SaneBox alternatives
SaneBox sorts your mail on its own servers and bills per tier of email accounts. If that is why you are looking, here are eight alternatives with their real prices, where each one runs, and who it suits. We make Premail, which is listed first and processes mail on your own computer; the rest are the tools people actually weigh against SaneBox.
Free for personal inboxes. No account required.
Updated
Prices are read from each vendor's own pricing page and linked, so you can check them. Cleanup tools (Clean Email, Mailstrom, Cleanfox, Unroll.Me) replace SaneBox's bulk features; AI email clients (Shortwave, Spark, Superhuman) replace its sorting by asking you to switch apps; Premail replaces the sorting without switching.
| App | Price | Runs on | How it makes money |
|---|---|---|---|
| Premail | Free for up to 2 personal inboxes, then $9/mo, $79/yr, or $99 once | Your own computer | Paid licences |
| Clean Email | $9.99/mo, or $29.99/yr | Cloud | Subscriptions |
| Mailstrom | $9/mo, or $59.95/yr | Cloud | Subscriptions |
| Shortwave | $30 per seat/mo | Cloud client | Subscriptions |
| Spark Mail | Free | Cloud client | Free tier, then subscriptions |
| Superhuman | $30/mo, or $25/mo billed annually | Cloud client | Subscriptions |
| Cleanfox | Free | Cloud | Sells data, by its own description |
| Unroll.Me | Free | Cloud | Free, no paid tier advertised |
Best for: Filtering mail before you read it, without a service holding your mailbox
Runs as a desktop app alongside the email client you already use, applying rules you write in plain English. Nothing passes through a Premail server, and one price covers every inbox you connect. It only works while your computer is on, so overnight triage on a phone is a genuine reason to pick something else here.
Best for: The most complete cleanup toolkit across several mailboxes
Clean Email includes every feature at every tier and prices purely on how many mailboxes you connect.
Best for: Genuinely enormous backlogs, bundled by sender and size
Mailstrom tiers on three axes at once: how many accounts, how large a mailbox it will process, and how many smart filters you get.
Best for: Searching and reasoning across a large mail history
Shortwave tiers on AI capacity: how much AI usage, how far back AI search reaches, and how many AI-powered filters you get. Figures below are its Business plans.
Best for: A capable client with AI attached, at the lowest price
Spark is a full email client with AI layered on, and it keeps a genuine free tier rather than a trial.
Best for: People who live in email and want it to feel fast
Superhuman prices per member per month, with the AI features split across tiers rather than bundled into one.
Best for: A fast free cleanup, if its funding model suits you
Cleanfox is free and states on its own homepage that it sells data for statistical purposes to stay that way. That is their description of their model, not an accusation.
Best for: Rolling newsletters into one daily digest
Unroll.Me does not sell a subscription. Its own site offers only a free sign-up, with no paid plan advertised.
Why people switch to Premail
SaneBox connects to your mailbox over IMAP and processes messages on its own infrastructure. Premail runs on your computer and, with Ollama, classification is fully offline. With Anthropic or OpenAI, requests go straight from your machine to the provider you chose.
SaneBox bills per email account per month, and the price climbs as you add features. Premail is free for personal inboxes. Pro is one flat price for unlimited custom rules and professional inboxes, with a one-time Lifetime option for early adopters.
SaneBox's security page says it only analyzes headers to decide what is important, and that optional features which retrieve message bodies never store them. Premail has no servers, so it can use the full body as a classification signal. An LLM judges each message the way you would, instead of guessing from sender and subject alone.
Side by side
| Feature | Premail Local desktop app · BYOK AI | SaneBox Cloud service · IMAP integration |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing for personal inboxes | Free | Paid only |
| Per-inbox subscriptionSaneBox prices scale per account and per feature add-on. | ||
| Email is processed on your own computerPremail with Ollama is fully offline. SaneBox processes mail on its own servers. | ||
| Uses email body content as a classification signalSaneBox's security page says it only analyzes headers to decide what is important, and that optional features which retrieve message bodies never store them. Premail can use the full body because nothing leaves your machine (or, with BYOK, only goes to the model you chose). | Headers for sorting | |
| Bring-your-own AI key (Anthropic, OpenAI) | ||
| Plain-English custom rules | Limited | |
| Works with any email client | ||
| Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud support | ||
| Bulk unsubscribe | ||
| Filters apply across all devices automaticallySaneBox runs in the cloud, so actions sync instantly to phone. Premail acts on the inbox itself, so changes show up everywhere too, but require your desktop to be running. | Server-side via your provider | |
| Open audit log of every action | Limited | |
| No account, no signup required | ||
| One-time Lifetime license available | ||
| Native desktop app | ||
| Works while your computer is asleep | Catches up on wake |
Pricing
Every SaneBox tier caps how many email accounts it covers, so a second inbox means a higher tier rather than a second connection.
Free tier, then one flat price regardless of how many inboxes you connect
Subscription, tiered by number of email accounts
SaneBox pricing read from their own pricing page and verified . Prices change, so check the source before deciding.
Pick SaneBox if
You need filtering to keep running 24/7 even when your laptop is off, you live on your phone, and you are happy to pay a recurring per-inbox fee in exchange for a service that has been around since 2010.
Pick Premail if
You want your email to be classified on your own hardware, you prefer one price (or a free tier for personal use) over a per-inbox subscription, and you want to write custom rules in plain English using a real LLM.
FAQ
How is Premail different from SaneBox at a high level?
SaneBox is a cloud service. You give it IMAP access to your mailbox and its servers sort your mail. Premail is a desktop app that runs on your own computer and uses an AI model of your choice, including local Ollama, so your email is never processed on a third-party server controlled by us.
Does Premail charge per inbox like SaneBox?
No. The free plan covers up to two personal inboxes. Pro is a flat subscription (or one-time Lifetime fee) that includes professional inboxes, unlimited custom rules, and Reputation Shield. Adding another account does not change the price.
What does SaneBox do better?
SaneBox has been around since 2010 and runs in the cloud, which means filtering keeps going even when your laptop is off. If you need server-side filtering with no desktop dependency, SaneBox is a more mature fit. Premail runs on your machine, so it catches up on missed mail when you wake up but does not act while your computer is off.
Can I keep my existing SaneBox folders?
Yes. Premail acts on the inbox directly using your own folders, so you can keep SaneLater, SaneBlackHole, or anything else around while you evaluate. Rules in Premail can move mail into any folder you already have.
Is Premail really free for SaneBox refugees?
Yes, for personal inboxes on consumer domains like gmail.com, icloud.com, and outlook.com. You only need Pro if you connect a work or Google Workspace inbox, want unlimited custom rules, or want Reputation Shield.
What about AI cost?
Use Ollama locally and there is no AI cost at all. With Anthropic or OpenAI, you bring your own key and pay them directly. With the default models that is roughly $3 per 1,000 emails (GPT-5 Mini) to $11 per 1,000 (Claude Haiku). Premail never marks up AI usage because we never see it.
Does Premail actually read the body of my email?
Yes, and that is the point. SaneBox's security page says it only analyzes headers to decide what is important, and that optional features which retrieve message bodies never store them. Premail has no servers, so the body can be a classification signal without anyone but you (and, if you choose, your own LLM provider) ever seeing it. With Ollama, even that provider is your own machine.
Also considering
Free for personal inboxes. No Premail account, no servers touching your email. Works alongside the email client you already use on Mac, Windows, and Linux.