MailCatcher vs Mailpit
MailCatcher
mailcatcher.me
Mailpit
mailpit.axllent.orgSide by side
| Figure | MailCatcher | Mailpit |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Email Testing Software | 7.2 (#22) | 8.6 (#6) |
| Integrations | The site gives setup instructions for Rails, PHP, and Django applications. | The project says Mailpit is used by projects including Laravel, DDEV, Quarkus, and Saleor, and in CI/CD pipelines. |
| Purpose | MailCatcher runs an SMTP server that catches messages and displays them in a web interface. | Mailpit is an open-source utility for testing emails and SMTP delivery, with a local SMTP server, web interface, and integration-testing API. |
| Support | The maker asks users to file an issue and include the complete message when reporting processing problems. | The troubleshooting guide invites users to raise an issue after checking existing issues first. |
Plans
In their own words
MailCatcher
MailCatcher has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Mailpit
Mailpit is a free, open-source tool for checking email content and SMTP delivery without sending messages to real addresses. It runs a local SMTP server alongside a web interface and REST API, and is available for Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker, and self-hosted deployment. The interface displays formatted HTML, source, text, headers, raw messages, and MIME attachments with image thumbnails. Checks include HTML and link testing, message screenshots, and optional SpamAssassin scoring. The API can access, search, send, delete, tag, and release messages; messages can also be relayed, forwarded, or used to trigger configurable SMTP errors. Mailpit can send message-summary webhooks and offers a Cypress package for integration tests. The web UI and API can use HTTPS and basic authentication; SMTP supports optional authentication and TLS. By default, SMTP listens on port 1025 without encryption or authentication. Mailpit keeps the most recent 500 messages by default.