SendGrid vs Sparkpost
Compare SendGrid and Sparkpost based on observed API performance, features, and pricing
Live performance comparison
Real-world performance data from messages sent through Knock
| Provider | Message volume | Growth | Status page updates (30d) | Status page updates (90d) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 500M+ | 2nd of 10 → | 13 | 23 |
 | <1M | 10th of 10 ↑ | 8 | 11 |
From December 12th to March 12th, Knock routed 500M+ messages through SendGrid and <1M through Sparkpost. SendGrid reported 23 status page updates over the last 90 days, while Sparkpost reported 11.
Response time
Response time measures how long each provider takes to accept an API request from Knock, including connection overhead and any automatic retries. Lower values mean faster message hand-off.
The chart above shows each provider's daily median response time (p50) from December 12th to March 12th. The top-line number is an average of these daily values: SendGrid averaged 22ms compared to 288ms for Sparkpost. SendGrid's highest daily p50 was 28ms; Sparkpost's was 336ms. SendGrid is 266ms faster at the median, which can add up at high volumes.
The 90th percentile (p90) captures the slowest 10% of requests, revealing how each provider handles moderate stress. Averaged across all days, SendGrid has a p90 of 77ms compared to 347ms for Sparkpost. The highest daily p90 was 98ms for SendGrid and 402ms for Sparkpost. SendGrid handles these slower requests 270ms faster, suggesting more consistent performance across the board.
The 99th percentile (p99) represents the long tail — the slowest 1% of requests. Averaged across all days, SendGrid reached 159ms at p99 while Sparkpost reached 544ms. The highest daily p99 was 1256ms for SendGrid and 31566ms for Sparkpost, indicating the worst-case response time during spikes or provider-side congestion. SendGrid shows a tighter tail, which may matter for time-sensitive notifications like one-time passwords or real-time alerts where even rare delays can impact user experience.
Error rate
Error rate tracks the ratio of 5xx responses and timeouts to total requests. Knock automatically retries failed requests, so transient provider errors rarely affect end-user delivery.
| Provider | Avg. daily error rate | Highest daily rate | Peak error date | Zero-error days | Days above 0.01% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00% | 0.02% | Jan 21 | 83 | 3 |
| 0.22% | 3.41% | Feb 24 | 90 | 1 |
Averaged across the date range, SendGrid shows a 0.00% daily error rate compared to 0.22% for Sparkpost. The highest single-day error rate was 0.02% for SendGrid and 3.41% for Sparkpost. SendGrid demonstrates a lower error rate, indicating slightly more consistent availability during this period. Knock automatically retries failed requests to both providers, minimizing the impact of transient errors on end-user delivery.
About these metrics: Data represents messages sent through Knock during the specified period. Response time measures time from Knock to provider acceptance. Error rate includes only provider 5xx responses and timeouts.
Recent SendGrid incidents
Status page incidents from the last 30 days for SendGrid
Started Mar 11, 2026 — Resolved Mar 11, 2026
Mar 10, 18:00 PDT Completed - The scheduled maintenance has been completed.Mar 10, 17:30 PDT In progress - Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress. We will provide updates as necessary.Mar 9, 07:16 PDT Scheduled - As part of correcting an inaccurate timestamp in the response from our Spamreport API request, we will be performing database maintenance on March 10th, from 5:30 to 6:00pm PT. During this time, customers will be unable to access the public API and v2 equivalent APIs and all Sp
Started Mar 8, 2026 — Resolved Mar 8, 2026
Mar 7, 20:00 PST Completed - The scheduled maintenance has been completed.Mar 7, 16:00 PST In progress - Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress. We will provide updates as necessary.Feb 27, 14:47 PST Scheduled - In order to increase the stability and scalability of our systems, we are performing scheduled maintenance on our infrastructure on Saturday, March 7th, from 4PM-8PM PDT. During this time, customers may not be able to create new accounts, users, subusers, teammates, or API keys
Started Mar 7, 2026 — Resolved Mar 7, 2026
Mar 6, 18:13 PST Completed - The scheduled maintenance has been completed.Feb 23, 10:23 PST Update - Scheduled maintenance is still in progress. We will provide updates as necessary.Feb 23, 10:02 PST Update - From Monday February 23rd - Friday March 6th, our legacy webhook infrastructure will be disabled for 12 hours daily, then re-enabled, affecting webhook deliveries.Feb 18, 12:04 PST Update - Scheduled maintenance is still in progress. We will provide updates as necessary.Feb 17, 14:36 PST U
Started Mar 5, 2026 — Resolved Mar 5, 2026
Mar 5, 11:14 PST Resolved - Between 8:53 AM and 9:37 AM PST, customers may have experienced delays in email event processing, including click and open data. Our Engineers identified a bottleneck, and have resolved the issue. While email delivery continued with low execution times, the reporting of these events to the Stats API and your dashboard was delayed. However, all downstream queues, including Engagement Stats, have fully caught up as of 9:45 AM PST and are resolved at the time.
