Mailpit vs MailDev
Two local SMTP catchers: a single Go binary against an npm install that suits Node projects.
What matters for growth and lifecycle teams
Growth work lives or dies on targeting and measurement. What matters is whether behavioral triggers can be built without engineering time, whether the event stream supports attribution past the open, and whether deliverability holds when broadcast volume shares a reputation with product email.
| Priority | Mailpit | MailDev |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling | No | No |
| Event stream | No | No |
| Deliverability | Not applicable; capture-only. | Not applicable. |
| Operating since | Not published | Not published |
| Suppressions API | No | No |
| Best published rate per 1,000 | Tiers not published in comparable form | Tiers not published in comparable form |
| Multi-tenant | No | No |
| Free tier | Free, MIT-licensed | Free |
| Starts at | Free | Free |
For lifecycle and activation work running behavior-triggered journeys, broadcasts, and winback campaigns measured on revenue, the two are level on every priority that can be scored here, so the choice comes down to price and to which product your team would rather operate. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverability | Not applicable; capture-only. | Not applicable. |
| Multi-tenant | No | No |
| Free tier | Free, MIT-licensed | Free |
| Starts at | Free | Free |
| Tagline | Modern local SMTP catcher. | Node-based local SMTP catcher. |
| Pricing model | self-hosted | self-hosted |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| SMTP | Yes | Yes |
| SDKs | None | None |
| Templates | none | none |
| React Email | No | No |
| Webhooks | No | Yes |
| Inbound | No | No |
| Idempotency | No | No |
| Dedicated IP | No | No |
| DX score | 9/10 | 6/10 |
| 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