Shortwave vs Superhuman
A source-aware comparison of pricing, documented capabilities and workflow fit.
Short answer
- Price: Superhuman is cheaper — $12/user/mo vs $30/user/mo.
- How to start: Shortwave is from $30/user/mo, Superhuman is from $12/user/mo billed annually.
- Where they differ: only Shortwave has public api; both offer mobile app and sso (saml).
These lines are generated from the pricing we track, not from a paid placement. How we score tools.
What Shortwave is
What Shortwave isShortwave is an AI-first email client whose pricing is unusual in that the tiers do not unlock features so much as buy a stronger model and a larger daily quota. The vendor names the models directly: Standard is Claude Sonnet 4.6, Advanced adds adaptive thinking, and Expert is Claude Opus 4.6. Every plan is per seat and there is no free tier, only a 14-day trial, so the decision is really about how much AI work you push through your inbox each day and how far back the AI needs to search.
What Superhuman is
What Superhuman isSuperhuman is a keyboard-first email client built around speed, with AI drafting and follow-up reminders. Everything is a keyboard shortcut and the interface is stripped to make triage fast, which is why heavy-volume users pay a premium for it. If your inbox is not the bottleneck in your day, that premium buys nothing.
Side by side
| Shortwave | Superhuman | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Productivity | Productivity |
| How to start | $30/user/moverified | $12/user/moverified |
| Public API | Yes | No |
| Mobile app | Yes | Yes |
| Open source / self-hostable | No | No |
| SSO (SAML) | Yes | Yes |
| Visit | Shortwave ↗ | Superhuman ↗ |
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What Shortwave is built to do
- AI assistant
- Answers questions across your mail using a selectable intelligence level.
- AI-powered filters
- Custom prompts that label, archive, delete or star incoming mail automatically.
- AI search
- Natural-language search across email history, 5 years or unlimited by plan.
What Superhuman is built to do
- Keyboard-first triage
- Runs the whole inbox from shortcuts without touching the mouse.
- Split inboxes
- Separates important mail from newsletters and notifications automatically.
- Follow-up reminders
- Resurfaces sent mail that has not received a reply.
Choose Shortwave if
- People who want AI triage rather than a mail client: even the entry plan includes filters, web browsing and attachment analysis
- Buyers who want to know what they are running — the vendor names the exact model behind each intelligence level
- Heavy searchers: unlimited AI search history and 100 threads per search start at Premier, $45 per seat per month
- Power users automating the inbox, since AI filters go from 3 to 10 to 50 across the three tiers
Skip Shortwave if
- You want to try before paying beyond two weeks — there is no free tier, only a 14-day trial
- Your budget expects mail-client pricing: this starts at $30 per seat per month
- You need heavy daily AI use on the entry plan, which is quoted at roughly 150-300 standard requests a day
- You expect 24/7 workflow automation in the product — that is a separate sister product, Tasklet
Choose Superhuman if
- Teams that want the writing and docs half only: Free covers Grammarly, Docs and Go, and Pro is $12 per member per month billed annually
- Sales-facing inboxes — Business puts HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive records inside the email client
- Organizations consolidating tools, since one subscription now covers email, a writing assistant, docs and an AI agent
- Companies needing SAML SSO, DLP and BYOK encryption, which are the Enterprise tier
Skip Superhuman if
- You came for the email client: Mail is not on Free or Pro — the cheapest plan that includes it is Business at $33 per member per month billed annually ($40 monthly)
- You bill monthly: Pro is $15 and Business $40 per member per month, above the advertised annual rates
- You only wanted a fast inbox and no writing assistant or docs — the suite is sold as a bundle, not as separate products
- You need admin analytics, custom roles or SSO, which move you to a custom-priced Enterprise agreement
Evidence and freshness
Where a claim on this page comes from a vendor page, it is linked here.
Shortwave: pros & cons
- Vendor names the underlying models and quotas openly
- AI search history, filters and context scale with the tier
- 14-day free trial on every plan
- No free plan at any level
- Daily AI usage is a quota, not unlimited
- Entry price is high for a mail client
Superhuman: pros & cons
- Very fast keyboard workflow
- Onboarding session teaches the shortcuts
- Good follow-up and snooze handling
- Expensive per user for an email client
- Gmail and Outlook only
- Benefit depends on email volume
Our verdict on Shortwave
Priced as an AI subscription that happens to include a mail client. Worth it if AI triage is the point; overpriced if you mainly want a nicer inbox.
Our verdict on Superhuman
Real speed gains for heavy senders. Light inboxes will not repay the price.
Published plans, side by side
Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page and is shown with the sentence it came from. Where a vendor publishes no plan prices, we say so rather than guess.
Shortwave
- Business$30/user/mo
Business $30 per seat/month: standard intelligence, full standard search history, 5 years of AI search history, max 50 threads per AI search, 3 AI-powered filters, AI integrations and web browsing, AI autocomplete, summaries and attachment analysis, read statuses, link tracking and snippets
- Premier$45/user/mo
Premier $45 per seat/month: advanced intelligence, 2x more AI usage, unlimited AI search history, max 100 threads per AI search, 10 AI-powered filters, 2x context tokens
- Max$120/user/mo
Max $120 per seat/month: expert intelligence, 6x more AI usage, max 150 threads per AI search, 50 AI-powered filters, 3x context tokens
Superhuman
- Free$0/mo
Free $0: Grammarly, Docs and Go — AI chat across applications, writing correction in 20+ languages, collaborative docs with tables, charts, Kanban boards and forms
- Pro$12/user/mo billed annually
Pro $12 per member/month billed annually, $15 billed monthly: unlimited paragraph rewrites and translations in 15+ languages, AI text detection, brand style, custom domains for docs, unlimited doc size with 30-day version history
- Business$33/user/mo billed annually
Business $33 per member/month billed annually, $40 billed monthly: adds Mail — the Superhuman inbox, AI email writing, HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive inside the inbox, unlimited automations and version history, data sync from Jira, GitHub and Figma
Shortwave vs Superhuman: common questions
- Is Shortwave cheaper than Superhuman?
- Superhuman is the cheaper entry point at $12/user/mo billed annually, against $30/user/mo for Shortwave. Both figures come from the vendors' own pricing pages.
- Does Shortwave or Superhuman have a free plan?
- Shortwave has no free plan listed, while Superhuman publishes a free plan (Free).
- Which is cheaper once you start paying, Shortwave or Superhuman?
- Superhuman has the cheaper first paid step: Pro at $12/user/mo billed annually, against Business at $30/user/mo for Shortwave. Both figures come from the vendors' own pricing pages.
- What is the difference between Shortwave and Superhuman?
- On the criteria we check, only Shortwave has public api; both offer mobile app and sso (saml). The table above lists every criterion side by side.