Started Mar 4, 2026 — Resolved Mar 4, 2026
Mar 4, 08:44 PST Resolved - Our engineers have investigated and resolved an issue that occurred causing delays in timezone updates. On 03/03 ~2:09PM customers would have seen errors in the console when trying to update their timezone setting or while fetching timezones via /v3/timezones. A fix was deployed a fix on 03/04 ~7:48AM. This issuse has now been resolved
Started Mar 4, 2026 — Resolved Mar 4, 2026
Mar 4, 07:30 PST Resolved - Our engineers have investigated and resolved the issues that began on 3/4/2026 from 8am PST to 3/9/2026 at 5pm PST that impacted the reporting for a subset of group unsubscribe and group resubscribe Event Webhooks. Users may have experienced issues with group unsubscribes and group resubscribes that were not processed, although the api calls for those events were processed. The issue has been resolved and all impacted services are operating normally.
Started Mar 3, 2026 — Resolved Mar 3, 2026
Mar 2, 17:17 PST Resolved - Between 4:00 PM and 5:04 PM PST, customers may have experienced delays when viewing Global Stats. Our Engineers identified and resolved the issue
Started Mar 3, 2026 — Resolved Mar 3, 2026
Mar 2, 17:05 PST Resolved - Between 4:00pm to 4:30pm PT, some mail delivery were delayed. There was no data loss or API unavailability. Our Engineers identified and resolved the issue.
Started Mar 2, 2026 — Resolved Mar 2, 2026
Mar 2, 11:06 PST Resolved - Our engineers have confirmed this issue is now resolved. Customers in Argentina should now be able to authenticate and add credit cards successfully. If you are located in Argentina and are still experiencing issues adding or authenticating a credit card, please reach out to Support for additional assistance.Feb 27, 15:02 PST Update - Our engineering team is continuing to monitor system performance. For customers located in Argentina impacted by this issue, please r
Started Mar 1, 2026 — Resolved Mar 1, 2026
Feb 28, 18:00 PST Completed - The scheduled maintenance has been completed.Feb 28, 14:00 PST In progress - Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress. We will provide updates as necessary.Feb 19, 07:47 PST Update - In order to increase the stability and scalability of our systems, we are performing scheduled maintenance on our infrastructure on February 28, from 2PM to 6PM PT. During this time, customers may experience failures when trying to create, update or delete lists, custom fields, se
Started Feb 26, 2026 — Resolved Feb 26, 2026
Feb 26, 11:23 PST Resolved - Our engineers have investigated and resolved an issue that caused high latency when sending email through SendGrid. From 8:24 AM PST to 9:15 AM PST on Thursday, February 26, 2026, customers may have experienced delays sending email from both the SendGrid dashboard (web app) and email sent via SMTP or API. The issue has been resolved, and all SendGrid email sending is operating normally across the dashboard, SMTP, and API.
