Superhuman costs about $25 per seat, lives inside Grammarly now, and asks you to move your whole inbox into its client. These five Superhuman alternatives run from free to full inbox agent, and this page is arranged by what each one costs and what you get back for it.
Every Superhuman alternative on this page is cheaper, and most of them do something Superhuman does not. Spark Mail and Shortwave give you a free client. SaneBox filters for about $7. Fyxer drafts and takes meeting notes for around $22.50 on an annual plan. Pidgy is the one to pick if speed was never really your problem, because it ranks Outlook and Gmail in one list, drafts in your voice and chases the follow-ups you forgot, with a 7-day free trial and EU hosting.
The fastest email client on the market, and a set of conditions people eventually tire of.
Twenty-five dollars per user per month is the highest price in this category, and the case for paying it rests on your hours being worth more than the subscription. That holds for some people. The four things that push the rest to look around are about everything attached to the speed.
One seat is a coffee habit. Ten seats is a hire. Teams notice the difference when the renewal lands.
Superhuman is a client, so your entire workflow moves into it and everyone has to learn the shortcuts before the speed shows up. Rollouts stall on that step.
Since the acquisition, your correspondence runs inside a writing-tools company. For sensitive mail, some professionals would rather it did not.
You reach an empty inbox sooner. Nothing turns those emails into tasks, groups them by project or notices when a thread you replied to goes silent.
Ordered by published price. Pidgy has no public list price yet, so it sits last by arithmetic, not by verdict.
Spark is Readdle's client for Gmail, Outlook, iCloud and IMAP, with a Smart Inbox, AI Compose and a My Writing Style setting that shapes drafts to sound like you. The free tier is generous enough that plenty of people stay on it.
Suits anyone who wants a good-looking client across every account for very little money. Two caveats. Your credentials are stored on Readdle's servers, and reviewers describe the AI as lighter than the dedicated tools.
SaneBox sits in front of any IMAP mailbox, including Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, learns which senders matter, and moves the rest into smart folders. It also keeps a list of messages you sent that never got a reply.
Suits people whose problem is noise rather than workload. It does not draft, it does not rank one list for you, and the unanswered-mail list is something you check, not something that chases on your behalf.
Built by engineers from the Google Inbox team, Shortwave treats AI search, summaries, drafting and categorisation as the default state of the inbox rather than features bolted on. Of the five, it is the closest in spirit to Superhuman.
Suits Gmail-only users who want a modern client without the Superhuman bill. It replaces your client, and there is no Outlook or IMAP support at all.
Fyxer runs server-side on top of Gmail or Outlook, sorts mail into fixed categories, drafts replies in your voice and writes up meetings from your calendar. You keep your existing client.
Suits people who want drafts plus a notetaker in one subscription. The price assumes annual billing, heavy months can trigger volume overage charges, and the category logic cannot be tuned.
Pidgy layers onto Outlook and Gmail and treats them as one inbox. It ranks the handful of messages that need you, drafts replies in your voice with four named tones, and follows up on threads that stalled without you asking. Email, documents and tasks are grouped into projects, an Inbox Health score tracks how on top of things you are, and a built-in assistant answers questions about your mail (voice is on the way).
Suits anyone who leaves Superhuman because the inbox got faster but the work did not get done. It is EU-hosted, never trains on your mail and never sends without your click. There is no meeting notetaker.
The two columns most people scan first, plus the one they should.
| Tool | Price | Billing | Accounts | After triage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spark Mail | From $5.99 | Free tier, Premium monthly | Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, IMAP | Nothing further |
| SaneBox | About $7 per inbox | Per inbox, monthly | Any IMAP | Lists unanswered sent mail |
| Shortwave | From $14 | Free tier, paid plans | Gmail only | Nothing further |
| Fyxer | About $22.50 | Per user, annual | Gmail, Outlook | Meeting notes |
| Superhuman | From $25 | Per user, monthly | Gmail, Outlook | Nothing further |
| Pidgy | 7-day free trial | Open to everyone | Outlook and Gmail as one | Projects, chasing, Inbox Health |
Switching is less dramatic than it sounds, because your mail never lived in Superhuman in the first place.
Superhuman is a window onto a Gmail or Outlook account you still own. Cancel it and every message stays where it was. What you lose is the interface, the shortcuts and the sub-100 millisecond feel. What you gain depends on the alternative, and the order of operations is short.
Three honest cases where the $25 is the right call.
You answer hundreds of messages a day and the difference between a 90 millisecond action and a 900 millisecond one adds up to real minutes. You work alone, so per-seat pricing is a rounding error and rollout friction does not exist. Or you have already learned the shortcuts and the thought of unlearning them is worse than the invoice. In those cases Superhuman is a fine tool and nothing on this page will feel as quick. The alternatives earn their place when the bottleneck is what happens after the inbox is empty.
Faster is nice. Finished is better. Pidgy chases what Superhuman leaves behind.
Try Pidgy for freeRelated pages for anyone still weighing the switch.
Pidgy ranks Outlook and Gmail in one list, drafts in your voice, and chases the replies you are still waiting on. 7-day free trial, EU-hosted.