are different sizes, so $127 for Pro and $1,266 for Essentials plus the $1,250 add-on are not a like-for-like comparison. What we can say is smaller. A managed IP alone costs $23 at 100,000 emails without Pro, so Pro is poor value if the IP is all you want. Pro makes sense only if you need its bundle of deliverability and validation tools, and most small products will not.

Choose à la carte if

• You send around 100,000 emails a month and do not need the deliverability feature.
• You want a managed dedicated IP without paying for a plan.
• Your emails carry big attachments: à la carte reaches Resend's $35 at about 2.1 MB per email, Essentials at about 1.6 MB (price only, 2026-11-03).

Choose Essentials if

• You want the deliverability feature and no extra line items.
• Your average message is under about 1.6 MB, where SES still beats Resend's $35 plan on price (2026-11-03).

Choose Pro if

• You need Pro's bundle of global deliverability, email validation and managed IP, and you accept $127 at 100,000 emails (2026-11-03).

What we did not check

• Resend plan features beyond price, its support for attachments of different sizes, and whether Resend counts per recipient.
• The Mailgun Scale and Resend Scale dedicated-IP prices. We reused the 2026-11-01 figures from our earlier article.
• Whether email validation is part of Pro on the AWS page itself. We saw it in the plan table summary and in one third-party summary, so re-check it before you rely on it.
• Deliverability query charges: the page lists $0.0005 per 1,000 queries after the first 5,000 each month (checked 2026-11-03). We left queries out of every sum.
• Free credits for new AWS accounts, and fixed fees that repeat in each AWS region.
• SES sandbox limits, bounce and complaint handling, and inbound mail.
• The size of EC2 data transfer fees, taxes and enterprise discounts.

How we researched this

We read the Amazon SES pricing page in a browser on 2026-11-03, plus Resend's pricing page and attachments doc the same day, and calculated every sum ourselves from the rates above. We did not test these products hands-on. Prices change; re-check the linked pages before you buy. This article has no ads or affiliate links.

Changelog

• 2026-11-03: First published. All prices were read on 2026-11-03.