These four products all promise an inbox that handles itself, but they get there in opposite ways. Superhuman, Shortwave and Missive ask you to move into a new app. Fyxer stays inside the Gmail or Outlook you already use. This guide compares them on the checks that decide the purchase before features do: which email provider you are on, what the AI actually costs, and where the usage limits sit.
Superhuman Mail Starter, billed annually ($300/year). Monthly billing is $30/mo. No free plan.
Pro, per seat per month. Higher tiers run to $120/mo. Free plan with limits; 14-day trial on paid plans.
Pro, billed annually ($49/mo on monthly billing). Free plan without drafts or sorting; 14-day trial.
Starter, per user, billed annually ($18/mo monthly). AI starts on Productive ($24/mo billed annually) and AI usage is billed separately.
| Superhuman | Shortwave | Fyxer | Missive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Individuals who live in email and work by keyboard | Gmail users who want deep AI search and drafting | Busy professionals who will not switch email apps | Small teams handling shared addresses together |
| How it works | Replacement email client | Replacement email client | Assistant layer inside your existing Gmail / Outlook | Replacement client built around team collaboration |
| Email providers | Gmail and Outlook | Gmail and Google Workspace only | Gmail and Outlook | Gmail, Microsoft 365 / Outlook, and IMAP accounts |
| Free option | None — no free plan | Free plan with limits (basic AI, 90 days of search history) and a 14-day trial on paid plans | Free plan (briefings and audio meeting notes; no sorting or reply drafts) and a 14-day trial | 30-day trial with no credit card. Whether a permanent free plan is currently offered is unclear across sources — confirm on the vendor's site |
| Paid plans from | Mail Starter $25/mo billed annually ($30 monthly) | Pro $18/seat/mo; Business $30; Premier $45; Max $120 (monthly billing) | Pro $37/mo billed annually ($49 monthly); Team $64 billed annually ($99 monthly) | Starter $14/user/mo billed annually ($18 monthly); Productive $24 ($30 monthly); Business $36 ($45 monthly) |
| Where the headline AI sits | Auto Drafts and Ask AI require Business ($33/mo billed annually), not Starter | AI usage scales by plan: daily request levels, search history and threads per search all rise with price | Drafts and sorting require Pro or above; the free plan does not include them | No AI assistant on Starter. AI is on Productive and Business, and usage is charged on top of the seat price |
| How AI usage is limited | By plan tier rather than a published credit meter | Daily AI usage levels, AI search history (90 days to unlimited) and threads per AI search (15 to 150) vary by plan | Monthly credits: 3,000 per paid member on Pro and 6,000 pooled per member on Team, after an initial 3-month unlimited launch period | Pay as you go: bring your own model API key at the provider's price, or buy Missive credits, which the vendor's documentation prices above the provider's cost |
| Team shape | Shared conversations and team comments; Mail plans are capped at 25 seats, Enterprise is uncapped | Team plans add shared threads, comments, assignees and shared labels; everyone on a team shares one plan | Team plan adds shared spaces, shared follow-ups and team reporting | Built for teams: Starter up to 5 users, Productive up to 50, Business unlimited. Also handles SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and live chat |
| Trade-off to know | The highest entry price here, no free plan, and the suite pricing creates confusion (see the note below) | Gmail only. If anyone on your team is on Outlook, this is not an option at all | Pricing was overhauled in September 2026 — many older reviews quote plans that new customers can no longer buy | The seat price is not the total: AI usage, and jumping a user cap (5 or 50), can move the bill more than the plan itself |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. Superhuman note: the email app is now called Superhuman Mail. In July 2025 Grammarly announced it was acquiring Superhuman, and on October 29, 2025 the parent company renamed itself Superhuman; the suite now groups Superhuman Mail with Grammarly, Superhuman Docs and Superhuman Go (per the vendor's help center). Watch the pricing trap this creates: the suite's Pro tier does not include Mail — Mail is included from the suite's Business tier, while standalone Mail Starter is the separate plan priced in this table. You also keep paying for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 separately with all four products. Plans change — always confirm the current price and what is included on the vendor's site before you buy.
