Both send email over a REST API. Every row below was read from Rasket's own pages and SendGrid's own pages, and the day they were read is printed under the table.
Rasket is an email API for developers: one REST API and a dashboard for transactional email and campaigns, with inbound mail, signed webhooks and an MCP server in the same product and on the same key.
SendGrid is Twilio's email product: an API and an SMTP service with seven official libraries, sold as Email API plans, with its campaign tooling bought as a second subscription.
| Criterion | Rasket | SendGrid |
|---|---|---|
| Sending and receiving | ||
| Inbound email | Pro and Premier | |
| Transactional and campaigns on one plan | Separate purchase | |
| Idempotent sends | Not published | |
| Versioned templates | Not published | |
| Automations | Separate purchase · in Marketing Campaigns | |
| SMTP relay | ||
| DKIM key size | 2048-bit | Not published |
| Webhooks and developer tools | ||
| Signed webhooks | ||
| Replay a webhook event | Not published | |
| MCP server | ||
| Markdown docs and llms.txt | ||
| Official SDKs | Coming soon | 7 languages · incl. Node.js, Python, Go |
| Plans and pricing | ||
| Free plan | 3,000 / mo · 100 a day | 60-day trial · 100 a day; no free plan |
| Entry paid plan | $20 / mo · 50,000 emails | $19.95 / mo · 50,000 emails |
| Extra emails, per 1,000 | $0.60 · down to $0.25 on Scale | $1.30 |
| Data retention | 30 days | 3 days · 7 on Pro and Premier |
| Dedicated IP | $30 / mo · on Scale | One included · Pro and Premier |
| Best for | Developers who want sending, receiving and campaigns behind one API key | Teams already inside Twilio who want email on the same account |
Facts checked on against each company’s public pricing and documentation.
SendGrid ships seven official libraries while ours are still coming, so a C#, Java, Go, PHP or Ruby service has a maintained client from them today. Their Pro and Premier plans include a dedicated IP in the price where ours is an add-on. If your company already bills through Twilio, one account and one invoice for email, SMS and voice is a real advantage no feature row here captures.
SendGrid is best for: Teams already inside Twilio who want email on the same account
The rows that decide this one are the free plan and the shape of the bill. SendGrid's entry is a 60-day trial rather than a plan you can stay on, campaigns are a second subscription, and searchable activity is three days on Essentials against thirty on every self-serve Rasket plan. Extra email is $1.30 a thousand against $0.60. Choose SendGrid when the rest of your stack is Twilio or you need a language we do not have a client for; choose Rasket when you want a free plan that does not expire, inbound mail without moving up two tiers, and one plan covering transactional and campaign mail.
Rasket is best for: Developers who want sending, receiving and campaigns behind one API key
It is, for most of what the Email API plans do. Rasket sends over a REST API or its SMTP relay, signs webhooks and lets you replay them, receives inbound mail on every plan, and keeps thirty days of history on the self-serve plans against three on Essentials. What Rasket does not have is SendGrid's seven client languages, and it is not part of Twilio, so shared billing with SMS and voice is not on the table.
SendGrid: On the Pro and Premier plans. The pricing table lists the Inbound Parse Webhook against Pro and Premier only. Rasket receives mail at your own domain on every plan, including the free one, and delivers each message to a signed webhook with its headers, text, HTML and attachments.
At 50,000 emails a month the two entry plans are within a rounding error: $19.95 for Essentials 50K, $20 for Rasket Pro. Past the quota the gap opens — $1.30 per extra thousand against $0.60 — and the plans are not carrying the same things, because inbound mail arrives on SendGrid's Pro tier and on every Rasket plan, and campaigns are a separate SendGrid subscription.
Yes. Point any app that sends over SMTP at smtp.rasket.com on port 465 or 587, with the username rasket and an API key as the password, and each message becomes an ordinary API send: the same verified domains, suppressions, quota and webhooks. Moving an SMTP integration is a change of host and credentials, not of code.
Add your domain in Rasket, publish the DKIM, SPF and DMARC records we generate, and keep sending through SendGrid until verification passes. Then swap the call: POST /emails takes the same pieces as their mail send, and the key moves to an Authorization header. An app on their SMTP service changes three settings instead: the host to smtp.rasket.com, the username from apikey to rasket, and the password to a Rasket key. Dynamic templates are rewritten once and published as a version; Event Webhook endpoints become Rasket webhooks with their own signing secret, and a failed delivery can be replayed from the dashboard while you finish the handler.
Both publish for agents. Twilio runs an MCP server across its documentation and API and serves Markdown at its docs URLs with an llms.txt index, and Rasket publishes an MCP server with seven toolsets, a setup skill, Markdown twins and llms.txt. The difference is what the tools reach: Twilio's server spans the whole Twilio API surface, where Rasket's is email and only email, which is a smaller thing for an agent to get wrong.
Create a key, verify a domain, and send your first email the same morning. The free plan does not expire.