Superhuman has been the premium email category for nearly a decade. They built it. We respect what they built. We also disagree with the underlying bet.
This post is not a hit piece. It is the honest answer to the question we get every week: “how is STAMP different?”
What Superhuman is, in one sentence
Superhuman is a fast, keyboard-driven Gmail client with strong triage primitives (Split Inbox, snooze, follow-up) and a polished, opinionated UX.
If you described it to a 2014 Gmail power user, they would say “yes, please.” That is who built it. That is who pays for it.
What STAMP is, in one sentence
STAMP is a triage-first email client that surfaces the seven threads that matter today across every account, then gets out of your way.
The difference is not in the keyboard layer. Both are fast. The difference is in what you do with the speed.
The bets, side by side
| Dimension | Superhuman | STAMP | | --- | --- | --- | | Primary bet | Keyboard speed makes email faster | Triage makes email shorter | | Main view | Sorted by recency, with splits | Ordered by what matters today | | Account types | Gmail, Outlook | Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, IMAP | | Classification | User-driven splits | On-device automatic tags | | Pricing | $30/month | $8/month, locked | | AI | Cloud-based summaries, drafts | On-device classification, no summaries shipped |
The two pricing numbers are not the main story. The bet is the main story.
The Superhuman bet, taken seriously
Superhuman's bet is that email is a keyboard problem. If you make every action one keystroke, smart users will be three times faster. Three times faster means you spend 20 minutes a day on email instead of 60. Time saved.
This is true. Superhuman users are faster. We have used Superhuman. It is a great keyboard layer.
The limitation: you are still reading every email. You are reading them faster, but you are reading the wrong ones. The 12-emails-a-day world Gmail was built for is the world Superhuman was built for, just at higher RPM.
In the 200-emails-a-day world, faster reading is not enough. The fix is reading less.
The STAMP bet, taken seriously
Our bet is that email is a triage problem. If you accurately surface the seven threads that matter today, the user can ignore the other 193 without anxiety. Time saved.
The keyboard layer matters too. We have it. J/K, R, E, S, the lot. But the speed is in the service of triage, not in place of it.
Where Superhuman wins
We will be honest. Three places Superhuman is better today.
- Polish on send and snippets. Their AI-assisted reply drafting is more mature than ours.
- Read receipts. They invented the modern flow. We do not currently match it.
- Brand recognition. When a recruiter asks “what email client do you use,” saying “Superhuman” is a known signal. STAMP is new.
If those three are decisive for you, Superhuman is the right choice today.
Where STAMP wins
Three places we are confident we are better.
- Triage across multiple accounts. Superhuman supports multiple accounts; the triage layer is per-account. STAMP's is unified.
- Privacy. On-device classification, no email leaves your machine for processing. Superhuman's AI features run cloud-side.
- Price lock. $8 forever vs $30/month. The math is not subtle.
If those three are decisive for you, STAMP is the right choice today.
Who should pick which
Pick Superhuman if you are a power user with one or two Gmail-based accounts, you want a polished mature product today, and price is not a factor.
Pick STAMP if you have three or more accounts, you care about on-device privacy, you want the inbox to do the triage for you, or $8 vs $30 matters.
Plenty of people will be at the boundary of both. We meet them often. They usually try us in early access and decide based on the unified inbox piece.
The thing we steal from each other
We are not pretending the two products do not converge over time. Every successful keyboard email client will eventually add triage. Every triage client will eventually add good keyboard nav. The question is who got to which problem first and who designed the right primitives.
We think triage is the harder design problem. Keyboard speed is mostly engineering. Triage is opinion plus engineering.
The hard part of an email client is having an opinion about what matters.
A note on AI
Both products use machine learning. The implementations differ.
Superhuman uses cloud LLMs for summaries, draft generation, and instant reply suggestions. Powerful, well integrated, has a privacy posture you will have to evaluate.
STAMP uses small on-device models for classification. Less flashy, slower for some tasks, no email content leaves your machine. We made that tradeoff deliberately. We think it is the right one for a primary email client. More on the technical side here.
The honest closing
Both products want the same user: the knowledge worker who is tired of email. Both products are paid. Both are opinionated. We are not trying to convince you Superhuman is bad. We are trying to convince you that triage is the harder, more important problem.
Try STAMP free during early access. If it is not for you, Superhuman is a quality product and we will not be offended.
Where to go from here
If you want the broader category review, best macOS email clients in 2026. If you want the philosophical argument, why we built STAMP instead of forking Mailspring.
See for yourself. hello@stamp.email