vs Nylas federates a human's existing Gmail, Outlook, or IMAP mailbox over an OAuth grant — the right tool when the agent must act inside a real person's account. For an autonomous agent that just needs its own inbox, MailKite gives it a scoped address on a domain you own and pushes the parsed message as JSON — no OAuth app, no CASA review, no notify-then-fetch.
Nylas is a genuinely capable bidirectional email, calendar, and contacts API, and it does something MailKite deliberately does not: it operates a real person's existing mailbox. If the agent has to read the mail already sitting in someone's Gmail or Outlook, reconcile it against their calendar, and reply as them, Nylas is built precisely for that — and its newer Agent Accounts product (in beta) provisions a Nylas-hosted mailbox for an agent too.
The agent gets agent@yourco.dev on your own domain, SPF/DKIM aligned — not a grant onto a human's existing account, and not a Nylas-hosted mailbox. Your brand, your deliverability, your data.
Production Gmail access with restricted scopes needs your own verified Google Cloud app plus an annual CASA security assessment that can take weeks. MailKite has no OAuth app and no review — you verify a domain via DNS (MX to receive, SPF+DKIM to send).
Nylas' webhook carries message IDs, so you call the Messages API for the body — and re-query when it's truncated over 1 MB. MailKite pushes the full decoded message in one signed webhook, with an auth block, threading, and signed attachment URLs already there.
Nylas' free tier is 5 connected accounts for sandbox and testing; production is per connected account. MailKite's free tier is 3,000 messages/mo of real inbound + outbound, on unlimited domains, behind a single API key — no per-mailbox OAuth or token refresh.
| MailKite | Nylas | |
|---|---|---|
| The address | Agent's own address on your domain | Federates a human's existing mailbox (Agent Accounts beta for agent-owned) |
| Getting to production | DNS-verify — no review | Your OAuth app + Google verification + annual CASA |
| Inbound delivery | Full parsed message in one signed webhook | Webhook notifies with IDs; you GET the body (truncated over 1 MB) |
| Sender trust signal | auth block (SPF/DKIM/DMARC/spam) in payload | Read headers off the fetched message yourself |
| Credential upkeep | One API key — no per-mailbox OAuth | OAuth grants Nylas refreshes; provider send caps |
| Calendar + contacts in same API | Email only | Yes — email, calendar, contacts |
| Operate a real person's inbox | No — its own address only | Yes — its core strength |
| Free tier | 3,000 messages/mo (in + out) | 5 connected accounts, sandbox/testing only |
Competitor capabilities change — we re-audit these tables regularly. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we'll fix it.
Nylas notifies with IDs so you fetch the body and send as a human's account; MailKite pushes the parsed message to an address the agent owns.
import Nylas from "nylas";
const nylas = new Nylas({ apiKey: process.env.NYLAS_API_KEY });
// 1) One-time per user: exchange the hosted-auth code for a grant you store.
const { grantId } = await nylas.auth.exchangeCodeForToken({
clientId: process.env.NYLAS_CLIENT_ID,
code, // from your /callback after the OAuth redirect
redirectUri: process.env.REDIRECT_URI,
});
// 2) The webhook is a NOTIFICATION with IDs, not the message body.
app.post("/nylas/webhook", async (req, res) => {
res.sendStatus(200);
const { type, data } = req.body;
if (type !== "message.created") return; // also handle message.updated
const msg = await nylas.messages.find({ // GET /v3/grants/{grant}/messages/{id}
identifier: data.grant_id,
messageId: data.object.id,
});
await runAgent({ task: msg.data.body }); // untrusted input
});
// Production first needs: your OAuth app + Google verification + annual CASA. POST /your-webhook Content-Type: application/json
x-mailkite-signature: t=…,v1=… (HMAC-SHA256 — verify locally)
{
"id": "msg_2Hk9…",
"type": "email.received",
"from": { "address": "ada@example.com" },
"to": [{ "address": "support@myapp.ai" }],
"subject": "Re: invoice #1042",
"text": "Looks good — approved!",
"html": "<p>Looks good — approved!</p>",
"threadId": "<a1b2c3@mail.example.com>",
"auth": { "spf": "pass", "dkim": "pass", "dmarc": "pass", "spam": "ham" },
"attachments": [
{ "filename": "po.pdf", "contentType": "application/pdf",
"size": 18213, "url": "https://api.mailkite.dev/att/2Hk9…/0?sig=…" }
]
} Nylas prices per connected account because it federates one mailbox per grant. MailKite has no per-address or per-domain fee — one combined inbound + outbound quota across unlimited domains.
Point MX + SPF/DKIM at MailKite, or start instantly on a managed subdomain. The agent's address lives on your domain — no provider mailbox to provision, no OAuth app, no CASA review.
Delete the grant exchange and the Messages-API GET. Set one webhook URL; read event.from.address, event.subject, event.text, event.attachments[] straight from the pushed JSON — no truncation re-query.
Check x-mailkite-signature with the SDK's verifyWebhook helper, then reply through the same send API from the agent's own address — or hand the loop to a route with action: 'agent'.
Newly, yes — Nylas has an Agent Accounts product (in beta) that provisions a Nylas-hosted mailbox for an agent. The classic Email API instead federates a human's existing Gmail, Outlook, or IMAP account over OAuth. MailKite gives the agent its own address on a domain you own and pushes inbound as parsed JSON on the free tier.
For restricted Gmail scopes (gmail.readonly, gmail.modify), yes: your own Google Cloud app must pass OAuth verification plus an annual CASA security assessment, which can take weeks. Nylas sells a pre-verified Shared GCP App add-on to skip it on paid plans. MailKite has no OAuth app and no review — you verify a domain via DNS.
If the agent must operate a real person's existing mailbox, calendar, and contacts, pick Nylas — it's built for exactly that. If the agent should just have its own autonomous address with parsed inbound pushed to it and no OAuth to manage, pick MailKite. They solve adjacent problems, not the same one.
The Nylas alternative for AI agents →
The long-form take on our blog — receipts, runnable code, and where we won't overclaim.
Point a domain, drop in a webhook URL, receive your first email. Unlimited domains, no credit card.