Hunter vs Mailgun
Side-by-side plans, pricing, and feature gates for Hunter and Mailgun, verified . Hunter is primarily lead generation; Mailgun is primarily transactional email.
Plans side by side
Every published plan from each vendor, with the headline monthly anchor price. Some prices scale with subscriber count or seats; full detail lives on each tool's page.
Hunter
- Free
50 search credits per month for testing
Free - Starter
2,000 credits/mo, auto-verification, AI Writing Assistant
$34/mo - Growth
10,000 credits/mo, 10 email accounts, expanded AI
$104/mo - Scale
25,000 credits/mo, 20 email accounts, unlimited Signals
$209/mo - Enterprise
Custom credits and dedicated account manager
Custom
Mailgun
- Free
Hobby tier capped at 100 emails per day
Free - Basic
Entry paid tier with 10,000 emails/month included
$15/mo - Foundation
50,000 emails/month with template builder and full inbound routing
$35/mo - Scale
100,000 emails/month with SAML SSO, dedicated IP, and live support
$90/mo - Enterprise
Custom contracting for high-volume senders
Custom
Limits at the entry paid tier
Compares Starter (Hunter) against Basic (Mailgun). Both are the lowest-priced non-free, non-custom plan on each side.
| Limit | Hunter | Mailgun |
|---|---|---|
| Emails / month | · | 10,000 |
| Team seats | Unlimited | · |
When Hunter wins
- Founders doing personalized B2B outreach to small lead lists
- Agencies running outreach campaigns for SMB clients
- Sales teams wanting an email-finder and verifier in a single tool
Where Hunter is the wrong fit
- Enterprise sales orgs that need ZoomInfo-grade data depth
- Teams that don't run cold outreach (use a CRM instead)
- Buyers who want unlimited credits at any price (use ZoomInfo or Apollo Unlimited)
When Mailgun wins
- Developers integrating receipts, notifications, and password-reset emails
- Teams already on a marketing ESP that need a separate transactional channel
- High-volume B2B applications with strict deliverability requirements
Where Mailgun is the wrong fit
- Marketing teams seeking campaign tooling (use Mailchimp or Kit)
- Creators sending newsletters (use Kit or beehiiv)
- Free-tier hobbyists with low total volume but spiky daily-cap-bumping use cases
Common questions
- Is Hunter cheaper than Mailgun?
- Both Hunter and Mailgun have free or custom entry pricing, so a direct entry-tier price comparison is not meaningful.
- Does Hunter or Mailgun have a free plan?
- Both have free plans. Hunter: 50 search credits per month for testing. Mailgun: Hobby tier capped at 100 emails per day.
- Are Hunter and Mailgun in the same category?
- No. Hunter is primarily a lead generation tool; Mailgun is primarily a transactional email tool. They overlap on use case but sit in different primary categories, so the comparison is between adjacent tools rather than direct competitors.
- Which has more plans, Hunter or Mailgun?
- Both Hunter and Mailgun ship 5 plans. Tier counts match; the differentiation is in features and pricing structure rather than tier ladder depth.
- Where can I see alternatives to Hunter or Mailgun?
- Each tool has a dedicated alternatives page on TierGauge with ranked options and verified pricing: /alternatives/hunter for Hunter and /alternatives/mailgun for Mailgun. Alternatives are derived from each tool's editor-flagged competitors plus same-category tools we track.
Hunter: https://hunter.io/pricing · Mailgun: https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/
Last verified . Pricing changes between refreshes; confirm at the vendor before purchasing.