Seat prices alone mislead here, because the four products meter AI in four different ways. Two pieces of arithmetic, both from the published prices above, make the comparison fairer.
On annual billing (Shortwave is billed monthly, so its figure is the monthly price times twelve), five seats cost: Superhuman Mail Starter $1,500/year, or $1,980/year on Business — the plan you need for Auto Drafts and Ask AI. Shortwave Business is $1,800/year, and Premier, the first tier with unlimited AI search history, is $2,700/year. Fyxer Pro is $2,220/year, or $3,840/year on Team if you need multiple inboxes and shared spaces. Missive Starter is $840/year but includes no AI assistant; Productive is $1,440/year plus whatever AI usage you consume, because Missive charges for AI separately. Compared on the plans that actually include the AI features, the four sit much closer together than their headline prices suggest.
Superhuman gates its best-known AI features by tier: Auto Drafts and Ask AI are Business features, so the effective entry price for AI drafting is $33/mo billed annually, not the $25 Starter headline. Shortwave gates by volume instead: its tiers raise the daily AI usage level, extend AI search history from 90 days on the free plan to unlimited on Premier and above, and widen each AI search from 15 threads to as many as 150 — so the older your archive and the more you ask, the higher the tier you need. Fyxer gates by credits: sorting one email costs a fraction of a credit and recording costs credits per minute, so a Pro allowance of 3,000 credits a month covers, in the vendor's own worked example, roughly 5,000 sorted emails plus 25 recording hours plus 25 chat messages — and the allowance only starts applying after the first three months, which begin unlimited. Missive does not bundle AI usage at all: you either supply your own model provider key and pay that provider directly, or buy Missive credits at a markup over the provider's price, per the vendor's documentation. Its total cost therefore depends on how much AI your team actually runs.
Superhuman Mail is a full email client that sits on top of your existing Gmail or Outlook account: you keep your address and mailbox, and work in Superhuman's app instead. Its published feature set centers on processing speed and structure — Split Inbox to separate important mail from the rest, read statuses, snippets, follow-up reminders, a built-in calendar and scheduling links, plus shared conversations and team comments. Starter ($25/mo billed annually, $30/mo monthly) includes the client and most AI features. Business ($33/mo billed annually, $40/mo monthly) adds the features most buyers are actually shopping for: Auto Drafts, Ask AI, custom Auto Labels and CRM integrations such as HubSpot and Salesforce. Enterprise is custom-priced. There is no free plan.
Ownership note: Superhuman is no longer an independent startup. Grammarly announced its acquisition of Superhuman in July 2025 and renamed the parent company Superhuman on October 29, 2025; the email product is now Superhuman Mail, sold both on its own and inside the wider Superhuman suite (source: the vendor's help center, checked November 2026).
Shortwave is an AI-first client built for Gmail and Google Workspace, created by a team with Google Inbox roots. Instead of replacing your mailbox, it replaces the Gmail interface with its own app and puts an AI assistant at the center: natural-language search across your archive, thread summaries, AI bundles and filters that sort incoming mail, and personalized drafting in your writing style. Pricing is mainly a ladder of AI capacity. The free plan offers basic AI, 90 days of search history and 15 threads per AI search. Pro ($18/seat/mo) extends search history to 3 years, Business ($30) to 5 years with team features, Premier ($45) makes search history unlimited, and Max ($120) raises usage and context the furthest. Paid plans include a 14-day trial and are billed monthly.
Fyxer takes the opposite route from the other three: it is not an email client. It connects to your Gmail or Outlook account and works inside it — sorting incoming mail into labeled categories, preparing reply drafts in your tone for you to review and send, taking meeting notes, and sending a daily briefing. The vendor states that it does not send email on your behalf; sending stays with you. The free plan covers briefings and audio meeting notes on a small monthly credit allowance, but not sorting or drafts. Pro ($37/mo billed annually, $49/mo monthly) adds sorting, drafts and video meeting recording for one inbox. Team ($64/mo billed annually, $99/mo monthly) adds multiple inboxes, shared spaces and team reporting. Paid plans start with a 14-day trial.
