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Pidgeon vs the Gmail API
The Gmail API is a way into a person’s mailbox; Pidgeon gives the agent one. Seats, OAuth scopes, push notifications and sending limits, compared.
The short version
The first idea most people have for giving an agent email is a Gmail account and the Gmail API. For one agent working inside one person's mailbox, it is the right idea: the mail, the contacts and the history are already there.
It stops fitting when the agent needs an address of its own — or when there are many agents. The Gmail API is a way into a person's mailbox. Pidgeon gives the agent one. Each Pidgeon address is created in one API call, on our domain or yours, without a Google seat, an OAuth consent screen, a Pub/Sub topic or a yearly security assessment.
Choose the Gmail API if the agent works in somebody's existing inbox. Choose Pidgeon if the agent is a correspondent in its own right — or one of hundreds.
At a glance
Google's limits and prices as published on 17 October 2026, in US dollars. Pidgeon in euros.
| Pidgeon | Gmail API with Google Workspace | |
|---|---|---|
| A new address for an agent | One API call; 3 free, 10 for €20 a month | A Workspace user, from $7 a month each; Business plans stop at 300 users |
| A product reading its users' mail | Not what it does | Restricted scopes: app verification and an annual CASA security assessment |
| New mail, in real time | Signed webhook, event stream or WebSocket | A Pub/Sub topic you run, a watch renewed every 7 days, at most 1 event a second |
| Sending | Plan allowance, rising with sender trust | 2,000 messages a day per user, 500 recipients per API message, then up to 24 hours locked |
| MCP server | Hosted, sends and receives | Official server in developer preview; drafts only, a person sends |
| Verification codes and links | Extracted on every message | Your code parses them |
| Thread owner, agent or human | Yes, with assignment events | No |
| Mail that tries to steer the agent | Firewall verdict on every inbound message | Gmail's spam filtering, tuned for people |
| A person reads along | IMAP with an app password, or the Pidgeon inbox | Gmail |
Where Pidgeon is different
An address is an API call, not a seat
Every Workspace mailbox is a paid user, and a service account cannot help: Google's own documentation says service accounts don't have inboxes. Ten agents are ten seats; a product that gives each customer an agent is a seat per customer, and Workspace's acceptable use policy has a clause on reselling accounts as part of a product that is worth reading before you build on it. A Pidgeon address is created, scoped and deleted through the API, and pods keep each customer's addresses apart.
No consent screen, no assessment
Reading or modifying Gmail needs restricted OAuth scopes. An app that stores that data on its servers goes through Google's verification and a security assessment that is revalidated every year; until it is verified it is capped at 100 users, and while it is in testing its refresh tokens expire after 7 days. None of that applies to an address your agent owns: a Pidgeon key is issued by you, scoped by you and revoked by you.
Events that arrive
Gmail push notifications publish to a Cloud Pub/Sub topic you set up, carry only an address and a history id, must be renewed at least every 7 days, and can be delayed or dropped — Google recommends polling as a fallback. Pidgeon posts a signed webhook the moment a message arrives, or streams events over one connection, and keeps a replayable log of every event for 90 days.
Built for the agent reading it
GET /v1/messages/await waits for the next message and returns any verification code or link already extracted. Pidgeon Firewall marks every inbound message with anything that tries to instruct the agent. Threads have an owner, so when a person takes a conversation over the agent knows to stop — see the hand-off guide.
Where the Gmail API is ahead
- The agent works in a person's real mailbox. Triage, drafting replies and summarising years of history need the mailbox that has the history.
- The rest of Google. Calendar, Drive, Contacts, Vault and Workspace retention sit next to the mail.
- An address people already trust. Mail from a person's long-standing address carries its reputation; a new agent address has to earn one.
- Internal agents at a Workspace company. An admin can grant domain-wide delegation without OAuth verification for internal use.
- Draft-then-send. Google's MCP server deliberately leaves sending to a person, which suits some teams exactly.
Which should you choose?
- One agent, inside one person's inbox: the Gmail API.
- An agent with its own address that signs up for things, receives codes and answers mail: Pidgeon.
- Many agents, or one per customer: Pidgeon.
- Both: keep Workspace for your people. Pidgeon can send for your domain while Google keeps receiving its mail, or your agents can live on a subdomain such as
agents.yourcompany.com.
Getting started
The quickstart takes about five minutes; the MCP guide covers Claude Code, Cursor and Codex. Or paste one line into your coding agent:
Read pidgeon.ai/skill.md and get yourself an email address.
We make Pidgeon, so weigh this accordingly. Every claim about Gmail and Google Workspace comes from Google's own developer documentation, help centre, pricing and policy pages, checked on 17 October 2026. We re-check this page every month. If something here is out of date, write to support@pidgeon.ai and we will fix it.