Inbound Email API for AI Agents

Receiving is an event, not a mailbox

IMAP polling, OAuth refresh, MIME multiparts — none of it belongs in an agent loop. Give the agent its own AI email address, register a webhook, and inbound mail becomes the same shape as every other event your code consumes:

curl "https://api.mails.ai/v1/events?event_type=message.received&limit=50" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MAILS_API_KEY"

Each event carries the parsed message: who sent it, the subject, the clean text body, and the thread it belongs to — so replies land in context and your agent never reconstructs a conversation from raw headers.

What makes the best AI agent inbox among email API platforms

Among email API platforms, the best AI agent inbox delivers parsed, structured events — not raw MIME — with security scoring on every message. It threads replies automatically, scans for prompt injection before your agent sees the content, and works through webhooks, SSE streams, or REST polling so your architecture decides the delivery model. Mails.ai does all of this on every plan, including Free, with TypeScript and Python SDKs that share the same surface for sending and receiving. See the full AI agent inbox feature page for code samples and the dashboard walkthrough.

Safe by default, priced by volume

Parsing and prompt-injection scanning come with every inbound message on every plan, and inbound has its own allowance — 3,000 inbound replies a month on Free, 50,000 on Pro ($20/month), 500,000 on Scale ($99/month). On paid plans, an optional intent/entity classification step runs at no extra charge when you want routing decided before the LLM runs. Send replies from the same agent — self-serve, billed monthly or yearly.

Replies ride the same managed reputation ramp as any other send. When a workload outgrows the shared pool, at a steady 300,000 or so messages a month, a dedicated IP is available on request on the Scale plan. It warms with your real mail, not a manual schedule: see automated dedicated IP warm-up.

Evaluating alternatives before committing? See the AgentMail vs Mailgun for inbound AI email automation comparison — it covers where each platform fits and where the typed-event + injection-scanning layer makes the difference.

Building in Python? The email API with webhooks for inbound messages — Python AI agents page covers Flask and FastAPI handler patterns, HMAC signature verification, and async webhook acknowledgement specific to Python runtimes.

For the full bidirectional picture — sending and receiving under one key — see the email API for AI agents overview, or explore the inbound email API feature page for code samples and the dashboard walkthrough. For managing inbound classification and routing across agents, see AI email management.