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Compare · Xem vs Plunk

Xem vs Plunk.
Both open source. Only one has a flat monthly price.

Plunk is an open-source email platform for developers: transactional email, campaigns and workflows, billed at $0.001 per email. Xem is also open source, but it is built for newsletters and marketing, with plan prices that fall per email as you grow, plus forms, a CRM and a shared inbox.

Start free Move from Plunk

A weekly newsletter, priced.

Four sends a month to the whole list, on monthly billing in US dollars. Plunk on Pay as you go; Xem on its cheapest plan for that volume. Plunk prices checked November 5, 2026.

SubscribersEmails a monthPlunkXem
10,00040,000$40$19 · Starter
50,000200,000$200$59 · Growth
100,000400,000$400$99 · Scale

Plunk’s pricing page and billing docs give $0.001 per email, so 40,000, 200,000 and 400,000 emails come to $40, $200 and $400 a month. There is no base fee. Plunk is also open source (AGPL-3.0), and self-hosting it is free apart from your own server and email provider.

How they charge

Plunk
Pay as you go: $0.001 per email with no monthly fee and no commitment. The free plan covers 1,000 emails a month with Plunk branding on marketing emails. Contacts are unlimited on every plan, emails with an attachment count double, and inbound emails count too.
Xem
Per email sent. Free for 3,000 a month, then from $9. Contacts are free to keep, campaigns, automations and forms are on every plan, and you can self-host the open-source version and pay only your email provider.

When Plunk fits better

  • You send mostly transactional email from your app and want a small API-first tool with an SMTP relay.
  • You send very little, or you want to pay only per email with no plan fee.
  • You want the leanest open-source option to self-host, with inbound email handling built in.

Running it from an AI agent

Plunk
Plunk publishes an official MCP server, @plunk/mcp, with tools for contacts, sending, events, campaigns, segments and workflows. It can run read-only, sends need your confirmation, and billing stays in the dashboard.
Xem
Xem runs a hosted MCP server at mcp.xem.email with 43 tools for campaigns, newsletters, contacts, CSV imports, forms, CRM notes, automations, sending domains and analytics, or you can run @xem.email/mcp locally. It works with Claude, Cursor, Codex and any MCP client. Campaigns start as drafts, imports preview first, and sending is a separate tool. Set up the MCP server.

Questions.

Is Xem cheaper than Plunk?

For a weekly newsletter to 10,000 subscribers (40,000 emails), Plunk is $40 a month and Xem is $19. At 50,000 subscribers it is $200 against $59, and at 100,000 it is $400 against $99. Plunk has no minimum, so for a few thousand emails a month it can be cheaper.

Can I move my Plunk list to Xem?

Partly. We found no CSV export in Plunk’s docs, but the List contacts API returns every contact. Xem imports any CSV with an email column and keeps unsubscribed people unsubscribed.

When is Plunk the better choice?

You send mostly transactional email from your app and want a small API-first tool with an SMTP relay. You send very little, or you want to pay only per email with no plan fee. You want the leanest open-source option to self-host, with inbound email handling built in.

Can an AI agent like Claude run Plunk or Xem?

Plunk publishes an official MCP server, @plunk/mcp, with tools for contacts, sending, events, campaigns, segments and workflows. It can run read-only, sends need your confirmation, and billing stays in the dashboard. Xem runs a hosted MCP server at mcp.xem.email with 43 tools for campaigns, newsletters, contacts, CSV imports, forms, CRM notes, automations, sending domains and analytics, or you can run @xem.email/mcp locally. It works with Claude, Cursor, Codex and any MCP client. Campaigns start as drafts, imports preview first, and sending is a separate tool.

Sources

Prices change. We check these pages by hand; tell us at team@xem.email if something is out of date.