Mailpit vs MailDev
Two local SMTP catchers: a single Go binary against an npm install that suits Node projects.
What matters for early-stage startups
At an early stage the deciding factors are what the free tier actually covers, what the first paid invoice looks like, and how much of a founding engineer's week the setup costs. Feature depth that only matters at a million sends a month is noise until it is not.
| Priority | Mailpit | MailDev |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free, MIT-licensed | Free |
| Best published rate per 1,000 | Tiers not published in comparable form | Tiers not published in comparable form |
| Starts at | Free | Free |
| DX score | 9/10 | 6/10 |
| Deliverability | Not applicable; capture-only. | Not applicable. |
| Operating since | Not published | Not published |
| Scheduling | No | No |
| SDKs | None | None |
| Webhooks | No | Yes |
For a pre-revenue or early-revenue team running a waitlist, a launch announcement, onboarding email, and the first transactional sends, the split is even: Mailpit takes developer experience, MailDev takes webhook coverage. Neither pulls ahead on this audience's priorities. On free tier, Mailpit offers Free, MIT-licensed against Free from MailDev. That ordering reflects this audience. Weigh the same table differently and the answer changes.
Side by side
| Feature | Mailpit | MailDev |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free, MIT-licensed | Free |
| Starts at | Free | Free |
| DX score | 9/10 | 6/10 |
| Deliverability | Not applicable; capture-only. | Not applicable. |
| SDKs | None | None |
| Webhooks | No | Yes |
| Tagline | Modern local SMTP catcher. | Node-based local SMTP catcher. |
| Pricing model | self-hosted | self-hosted |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| SMTP | Yes | Yes |
| Templates | none | none |
| React Email | No | No |
| Inbound | No | No |
| Multi-tenant | No | No |
| Idempotency | No | No |
| Dedicated IP | No | No |
| Best for | Replacing MailHog in any local or CI email-capture setup. | Node-centric local development and CI. |
Mailpit
- ›Single Go binary or small Docker image with no runtime dependencies
- ›Reuses MailHog's 1025 and 8025 ports, so most existing configs work unchanged
- ›Views for rendered HTML, plain text, raw source, headers, and attachments
- ›Built-in HTML-compatibility check, link check, and spam-score view
- ›REST API and real-time inbox updates for automated tests
- ›Local development and staging only, not a production sender
- ›No hosted or shared team-inbox mode
MailDev
- ›Installs with a single npm install or docker run
- ›SMTP on 1025 with a web UI and REST API on 1080
- ›Optional webhook on new mail for CI assertions
- ›Relay mode can forward caught mail to a real SMTP host
- ›Vue UI renders modern HTML email less faithfully than Mailpit
- ›Release cadence is slower than Mailpit