An honest comparison
Batmail vs SaneBox: filing by behaviour, or triage with reasons
SaneBox ranks importance from how you treat senders and files the rest away, on almost any email provider. Batmail reads the message, runs rules you wrote, and writes down why it did each thing.
The short answer
- Pick SaneBox if
- Your mail is not on Gmail. SaneBox runs on Outlook, Exchange, iCloud, Yahoo, Fastmail and any IMAP server; Batmail is Gmail-only today.
- Pick Batmail if
- You want decisions made on what the email actually says, not on how you treated that sender last month.
SaneBox pricing and features verified against the sources listed at the foot of this page. Written by the Batmail team, who make one of the two products compared here.
The short version
Two different jobs
What each product is actually for, stated fairly.
What SaneBox is
SaneBox is the closest thing to Batmail's job and has done it since 2010. It watches which senders you actually engage with, ranks importance from that behaviour, and moves the rest into a SaneLater folder, with SaneBlackHole to banish a sender for good, reminders, follow-up tracking and a daily digest of what it filed. Its great advantage is reach: Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, iCloud, Yahoo, Fastmail and any IMAP server. Its core importance filter reads headers and behaviour rather than the body of your mail, though its optional AI features, including reply drafting, do read message text.
What Batmail is
Batmail reads the message itself, and that is the trade. Because the AI sees the content it can tell an urgent invoice from a routine one and act on a rule like "looks like a cold sales email from someone I never asked, archive it." Every action carries a written reason you can audit and an undo where Gmail allows one, and the night ends with one morning roundup shaped by your own guidelines. Your mail is processed to run your rules, apply your labels and write your roundup, and is never used to train AI models.
Side by side
Batmail vs SaneBox, feature by feature
No column gets padded and none gets dimmed.
| Feature | Batmail | SaneBox |
|---|---|---|
| Decides using | What the message says | How you treat that sender |
| Your rules look like | Plain English, any condition | Training it by moving mail |
| Explains each decision | Written reason on each overnight action | A folder, no reason |
| Actions it can take | Archive, star, label, forward, reply… | File, banish, snooze, remind, draft |
| Replies for you | Sends one, only where a rule says so | Drafts one for you to send |
| Morning brief | One roundup, shaped by your guidelines | Daily digest of what it filed |
| Email providers | Gmail only | Almost any: IMAP, Exchange, iCloud… |
| Free plan | Yes, one inbox | No; free trial, no card |
| Features by plan | Rules and AI labels on both plans | Any 2, any 6, or all, by tier |
| Priced by | $12 per inbox / month | $9.49 to $42.99 / month by tier |
SaneBox pricing vs Batmail pricing
SaneBox repriced in July 2026, and most review sites still quote the old numbers. As of 12 August 2026 on their own pricing page: Snack $9.49 a month for one account and any two features; Lunch $15.99 a month for two accounts and six features; Dinner $42.99 a month for four accounts and everything. Annual billing is a much bigger saving than the category norm, at 38% to 43% off ($65, $109 and $319 a year). There is a free trial with no card (SaneBox's own pages say 7 days in some places and 14 in others), and no free plan. Batmail: Scout free on one inbox; Night Shift $12 per inbox per month.
Proof
What the Batmail column actually looks like
The screens behind the claims, captured from the product.
The verdict
Which one should you pick?
Both answers, because only one of them applies to you.
Choose SaneBox if…
- Your mail is not on Gmail. SaneBox runs on Outlook, Exchange, iCloud, Yahoo, Fastmail and any IMAP server; Batmail is Gmail-only today.
- You want the importance ranking itself to run on headers and behaviour rather than message text. SaneBox's core filter works that way, as long as you leave its optional AI features off.
- You want the longest track record in the category: SaneBox has been doing this since 2010, and Batmail has not.
- You are happy to pay annually. At 38% to 43% off, SaneBox's annual pricing is the best value in this comparison.
Choose Batmail if…
- You want decisions made on what the email actually says, not on how you treated that sender last month.
- You want the reason for each action, with one-click undo on the reversible ones, instead of finding mail already in a folder.
- You want rules you can write in one English sentence rather than train by example over weeks.
- You want rules and AI labels on the free plan rather than any two features on a paid entry tier.
Questions
What people ask
The answers worth having before you pick either one.
What is the difference between SaneBox and Batmail?
What each one looks at, and what it leaves you. SaneBox ranks importance from how you have treated a sender before and files the unimportant mail into a folder for you to skim later. Batmail's AI reads the message itself, so it can act on what the email says, follow rules you wrote in plain English, attach a written reason to each thing it did, and end the night with one morning brief instead of another folder.
How much does SaneBox cost?
SaneBox repriced in July 2026, so most review sites are out of date. On their own pricing page as of 12 August 2026: Snack is $9.49 a month for one account and any two features, Lunch is $15.99 a month for two accounts and six features, and Dinner is $42.99 a month for four accounts and everything. Annual billing takes 38% to 43% off ($65, $109 and $319 a year). There is a free trial with no card, though SaneBox's own pages quote its length as 7 days in some places and 14 in others, and no free plan. Batmail is free on one inbox and $12 per inbox per month.
Does Batmail read my email content the way SaneBox avoids?
Yes, and it is the honest trade between the two, though the line has moved. SaneBox's core importance filter reads headers and behaviour rather than message bodies, which is a genuine privacy advantage if you leave its optional AI features off; its own AI reply drafting does read the text. Batmail's AI reads message text throughout, because content is what lets it tell an urgent invoice from a routine one. Your mail is processed to run your rules, apply your labels and write your roundup, is never used to train AI models, and each overnight action is logged with its reason.
Is there a free SaneBox alternative?
Batmail Scout is free, not a trial: one Gmail inbox, plain-English rules, AI labels with written reasons, and the morning roundup in the app. SaneBox has a free trial that needs no card, and then starts at $9.49 a month, or $5.42 a month if you pay for a year up front.
Does Batmail work with Outlook or IMAP like SaneBox?
No, and this is the clearest reason to pick SaneBox. Batmail is Gmail-only today, including Google Workspace. SaneBox runs on Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft 365, Exchange, iCloud, Yahoo, Fastmail and any IMAP server, so if your mail is anywhere other than Gmail it is the only one of the two that can help.
Try the night shift on one inbox
Scout is free on one inbox, no card required, and your first morning roundup lands tomorrow.
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How we compared, and what we read
We wrote this page the way we would want a competitor to write one about us. Every SaneBox fact here was taken from their own published pages rather than from review sites, which in this category are frequently a year out of date. A second pass then tried to disprove each claim against the same primary sources, and anything that could not be confirmed was cut rather than softened. The Batmail column was checked against our own source code, which is why it concedes things a marketing page usually would not. We have not run a paid subscription to SaneBox end to end, so nothing here is a verdict on how it feels to use day to day, only on what it does and what it costs.
SaneBox facts on this page were taken from these pages on . Pricing in this category changes; if you find something out of date here, email support@batmail.ai and we will correct it.
SaneBoxand its logo are trademarks of their respective owner. The name and the logo appear here to identify the product being compared, in its owner’s own unmodified artwork; this page is not endorsed by or affiliated with them, and Batmail is not their product.