# email-agent-mcp vs EmailEngine (slim)

> EmailEngine scores 68.8 (B) to email-agent-mcp's 65.9 (B) for mailbox access. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/email-agent-mcp-vs-emailengine.md (~4,150 tokens) · this version ~2,380 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/email-agent-mcp-vs-emailengine.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/email-agent-mcp-vs-emailengine
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

EmailEngine scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against email-agent-mcp's 65.9 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. email-agent-mcp leads on payments & pricing. Both do mailbox access.

- email-agent-mcp: B 65.9, rank #396 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/email-agent-mcp.min.md
- EmailEngine: B 68.8, rank #267 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/emailengine.min.md
- email-agent-mcp, good for A person who wants an agent working in their own Outlook mailbox, or reading and drafting in Gmail, with guardrails. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 60 against 40. Also Runs on your own machine; Open source; No incidents deducted, where EmailEngine loses 6 points for them.
- EmailEngine, good for A team that must keep mailbox access on its own infrastructure, has many mailboxes across Gmail, Microsoft 365 and IMAP, and can run a server and Redis. Ahead on Reliability, 79 against 50; Schema & documentation, 91 against 79; Transparency & trust, 75 against 42.

| Category | email-agent-mcp | EmailEngine |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 50 | 79 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 79 | 91 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 79 | 81 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 67 | 71 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 84 | 81 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 42 | 75 |

| Fact (where they differ) | email-agent-mcp | EmailEngine |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | UseJunior | Postal Systems OÜ |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Paid |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Source available under the EmailEngine licence agreement, version 2.1 of 17 October 2023. Not open source. The PHP SDK is MIT |
| Tools exposed | 27 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.UseJunior/email-agent-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 394 npm/wk | 2.2k stars, 388 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Transparency & trust, EmailEngine +33: email-agent-mcp 42 (Apache-2.0 with a LICENSE file (30). SECURITY.md says tokens and mail are handled locally over stdio with no network listener, and the broker README says mail never reaches the broker and refresh tokens aren't stored. The broker has no published privacy policy (22 of 30). No deprecation policy (0). No telemetry was found in the README or package manifests, and none is stated either way (10 of 20). Total 62.); EmailEngine 75 (The editorial half. The source is public and readable under the EmailEngine licence agreement 2.1, a proprietary licence with clear terms on trial, keys, resale and source changes. It is not an OSI licence, and the vendor says so (20 of 30). The security page and the compliance page list what Redis holds, state that message bodies are not stored, and list every outbound connection. Postal Systems says it is neither controller nor processor for mailbox data. The website privacy policy gives no retention periods, and the security page still calls error reporting opt-in while the licensing page says a trial switches it on (20 of 30). No written deprecation policy was found. Since 2.86.0 (22 October 2026) the pre-2.79 token endpoints answer with `Deprecation`, `Sunset` and `Link` headers, and the changelog dates their removal and that of eight leftover request fields to after 1 January 2027, after the Document Store removal of 1 October was announced in July. But 2.84.2 made STARTTLS required in a patch release with no notice, and security fixes go to the latest release only (14 of 20, as hyperbolic's dated Sunset headers without a written policy). The licence check, feature summary, update check and Sentry reporting are all disclosed, with EENGINE_BEACON_DISABLED and EENGINE_UPDATE_CHECK_DISABLED as opt-outs. The licence check can't be turned off on a subscription (16 of 20). The provenance half is computed from the provenance block.)
- Reliability, EmailEngine +29: email-agent-mcp 50 (Graded with the lines for local packages and stdio MCP servers. Installs from the official npm package `email-agent-mcp` with npx, CI runs on Node 20 (20). A CI workflow with Vitest tests, Codecov and a spec-coverage gate; the run results weren't readable through GitHub's API that day, so partial (20 of 25). Open crash and regression issues couldn't be read because GitHub's API refused our requests for its rate limit (0, unchecked). Semver tags from v0.1.7 to v0.5.0 and auto-categorised GitHub Releases as the changelog, with no breaking changes marked in what we read (10 of 15). Pre-1.0 (0). Total 50.); EmailEngine 79 (Read with the local-software lines, since the owner runs EmailEngine and Postal Systems hosts nothing an agent calls. Graded on the REST API. Official npm package emailengine-app, 2.87.0 in the repository on 29 October 2026, declares Node.js 20.19.0 or later, with a Docker image, an installer script and binaries for macOS, Linux and Windows (20). The test workflow runs lint, a licence check, unit tests, live Dovecot tests and Playwright end-to-end tests, and the release workflow waits for it to pass on the same commit before publishing to npm or Docker. The last eight runs on master to 8 October 2026 passed per the GitHub API; run status wasn't readable on 1 November (25, per the 8 October check). Open crash and regression issues couldn't be counted, because the GitHub API reported issues as disabled on the repository. The changelog shows steady fixes (12 of 25, unchecked). Releases follow conventional commits with a dated changelog, but 2.81.2, a patch release, removed the `bounces` field, 2.82.0, a minor release, removed the Document Store, 2.83.0 moved global webhook headers off account-level targets and 2.84.2, a patch release, made STARTTLS required by default, none marked as breaking (7 of 15). Version 2.87.0, past 1.0 (15). No status page or SLA applies to software the owner runs.)
- Payments & pricing, email-agent-mcp +20: email-agent-mcp 60 (Free, Apache-2.0 software with nothing to buy, scored 20 + 20 + 20 by the self-hosted rule. No payment protocol (0 of 40). Total 60.); EmailEngine 40 (Read with the self-hosted rule, scoring the paid option, because the software needs a licence after the trial. No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). The price is public without a login, $1,450 or EUR 1,200 a year flat, with no per-call or per-mailbox unit, read as plan pricing (10 of 20). A 14-day trial with full functionality starts from the instance's own dashboard with no sign-up and no card (20). No vendor account is needed for the trial and the CLI can issue tokens, but the trial starts with a button in the admin interface and a licence is bought through a browser sign-up at postalsys.com. The line has no middle step, and 10 is our judgement call for a route that needs one click and no account (10 of 20).)
- Schema & documentation, EmailEngine +12: email-agent-mcp 79 (Tools are defined with typed input schemas that the MCP SDK publishes as JSON Schema (25). README in five languages, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md and GEMINI.md; no llms.txt, which a local server doesn't need (5 of 10). The README's tool table marks each tool read, write or destructive and states provider limits, such as Gmail deletes removing drafts only (15 of 20). Typed inputs with options such as `list_style` (12 of 15). Setup examples per client and documented error behaviour, such as NOT_SUPPORTED on Gmail and sanitised errors (10 of 15). Semver tags and GitHub Releases (12 of 15). Total 79.); EmailEngine 91 (Graded on the REST API. A public OpenAPI 3.0 spec for 2.87.0 at go.emailengine.app/swagger.json with 74 paths and 100 operations, read on 1 November 2026 (25). llms.txt on emailengine.app and learn.emailengine.app, an LLM context page and a capabilities.json manifest (10). All 100 operations carry a description, several with usage guidance such as preferring cursors over page numbers, the note that a 2xx on submit means queued, and a page on when to use MCP or REST. Limits of search by folder are stated in one sentence (16 of 20). Parameters are typed with defaults, minimums, maximums and 121 enum declarations, though account and gateway settings accept wide objects (12 of 15). Every operation documents 401, 403, 429 and 500, an error-codes page lists codes with a retryable flag, and examples come in curl, JavaScript, Python and PHP. Gmail API errors pass through without a code (13 of 15). The API is versioned at /v1 and CHANGELOG.md has 192 dated releases (15).)