The short version
Google Workspace is where most startups put their company email: a Gmail inbox for each person, priced per user. Pidgeon is company email for you, your team and your AI agents, priced for the workspace rather than per person, and built so that an agent has an address of its own.
The difference that matters is the agent. In Workspace today, an agent reaches mail through a person. Gemini works inside your inbox with your access; an app connected over OAuth reads the inbox of whoever signed in; a service account with domain-wide delegation impersonates a user. An account with an inbox of its own needs a licence, and Google says an account is meant for one person. Google has announced Gemini "coworker agents" with their own Workspace account and email address, and says they are not publicly available yet.
On Pidgeon, an agent gets its own address in one call, with a key that reaches only that address, on every plan, today.
At a glance
As published on 1 November 2026. Google's prices are its euro list prices for the annual plan, excluding tax.
| Pidgeon | Google Workspace | |
|---|---|---|
| How it is priced | Per workspace, unlimited inboxes: a free plan, then €20 a month for up to 10 team members | Per user: €6.80 (Business Starter), €13.60 (Standard) or €21.10 (Plus) a user a month |
| An agent with its own inbox | Yes, in one call, on every plan | A licensed account; coworker agents with their own address are announced, not publicly available |
| How an agent reaches mail | Its own address, and a key scoped to it | Gemini inside a person's inbox; OAuth as the person who signed in; domain-wide delegation impersonating a user |
| A person checks before it goes | First contact and risky threads wait for a person to approve | Gemini in Gmail makes changes only after you confirm |
| Mail kept in the EU | Stored and processed in the EU, on every plan | At rest, with Data Regions, on Business Standard and above; processing in the region on Enterprise Data Regions; none on Business Starter |
| Training on your mail | Never on the content of your mail | Google's terms: no training of its generative AI models on customer data without the customer's permission or instruction |
| Sending | A monthly allowance for the workspace, from 3,000 emails on Free | 2,000 messages a day for each user account |
| Reading mail from your own app | The API, SDKs and MCP server, with a key | Gmail API restricted scopes: Google's verification and a yearly security assessment; 100 new users until verified |
Where Pidgeon is different
An agent gets its own address
An agent on Pidgeon has its own inbox and its own key, so it never borrows a person's login, and a person never hands over their inbox to let it work. Make the address in one call, or let Claude or ChatGPT make it when you add Pidgeon to them. The key reaches that address and nothing else.
In Workspace, Google's own help pages describe each road an agent can take, and every one of them runs through a person: Gemini's access matches the user's; an OAuth app acts as the user who signed in; and a service account with domain-wide delegation calls the API "as users in your Workspace domain". Google's best-practice page warns that delegation lets apps access users' data "bypassing end user consent".
Priced for the team, not for each head
Workspace charges for every user, and every account with an inbox needs a licence. Pidgeon prices the workspace, with unlimited inboxes on every plan: the €20 plan covers up to 10 team members, and an agent's address is not a person's seat. The plans are on the pricing page.
People and agents in the same place, with a person in charge
Every conversation has an owner — a person or an agent — and handing it over is one call. An agent's first email to someone new can wait for a person to approve, and a reply on a thread that had suspicious mail always does. Every inbound message is read first by Pidgeon Firewall, which names hidden instructions before an agent reads them.
In the EU by default
Pidgeon stores and processes your mail in the EU on every plan, free included. In Workspace, data regions keep Gmail at rest in the EU from Business Standard up; keeping its processing in the region needs Enterprise Data Regions, and Business Starter has no data regions.
Mail that says an agent wrote it
Every email an agent sends through Pidgeon carries an Article 50-ready disclosure: headers that say an AI agent wrote it and whom it acts for, signed with Pidgeon's key, which anyone can check at pidgeon.ai/verify.
Where Workspace is the better choice
Workspace is an office suite, not only email: documents, storage, meetings and calendars for every person, with Gemini built into them. If your team already lives in it, that is a reason to keep it, and Pidgeon does not replace it.
Use both
Keep Workspace for your people, and give your agents addresses on Pidgeon on a subdomain such as agents.yourcompany.com. Your team's inboxes stay where they are; your agents get addresses of their own, a person in charge of each conversation, and mail kept in the EU.
Sources
All read on 1 November 2026.
- Google Workspace, pricing (Ireland): euro list prices, annual plan, excluding tax.
- Google Workspace Admin Help, how licensing works and avoid sharing an account among users.
- Google Cloud blog, Welcome to Gemini at Work 2026 (8 October 2026) and What the Gemini agent means for startups (16 October 2026).
- Gmail Help, Gemini in Gmail, and Google Workspace Help, Gemini and your data.
- Google for Developers, Gmail API scopes, restricted scope verification and service accounts; Google Cloud Help, unverified apps.
- Google Workspace Admin Help, domain-wide delegation best practices.
- Google Workspace Admin Help, data covered by data regions and data region features by edition.
- Google Workspace, Service Specific Terms, §12.11, Training Restriction.
- Google Workspace Admin Help, Gmail sending limits.