head to head
SendGrid vs Listmonk
Listmonk is the open source alternative to SendGrid — email delivery api. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — Listmonk is a viable free replacement for SendGrid. Listmonk is open source under AGPL-3.0, written in Go, with 23,471 GitHub stars, 2,604 forks and 111 open issues; it was last pushed 4 days ago. SendGrid costs from $19, while self-hosting Listmonk carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 1 other open source SendGrid alternative is tracked here, led by Mautic at 10,525 stars. Listmonk ranks #1 of 2 tracked open source SendGrid alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: Mautic (10,525 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Listmonk and 3 reasons to stay on SendGrid.
choose Listmonk if
- Your SendGrid bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with SendGrid if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a SendGrid integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| Listmonk (open source) | SendGrid | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $19.95-$89.95/month |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — knadh/listmonk | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 23K · ⑂ 2.6K | — |
| Built with | Go | — |
Why people look for a SendGrid alternative
About Listmonk
Listmonk is a standalone, self hosted newsletter and mailing list manager in the open source business software and marketing customer engagement ecosystem. It packages campaign management, subscriber management, and email delivery controls into a single binary application with a modern dashboard, and it uses PostgreSQL as its data store.
read the full Listmonk overview →
Other open source alternatives to SendGrid
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is Listmonk a good replacement for SendGrid?
Listmonk is an open source alternative to SendGrid (Email delivery API). It is written in Go and licensed under AGPL-3.0, with 23,471 GitHub stars.
Is Listmonk free compared to SendGrid?
Yes. Listmonk is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. SendGrid is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from SendGrid to Listmonk?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Listmonk's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.