listmonk vs Mailgun
Both are alternatives to SendGrid. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Mailgun vs listmonk — same comparison, one verdict.
listmonk
Self-hosted newsletters — a single binary handling millions.
listmonk is a self-hosted newsletter and mailing-list manager: subscriber management, segmentation, templates, analytics and bounce processing, as one Go binary with Postgres behind it. AGPL-3.0, around 23k stars, and documented as handling millions of subscribers on modest hardware. It is not a transactional sender — it hands off to SES or your own SMTP — which makes it a complement rather than a competitor. For anyone paying Mailchimp per subscriber for a newsletter, this removes that bill entirely.
Mailgun
The established competitor — strong on validation and routing.
Mailgun is SendGrid's long-standing rival with a comparable feature set and reputation, plus two things it does distinctly well: email address validation before you send, and inbound routing that parses received mail into your application. Proprietary and hosted, priced per volume with a small free allowance. Listed for the same reason as Render on the Heroku page — many teams comparing this category are choosing between managed vendors, and the honest comparison includes the obvious alternative rather than assuming everyone will self-host.
Side by side
| listmonk | Mailgun | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 93 | 31 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Local-first | Yes | No |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary (hosted service) |
| Pricing | Free and open source. You pay only for the underlying sending. | Volume-based with a small free allowance; paid tiers from about $15/month. Checked 2026-08-05. |
listmonk edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
listmonk
Strengths
- +Removes per-subscriber pricing entirely
- +One Go binary plus Postgres — genuinely simple to run
- +Handles very large lists on modest hardware
- +Subscriber data stays on your infrastructure
Trade-offs
- −Not a transactional sender — pairs with SES or your own SMTP
- −AGPL-3.0 needs reading before embedding it in a product
- −No shared IP reputation; deliverability is yours
- −Fewer templates than the commercial platforms
Mailgun
Strengths
- +Strong deliverability record over many years
- +Address validation catches bad addresses before you send
- +Genuinely good inbound routing and parsing
- +Detailed logs and analytics
Trade-offs
- −Proprietary and hosted
- −More expensive than SES for straightforward transactional mail
- −Pricing tiers are harder to read than they should be
- −Support quality varies by plan
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-05. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.