Amazon SES Is No Longer Just $0.10 per 1,000 Emails
Published at Oct 11, 2026
For years, the answer to “what is the cheapest way to send transactional email” has been Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 emails. That number is still true, but it is no longer what a new account pays by default.
On July 21, 2026, AWS announced pricing plans for SES: Essentials, Pro and Enterprise. I only caught it during my October price review, and the email calculator now shows both the à la carte price and the Essentials plan.
The new plans
| À la carte | Essentials | Pro | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per 1,000 emails (up to 10M a month) | $0.10 | $0.16 | $0.22 | $0.23 |
| Per 1,000 emails (10M to 100M) | not checked | $0.14 | $0.17 | $0.18 |
| Fixed fee, per account and region | none | none | $105 | $500 |
| Virtual Deliverability Manager | $0.07 per 1,000 extra | included | included | included |
| Managed dedicated IPs | add-on | add-on | 1 domain, 1 IP | 5 domains, 12 IPs |
| Email validation | $0.01 each | add-on | 2,500 per month | 5,000 per month |
| Global endpoints | add-on | add-on | add-on | included |
AWS’s own framing is that each plan builds on the one before it and gives you more capability at a discount compared to buying the pieces separately. That is true if you actually want those pieces. If you only want to send email, it is a price increase.
What it costs
For sending alone:
| Emails per month | À la carte | Essentials |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $1.00 | $1.60 |
| 100,000 | $10 | $16 |
| 1,000,000 | $100 | $160 |
Essentials is 60% more per email than à la carte. The one case where Essentials wins is if you would otherwise pay for Virtual Deliverability Manager. That add-on is $0.07 per 1,000 à la carte, so à la carte plus deliverability is $0.17 against $0.16 for Essentials.
Pro and Enterprise are for teams that need dedicated IPs, validation and multi-region sending. The fixed fee is charged per account and per region, so sending from two regions on Pro is $210 a month before a single email goes out.
Who is affected
From AWS’s pricing page, new SES accounts start on Essentials, and so do accounts (and account and region combinations) that have had no metered SES activity since June 1, 2025. An AWS Builder Center article on the launch adds that accounts that have been sending since then stay on à la carte unless they choose to switch.
You can change plans at any time in the SES console. If you were put on Essentials without choosing it, your first switch to à la carte takes effect immediately. Other downgrades wait for the next billing cycle. Plans are not available in the Middle East (UAE) and Middle East (Bahrain) regions.
I could not find anything that says existing sending accounts will be moved later, but AWS’s announcement does not address it either way, so check your pricing plan in the console.
The free tier is gone too
The same AWS Builder Center article says the SES-specific allowance of 3,000 free messages per month for the first 12 months is no longer offered to new customers, and that people who already have it keep it until their 12 months run out. New AWS accounts get the general AWS Free Tier instead, which is up to $200 in credits and a free plan that lasts 6 months, with credits that must be used within 12 months.
AWS’s SES FAQ still describes the old 3,000 message allowance as of this writing, so it is worth checking what your own account shows. Either way, it was a time-limited allowance, not a permanent free plan, which puts SES in the same bucket as the other providers in free plans that turned into trials.
What I would do
- Check which plan your account is on, especially if you created it or an extra region recently. Essentials is the default, and it is easy to miss that you did not choose it.
- Switch to à la carte if you only send email. You save 37.5% on the sending price and you can always change back.
- Keep Essentials if you want the deliverability dashboard. At $0.16 it costs less than à la carte plus that add-on.
- Skip Pro and Enterprise unless you need what they include. The fixed fee per region adds up quickly.
Compare SES against the others in the email calculator. Even on Essentials, SES is still the cheapest of the providers we track from 10,000 emails per month and up, apart from SES à la carte itself. Below that, the free plans from Resend, Mailgun and Brevo cost nothing.