Shortwave Email Pricing in 2026: Every Plan, AI Limit and What You Pay

Shortwave has a free plan. Its paid plans cost $18, $30, $45 or $120 per seat per month (Pro, Business, Premier and Max), and they're billed monthly. There's no annual discount. Every paid plan comes with a 14-day free trial. Before you compare prices, know that Shortwave only works with Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.

Disclosure: Dove is made by the team behind Canary Mail, and both appear below as alternatives. Every Shortwave price, limit and policy here comes from Shortwave's own pricing page and help docs.

Shortwave pricing at a glance

Prices are in US dollars, per seat per month, from Shortwave's pricing page, checked on October 9, 2026. The page splits the plans across two tabs, Individual (Free, Pro) and Business (Business, Premier, Max), and opens on Business.

The request ranges come from the FAQ on the same page and are counted at the Standard level. Shortwave says Advanced uses 1.5 times as much quota and Expert three times as much. So if you run Max on Expert all day, you get roughly 300 to 600 requests, not 900 to 1,800. That's our arithmetic from Shortwave's numbers.

What each Shortwave plan includes

Shortwave's plan cards only list headlines. What follows is from the full "Plans & features" table further down the pricing page.

Free: $0

The free plan is more than a trial. You get the AI assistant at the Basic level, instant AI replies and summaries, AI memory and saved prompts, AI-powered snooze, calendar integration, todos, block and unsubscribe, and auto-apply labels. Team features are on Free too: thread sharing, team comments, assignees, shared labels and channels. So are tracker blocking and privacy mode.

The limits that matter:

• Only 90 days of history. Shortwave imports your last 90 days of mail when you sign up, and both standard and AI search stop there. To import your full Gmail history, you have to upgrade.

• Basic AI with a small quota, and at most 15 threads per AI search.

• Splits, Bundles and delivery schedules are "Basic only".

• A "Sent with Shortwave" signature on the mail you send.

Shortwave's homepage says you don't need a credit card to get started on Free.

Pro: $18 per month

Pro is the plan for one person. It moves you to the Standard model (Claude Sonnet 4.6), roughly 75 to 150 AI requests a day, unlimited standard search, three years of AI search and 50 threads per AI search. It adds personalized AI writing (the AI learns your style from mail you've sent), predictive autocomplete, AI inbox organization, AI web browsing, custom themes, automatic follow-up reminders and auto-BCC to a CRM. It also removes the "Sent with Shortwave" line.

Pro leaves out some things you might expect for $18. The Pro column of Shortwave's table has no tick for AI integrations, attachment analysis, AI filters, read statuses, recent opens, link tracking or snippets. Those start at Business.

Business: $30 per seat per month

Business keeps the Standard model and roughly doubles the quota (150 to 300 requests a day). It adds AI integrations with other apps (built-in or through MCP), attachment analysis, three AI filters (rules written as a prompt that label, archive or star new mail), read statuses, recent opens, link tracking, snippets and team read statuses. AI search history goes to five years.

Premier: $45 per seat per month

Premier is the plan Shortwave marks "Most popular". It moves you to the Advanced model (Sonnet 4.6 with adaptive thinking) and doubles Business's usage. It also brings unlimited AI search history, 100 threads per AI search, ten AI filters and twice the context tokens, which helps the AI with long threads and big searches.

Max: $120 per seat per month

Max uses the Expert model (Claude Opus 4.6 with adaptive thinking), with six times Business's usage, 150 threads per AI search, 50 AI filters and three times the context tokens. At four times the price of Business, it's for people who use the AI assistant as their main way through email.

What no plan includes: automatic drafts

Shortwave drafts replies when you ask. Drafting them before you open an email isn't on any plan. The pricing page sends you to Tasklet, which it calls a "sister product", to "automatically draft replies, add team comments, and connect to 3,000+ apps." Tasklet is sold separately, and we haven't checked its pricing.

Shortwave only works with Gmail

This decides whether the price matters at all. You need a Gmail or Google Workspace account to sign in, and Shortwave's provider guide lists what else you can do:

Forwarding works, but your mail ends up in a Gmail account and Shortwave reads it from there. If your work email is on Microsoft 365, Shortwave isn't an option at any price, and the guide says there's no timeline for Microsoft support.

Monthly billing only

Shortwave doesn't sell annual plans. The pricing page FAQ says, "We offer monthly billing (prices are shown above in USD)," and its billing guide says, "New subscriptions are billed monthly."

That's why some reviews still quote figures like "$24 billed annually" or a $8.50 Personal plan. Shortwave's changelog announced annual discounts and a cheaper Personal plan in December 2023. Neither is on the pricing page today.

What a year costs, per person, at today's prices:

There's no one-time purchase option either. Payments go through Stripe.

What a team pays

Billing is per seat, and per person, not per account. Three rules from the billing guide shape a team's bill:

• One seat covers all of your own accounts. "Our paid plans are designed to provide our paid feature set to all of your accounts for one flat rate." Sign your other Gmail accounts in on the same device. Shortwave says not to add your own extra accounts to a team: "Teams are only for paying for other people."

• Everyone on a team is on the same plan. You can't put the founder on Max and everyone else on Business.

• Seats are prorated. Adding someone mid-cycle charges for the time left in the cycle; removing a seat gives a credit on the next bill.

At list price:

There's no published team discount and no annual prepay to bring this down. And because Shortwave runs on top of Gmail, a company is still paying for Google Workspace underneath.

Free trial, refunds and cancelling

• Trial: every paid plan has a 14-day free trial. Shortwave suggests trialing "the highest plan you're interested in" and moving down before it ends; you can switch plans during the trial. Whether the trial asks for a card isn't stated on the pricing page or in the billing guide, and we didn't start one to find out.