Started Feb 12, 2026 — Resolved Feb 12, 2026
Feb 12, 10:36 PST Resolved - Our engineers have monitored the fix and confirmed the issue with Advanced Statistics has been resolved. All services are now operating normally at this time.Feb 12, 06:42 PST Update - Our engineering team has identified the root cause of the issue and is continuing to work on implementing a fix. We will provide the next update in four hours or as soon as additional information becomes available.Feb 12, 03:02 PST Update - Our engineering team has identified the root
Started Feb 11, 2026 — Resolved Feb 11, 2026
Feb 11, 12:33 PST Resolved - Our engineers have monitored the fix and confirmed the issue with Ticket Creation within the SendGrid Help Center has been resolved. All services are now operating normally at this time.Feb 11, 11:35 PST Update - We are continuing to monitor for any issues. We will provide another update in an hour or as soon as more information becomes available.Feb 11, 10:43 PST Update - We are continuing to monitor for any issues. We will provide another update in an hour or as so
Recent Sparkpost incidents
Status page incidents from the last 30 days for Sparkpost
Ongoing since Mar 16, 2026
THIS IS A SCHEDULED EVENT Mar 16, 15:00 - 18:00 EDTMar 12, 11:24 EDT Scheduled - On March 16th between 19:00 UTC, we will be performing maintenance on our EU routers. During this planned maintenance, you may experience slightly longer initial delivery times, up to 15 minutes, between 19:00 and 22:00 UTC each day. During the full duration of this maintenance all emails will continued to be accepted. This maintenance only impacts our EU sending infrastructure. We appreciate your understanding
Started Mar 12, 2026 — Resolved Mar 12, 2026
Mar 12, 07:25 EDT Resolved - This incident has been resolved.Mar 12, 06:03 EDT Monitoring - System functionality has been fully restored and all emails are being transmitted correctly without added latencies; we are actively monitoring.Mar 12, 04:00 EDT Investigating - Email delivery in US is impacted, experiencing elevated delays.Mar 12, 03:48 EDT Monitoring - System is fully recovered and under monitoring.Mar 12, 02:51 EDT Investigating - We are currently investigating issues with delivery of
Started Mar 5, 2026 — Resolved Mar 5, 2026
Mar 4, 20:24 EST Resolved - This incident has been resolved.Mar 4, 20:00 EST Monitoring - We are observing recovery in email delivery performance and are actively monitoring.Mar 4, 19:51 EST Investigating - We are investigating an increase in delivery latency for some outbound messages.
Started Feb 27, 2026 — Resolved Feb 27, 2026
Feb 27, 12:38 EST Resolved - Microsoft has confirmed that they made additional changes the night of Thursday, Feb 26th that should have remediated most IP rate limiting and rejection issues. If you are still seeing impacts, please reach out via your normal support channels and our team can investigate and escalate with Microsoft.Feb 26, 12:55 EST Monitoring - We are currently seeing elevated temporary rejection rates for email delivered to Outlook.com, Hotmail, and other Microsoft-hosted addres
Started Feb 24, 2026 — Resolved Feb 24, 2026
Feb 24, 14:41 EST Resolved - This incident has been resolved.Feb 24, 14:38 EST Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.Feb 24, 14:34 EST Identified - The team has identified the root cause. There is a core networking issue that has impacted sending across the clusters.Feb 24, 14:25 EST Update - We are continuing to investigate this issue. We still see 5xx errors on mail injections and degradation.Feb 24, 14:07 EST Update - We are continuing to investigate this
Started Feb 24, 2026 — Resolved Feb 24, 2026
Feb 24, 13:17 EST Resolved - This incident has been resolved.Feb 24, 12:34 EST Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.Feb 24, 12:19 EST Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.Feb 24, 10:01 EST Investigating - We are currently investigating this issue. No messages are lost.
Started Feb 20, 2026 — Resolved Feb 20, 2026
Feb 20, 11:33 EST Resolved - This incident has been resolved.Feb 20, 11:15 EST Update - We are continuing to monitor for any further issues.Feb 20, 11:14 EST Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.Feb 20, 11:06 EST Investigating - We are currently investigating this issue.