Pricing caution: Fyxer replaced its plans in September 2026. The Starter ($30) and Professional ($50) plans quoted in many reviews are legacy plans that new customers can no longer choose, and the current plans meter usage in monthly credits — unlimited for the first three months as a launch offer, then 3,000 credits per paid member on Pro and 6,000 pooled per member on Team.
Missive is a collaborative email client: personal and shared inboxes live in one app where teammates can comment inside a thread, assign conversations, co-write drafts and track tasks without forwarding chains or shared passwords. It connects to Gmail, Microsoft 365 / Outlook and generic IMAP accounts, and it treats SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and live chat as channels in the same inbox. Starter ($14/user/mo billed annually, $18 monthly, up to 5 users) covers the core shared-inbox features. Productive ($24 billed annually, $30 monthly, up to 50 users) adds integrations, up to 1,000 automation rules, basic analytics, API access and the AI assistant. Business ($36 billed annually, $45 monthly) removes the user cap and adds SAML SSO, IP restrictions and advanced analytics. The trial is 30 days with no credit card required.
Superhuman, Shortwave and Missive change where you spend your day; Fyxer changes what happens inside Gmail or Outlook before you arrive. If your team resists new tools, that distinction decides the shortlist before any feature does.
Shortwave is Gmail only — Outlook and IMAP users can stop reading its pricing page. Superhuman and Fyxer cover Gmail and Outlook. Missive covers both plus IMAP, which matters for mixed-provider teams.
Use the plan with the feature you came for: Business for Superhuman's Auto Drafts, Productive for Missive's AI (plus usage), and for Shortwave and Fyxer, the tier whose search history or credit allowance fits your volume. Then multiply by seats and twelve months, as in the cost section above.
Shortwave, Fyxer and Missive offer trials, and Shortwave and Fyxer have free plans; Superhuman has neither a free plan nor a published free trial, so budget it as a paid evaluation. Run the same heavy week — a launch, a support spike, a trip backlog — through your finalist and check whether drafts and sorting match how you actually write.
It depends on why you are leaving. For a like-for-like AI client on Gmail at a lower entry price, Shortwave is the closest match in this comparison. If the problem is switching apps at all, Fyxer adds sorting and drafts inside your existing Gmail or Outlook instead. If the problem is that a team shares the work, Missive is built for shared inboxes rather than one person's speed. And if you are on Outlook, Shortwave is ruled out entirely — Superhuman, Fyxer and Missive all support Outlook.
Yes. All four products work on top of an existing mailbox rather than hosting your email themselves, so your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 subscription continues separately. Budget the two together: the figures in this guide are the assistant or client layer only.
Superhuman, Fyxer and Missive all list Outlook / Microsoft 365 support. Shortwave does not — it connects to Gmail and Google Workspace accounts only, with no Outlook, Microsoft 365 or IMAP support.
Because all four can draft and summarize on paper; what differs is how much of it your plan allows. Shortwave rations AI by daily usage level and searchable history, Fyxer by monthly credits, Missive by charging usage separately, and Superhuman by putting its best-known AI features on the higher tier. A plan that fits your volume matters more than a longer feature list.
Your mailbox, address and provider stay in place with all four — none of them replaces your email host. The difference is the working surface: Fyxer leaves your current client untouched, while Superhuman, Shortwave and Missive become the app you open instead. Shortwave also syncs labels and related items with Gmail, per the vendor; with the client-based tools, expect your daily habits and shortcuts to move to the new app even though the underlying mail does not move.
Because this guide is compiled from publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing, and we do not present vendor marketing claims about time saved as measured facts. Where a judgment appears — for example, that a team's real cost is its AI-inclusive plan times twelve months — the arithmetic and the published figures behind it are shown next to it so you can check them yourself.