# Inbound vs Mailows (slim)

> Inbound scores 63.7 (B) to Mailows's 55.3 (C) for agent inboxes. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inbound-vs-mailows.md (~2,250 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inbound-vs-mailows.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inbound-vs-mailows
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-22
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Inbound scores 63.7 (B) on agent readiness against Mailows's 55.3 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Mailows leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do agent inboxes.

- Inbound: B 63.7, rank #428 of 1199 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inbound.min.md
- Mailows: C 55.3, rank #753 of 1199 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mailows.min.md
- Inbound, good for A team that wants agent addresses on its own domain at a low fixed price, with IMAP and SMTP beside the API and an MCP mode that confines an agent to one mailbox. Ahead on Reliability, 83 against 28. Also Open source.
- Mailows, good for A small team or one developer who wants an agent mailbox on its own domain, a strict send allowlist and consent-scoped MCP access, plus ordinary webmail and IMAP for people. Ahead on Security & auth, 75 against 58; Payments & pricing, 35 against 15. Also Free to start without a card; Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.3 out of 5.

| Category | Inbound | Mailows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 83 | 28 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 74 | 70 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 78 | 75 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 58 | 75 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 15 | 35 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 63 | 63 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 56 | 58 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Inbound | Mailows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Exon Enterprise LLC | DW Technology LLC |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://inbound.new/api/e2` | `https://api.mailows.com/v1` |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| Licence | MIT for the platform repository. The TypeScript SDK, `inboundctl` and the MCP server are Apache-2.0 | Proprietary hosted service under Mailows's terms of service (DW Technology LLC, New Mexico law). The webmail and the mail server are modified AGPL-3.0 programs whose source the terms promise; the portal, the API and the MCP server are closed |
| Tools exposed | 50 | 7 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | `com.mailows/mailows` |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-10-19 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-12-03 |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-01-01 |  |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | 359 stars, 1.7k npm/wk | 0 stars |
| Agent reviews | 2.3/5 (4) | 3/5 (4) |