Started Feb 18, 2026 — Resolved Feb 18, 2026
Feb 18, 12:06 EST Resolved - This incident has been resolved.Feb 18, 11:15 EST Update - We have seen recovery. We will continue monitoring for the next 60 minutes to ensure message queues stay stable.Feb 18, 10:59 EST Monitoring - We continue to see strong recovery of the mail queues and message delivery. We expect all remaining delayed messages to be delivered in the next 5 minutes.Feb 18, 10:15 EST Update - We have begun to see improvements to outbound mail delivery delays. We anticipate fu
Pros and cons
SendGrid
Sparkpost
Pros
- Comprehensive documentation with SDKs for most major languages
- Rich analytics tools with programmatic API access to engagement data
- Strong focus on deliverability with AI-powered intelligent delivery
- Trusted by Uber, Booking.com, and Yelp for high-volume sending
Pros
- Delivers nearly 40% of all commercial email worldwide
- Subaccount support for isolated sending streams under one billing account
- On-premise mail sending solution available for very high volume workloads
- Great analytics tools with predictive health scores for email deliverability
Cons
- Extended email activity history requires a paid add-on
- Pricing can become complex at higher volumes
- Support response times vary by plan tier
Cons
- Documentation can be hard to navigate with less beginner-friendly getting started content
- Higher price point than basic providers
- Now part of Bird (formerly MessageBird), which may affect product direction
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between SendGrid and Sparkpost?
SendGrid is a cloud-based email delivery platform owned by Twilio, known for high-volume transactional and marketing email. SparkPost is a data-driven email delivery platform with advanced analytics and predictive tools for high-volume senders. SendGrid is best suited for high-volume transactional + marketing, while Sparkpost is geared toward data-driven, high-volume.
Which is cheaper, SendGrid or Sparkpost?
Free tier includes up to 100 emails per day for 60 days. Paid plans start at $19.95/month for 50,000 emails on the Essentials plan, with an Essentials 100K tier at $34.95/month. Pro plans with dedicated IPs start at $249/month for 300,000 emails. Free tier includes 500 emails per month with community support. Paid plans start at $20/month for 50,000 emails with premium deliverability features. The best value depends on your sending volume. Use the pricing calculator above to compare costs at your expected volume.
Which is faster, SendGrid or Sparkpost?
Based on real-world data from Knock, SendGrid has a median API response time (p50) of 22ms compared to 288ms for Sparkpost.
Which is more reliable, SendGrid or Sparkpost?
From December 12th to March 12th, SendGrid showed an error rate of 0.00% while Sparkpost showed 0.22%. Both rates are within acceptable thresholds for production email delivery, and Knock automatically retries failed requests to minimize the impact of transient errors.
Which is more popular, SendGrid or Sparkpost?
On the Knock platform, SendGrid handled 500M+ messages from December 12th to March 12th compared to <1M for Sparkpost. SendGrid volume has remained stable, while Sparkpost is trending upward.
Can I use both SendGrid and Sparkpost together?
Yes. Knock enables you to integrate multiple email providers into a single notification workflow. You can use SendGrid and Sparkpost side by side, route traffic between them, or migrate from one to the other without changing your application code.
What are the main pros and cons of SendGrid vs Sparkpost?
SendGrid strengths include comprehensive documentation with sdks for most major languages and rich analytics tools with programmatic api access to engagement data. Sparkpost strengths include delivers nearly 40% of all commercial email worldwide and subaccount support for isolated sending streams under one billing account. On the other hand, SendGrid drawbacks include extended email activity history requires a paid add-on, while Sparkpost drawbacks include documentation can be hard to navigate with less beginner-friendly getting started content.
Use either provider with Knock
Knock enables you to integrate SendGrid, Sparkpost, or any combination of email providers into a single notification workflow. Manage templates, orchestrate cross-channel delivery, and switch providers without changing your code.