Is Superhuman Worth $30/Month? Free Alternatives Compared

At $30/month, Superhuman is the most expensive email client on the market. Is it worth $360/year? Let's break it down honestly.

What Superhuman Does Well

Let's be fair: Superhuman is genuinely impressive. The speed is remarkable — emails load instantly, searches happen in real-time, and the entire interface feels buttery smooth. This isn't marketing hype; it's a well-engineered product.

The keyboard-first design is thoughtful, with 100+ shortcuts that cover virtually every action. AI auto-drafts save time. Auto-summaries distill long threads. The split inbox helps you focus. And the onboarding experience? It's premium — they literally walk you through setup on a video call.

For high-volume emailers — investors, executives, sales teams — Superhuman truly saves time. It's not snake oil.

What You're Paying For

That $360/year isn't arbitrary. You're paying for cloud infrastructure to run AI models, a design and UX team that obsesses over details, premium customer onboarding, and multi-platform support (web, Mac, Windows, iOS).

Every time you generate an email summary or AI draft, that request goes to servers running large language models. Those servers cost money. The $30/month is essentially renting access to someone else's compute power.

The Privacy Question

Here's the part Superhuman doesn't advertise prominently: their AI runs on cloud servers powered by OpenAI. Every email summary, every draft, every search query passes through third-party infrastructure.

Your private correspondence — client communications, legal matters, financial details — is processed on computers you don't control. For lawyers, doctors, investors, or anyone handling sensitive information, this is a deal-breaker.

Even with strict privacy policies, data breaches happen. Sub-processors change. Terms evolve. You're trusting not just Superhuman, but also their vendors.

Free Alternatives That Match Up

The good news? You don't have to choose between intelligence and privacy, or between features and cost. Here are the real alternatives:

• Inboxed — Same speed, local AI, free. The closest Superhuman experience without the cost or cloud dependency. Compare directly here. Keyboard shortcuts, AI summaries, smart replies — all on-device. Runs on Rust, optimized for Apple Silicon, uses ~50MB of RAM instead of 200MB+.
• Apple Mail — Free, native, private. But no AI features. Best for minimalists who don't need intelligent assistance and just want a clean, fast email experience.
• Thunderbird — Free, open source, respects privacy. But the interface feels dated, and there's no AI. Good for those who value control and customization over modern features.

Inboxed vs Superhuman: Feature-by-Feature

Here's the direct comparison:

• AI: Cloud (Superhuman) vs Local (Inboxed) — both deliver summaries and smart replies, but only Inboxed keeps data on your device
• Speed: Both fast — Superhuman uses Electron, Inboxed uses Rust for even lower resource usage
• Shortcuts: Both keyboard-first with extensive shortcut support
• Cost: $360/year vs Free
• Privacy: Cloud-processed vs On-device
• RAM: ~200MB vs ~50MB

Who Should Still Use Superhuman?

To be balanced: if you're embedded in a Gmail/Google Workspace team environment, need deep integrations with Salesforce or HubSpot, and privacy isn't a top concern, Superhuman is genuinely great.

If you're managing 200+ emails a day, work in a fast-paced startup, and want white-glove onboarding, the $30/month might be worth it.

For everyone else, there are better options.

The Verdict

Superhuman is an excellent product at a premium price point. The team built something genuinely impressive. But with local AI advancing rapidly, paying $360/year for cloud-based intelligence is increasingly hard to justify.

You can get the same speed, the same keyboard-first workflow, and AI-powered features — without giving up privacy or paying a subscription. Explore all Superhuman alternatives here.