• Refunds: "we will provide a refund upon request within 14 days of your payment." Downgrade to Free first, then contact support.

• Cancelling: go to Settings, then Members & Billing, pick the team you pay for, click Manage plan and choose Cancel plan (Shortwave's guide). You keep the paid features until the billing period ends. Your mail stays in Gmail, because Shortwave works on top of it.

Is Shortwave safe?

Here's what Shortwave's security page says:

• All data is stored in Google Cloud, encrypted at rest (AES256) and in transit (TLS 1.2 or later).

• Shortwave is CASA Tier 2 compliant and audited every year, and its Gmail access is approved by Google.

• The only sub-processors besides Google Cloud are OpenAI, Anthropic and Pinecone. "The vast majority of our AI workloads use open source models that run on hardware we control."

• "Your data will never be used to train third-party LLMs." The page doesn't say whether Shortwave trains models of its own.

• Employees can't access customer data without the customer's permission, and every access is logged.

• For SOC 2 Type II or GDPR paperwork, you're told to email support.

Shortwave doesn't claim end-to-end encryption.

Is Shortwave worth the price?

For a Gmail user, often yes.

Where Shortwave beats the alternatives below:

• The free plan is real. You get AI replies, summaries and team features with no time limit. Superhuman has no free plan at all.

• Pro is cheap for what it does. At $18 a month, it's less than Superhuman's $30 Starter or Dove's $20 monthly plan, and it covers every Gmail account you sign in.

• It's built around Gmail. It sends through Gmail's servers, so your domain's SPF, DKIM and DMARC records still apply, and your Gmail stays as it was if you leave.

• Team features cost nothing extra. Shared threads, comments, assignees, shared labels and channels are on every plan, Free included. Dove has no team inbox, and Superhuman has no free plan.

• It tells you what you're getting. It names the AI model on each plan and publishes rough daily limits. Spark, for one, doesn't put numbers on its AI limits.

• The trial is 14 days, twice as long as Dove's.

It's harder to justify if:

• you use Outlook or Microsoft 365. It doesn't work, and if you forward Outlook.com mail, you can't reply from that address.

• you'd rather pay yearly. There's no discount, so a year of Business is $360 per person.

• you need read statuses or snippets. They start at $30, not $18.

• you want drafts written before you open the email. That's Tasklet, a separate product, not a Shortwave plan.

• you're paying for a big team. Ten people on Premier is $5,400 a year, and everyone has to be on the same plan.

If you're on Gmail and want an AI assistant that can search years of mail, start on Free, trial Premier for 14 days, and see whether you actually hit the Pro limits.

Shortwave alternatives

If the Gmail-only limit or the per-seat cost rules Shortwave out, here are four options. Prices were checked on October 9, 2026, on each vendor's site. Our guide to the best AI email apps compares more of them, with the accounts each one supports.

Superhuman is the closest like-for-like if you need Outlook. It's faster at keyboard triage than most, but Auto Drafts and Ask AI are on the $40 Business plan. Our Superhuman pricing guide breaks down what each plan includes.

Dove is the AI-first option if you're not on Gmail, or have accounts on more than one provider. It sorts mail into Focus, Feed and Noise, drafts replies in your style and answers questions about your inbox, on Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android and the web. At $200 a year it costs less than a year of Shortwave Pro ($216), though monthly it's $2 more. It's new, so its track record is thin, and it has no team inbox, so a team that works out of shared threads is better off on Shortwave. It also has no end-to-end or PGP encryption. Dove vs Shortwave compares the two head to head.

Spark is the cheapest paid option that works with almost any provider. Its AI limits aren't published as numbers, and its auto-drafting features are still marked "Soon".

Gmail with Gemini may be all you need if you only want summaries and writing help in Gmail itself: it comes with Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month and up.

For every option side by side, including team inboxes and privacy picks, see our guide to Shortwave alternatives.

FAQ

Is Shortwave free?

Yes. Shortwave has a free plan with no time limit. It includes the AI assistant at the Basic level (Claude Haiku 4.5), AI replies and summaries, and team features, but only covers 90 days of email history and adds a "Sent with Shortwave" signature to what you send.

How much does Shortwave cost?

Pro is $18 per month, Business $30 per seat, Premier $45 per seat and Max $120 per seat, all billed monthly in US dollars (checked October 9, 2026, on Shortwave's pricing page). A year of Pro costs $216.

Does Shortwave have an annual plan or discount?

No. Shortwave says it offers monthly billing, and its billing guide says new subscriptions are billed monthly. Annual prices you see in older reviews are from plans Shortwave no longer shows.

Does Shortwave only work with Gmail?

Yes. You need a Gmail or Google Workspace account to sign in. Yahoo, iCloud, Fastmail and Zoho can be forwarded into a Gmail account and sent from with an app password.

Does Shortwave work with Outlook?

Not directly. Microsoft 365 and Exchange accounts aren't supported, and Shortwave has no timeline for them. Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live mail can be forwarded into Gmail, but you can't send from those addresses in Shortwave.

Is Shortwave safe?

Shortwave stores data in Google Cloud, encrypted at rest and in transit, is CASA Tier 2 compliant with an annual audit, and says your data is never used to train third-party AI models. Besides Google Cloud, its only sub-processors are OpenAI, Anthropic and Pinecone.

Does one Shortwave plan cover all my email accounts?

Yes, for your own Gmail accounts. Sign them in on the same device as your paid account and they get the paid features. Each other person on a team needs their own seat.

What happens when the Shortwave trial ends?

Shortwave says to settle on a plan before the 14 days are up, and you can switch plans during the trial. It doesn't say on its pricing page or billing guide what happens if you do nothing. If you're charged and change your mind, Shortwave refunds on request within 14 days of the payment.