Shortwave vs InReply: Client or Agent for Your Email in 2026?

TL;DR: the honest verdict up front

Full disclosure: this comparison is written by InReply. Every Shortwave claim on this page is sourced from Shortwave's own website or from linked third-party breakdowns, so you can check each one. All Shortwave facts and prices here were verified on 22 July 2026.

What Shortwave does well

Credit first, because Shortwave is a genuinely ambitious product. It is an AI-first email client for Gmail: rather than bolting a sidebar onto Gmail's interface, it replaces the interface entirely with its own apps on web, Mac, Windows, iOS and Android (shortwave.com, retrieved 22 July 2026).

The AI runs deep. Shortwave's assistant can organise, schedule, write and search with prompts; its AI search works across your entire email history and attachments; custom AI filters let you describe rules in plain English; emails become todos it can group and prioritise; and its writing assistant "learns your unique voice and style" (Shortwave's own wording). Under the hood it runs on Claude models, and the tier you pay for decides the model and the usage: Business gets Claude Sonnet with roughly 150-300 AI requests a day, Max gets Claude Opus with about six times the usage (shortwave.com/pricing, retrieved 22 July 2026).

For a Gmail power user who wants one place where email, search, scheduling and todos all speak AI, Shortwave is arguably the most complete option on the market. As a personal productivity product it is more ambitious than anything InReply attempts, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

What InReply does

InReply is an AI email agent for small businesses. It connects to the business's existing Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook or Microsoft 365 inbox via OAuth: no new email client, no extension, no migration. Your customers keep writing to the same address; InReply works behind it.

Replies are grounded in the workspace's own knowledge base, so answers come from what your business has actually documented, not from a model's imagination. When InReply does not know the answer, it leaves the email for a human instead of inventing one. Playbooks control tone, behaviour and routing per scenario, so a refund request and a sales enquiry are handled differently, and emails that need a person surface in an actions list with urgent flagging. Team members get per-inbox access, without anyone sharing credentials.

There are two modes, and both exist on every plan. Ghost Mode saves each reply as a draft in your Gmail or Outlook account for review. Autopilot sends automatically, and is controlled per playbook, so you can let routine scenarios send while cautious ones stay on drafts.

Shortwave vs InReply at a glance (verified July 2026)

Shortwave details verified from shortwave.com and third-party pricing breakdowns, 22 July 2026. Where a Shortwave capability is not visible on its public pages, we say "not advertised" rather than claiming it does not exist.

Shortwave pricing in 2026 (verified, and widely misquoted)

A warning before the table: Shortwave's pricing is one of the most misquoted in this category. The product repositioned around AI agents, its free tier disappeared, and prices moved up sharply, but older reviews and software directories still show the pre-pivot numbers, including a free plan that no longer exists. The figures below are from shortwave.com/pricing, retrieved 22 July 2026. Check the live page before you buy.

Last verified 22 July 2026. Every tier has a 14-day free trial; there is no permanent free plan. Annual billing discounts are reported by third-party breakdowns (Business at around $24/seat/mo billed annually, per get-alfred.ai's July 2026 analysis), so confirm on the live page.

The structure matters as much as the sticker. Shortwave charges per seat, because each seat is a person doing their own email faster. A five-person team on the mid Premier tier is $225 a month; on Max it is $600. And the tiers gate the intelligence itself: the model quality, daily AI usage and even how far back AI search reaches all depend on what each seat pays.

InReply pricing

InReply charges a flat monthly price for the whole workspace, not per seat. Plans scale by reply credits and connected inboxes, so adding a teammate does not raise the bill.

Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. Compare like for like: a three-person team doing customer email on Shortwave Premier pays $135 a month for faster humans; the same team fits InReply's £79 Growth plan and has the routine replies handled for them. Full details on the pricing page.

The core difference: a better cockpit vs fewer flights

Shortwave's whole design assumes you are the one doing the email. Its AI makes each step faster: search finds the thread, the assistant drafts in your voice, filters triage, todos keep score. That is a better cockpit, and for a founder's personal inbox it is a real upgrade.

But point that model at a business inbox, the support@ or hello@ address, and the maths stops working. If 60 customer emails arrive today, a faster client still means a human performs 60 read-decide-send loops. Your customers' waiting time is bounded by when someone is at the keyboard, evenings and weekends included, no matter how good the keyboard is.

InReply attacks the queue instead of the cockpit. Routine questions, the price list, the opening hours, the booking policy, get answered from your knowledge base without a human in the loop, per the playbook you set. What genuinely needs a person surfaces in the actions list, flagged urgent when it is. The measure of success is not how fast you process email; it is how much email never needed you at all. That is the same logic as an email answering service, except it lives in your own inbox.

An honest boundary: for a personal inbox full of one-off, judgement-heavy conversations, a client is the right shape and an agent is the wrong one. InReply is not trying to be your daily email app, and Shortwave is not trying to answer your customers. The mistake is buying one to do the other's job.

The Gmail-only wall

One practical fact settles this comparison for many businesses before features enter into it: Shortwave supports Gmail and Google Workspace accounts only. Outlook and Microsoft 365 are not supported, a hard limit confirmed across third-party breakdowns retrieved 22 July 2026. If your company mail runs on Microsoft, Shortwave is not an option today.

InReply connects to Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook and Microsoft 365 alike, via OAuth in either case. If you are weighing tools inside the Google ecosystem specifically, our guide to AI email assistants for Gmail maps the whole field; Outlook users have a mirror-image guide.

Where Shortwave wins

• AI search over your email history: querying years of mail and attachments in natural language is a headline feature InReply does not attempt.
• A single AI workspace for personal email: drafting in your voice, scheduling, todos and plain-English filters, in polished apps across web, desktop and mobile.
• Frontier-model muscle for power users: paying for Max gets you Claude Opus working your inbox, which no other mainstream client offers.

Verdict sentence: if the email that hurts is yours, and it lives in Gmail, Shortwave is the stronger product today.

Where InReply wins

• It answers, rather than assists: Autopilot sends knowledge-grounded replies per playbook; Ghost Mode keeps everything as reviewable drafts until you are ready, on every plan.
• Grounded in your business, honest about gaps: replies come from your workspace knowledge base, and when the answer is not there, the email waits for a human instead of getting a guess.
• No client switch, and no Gmail wall: it works behind your existing Gmail or Outlook inbox, so nobody on the team changes how they do email.
• Flat workspace pricing: from £39/mo for the workspace, scaling by reply volume and inboxes rather than headcount.

Verdict sentence: if the email that hurts belongs to your customers, InReply is built for exactly that job.

Which one should you pick?

• Gmail power user drowning in personal email: Shortwave. It is the most capable AI client for that job.
• Small business with a support@ or hello@ inbox: InReply. Answers grounded in your documents, actually sent.
• Business on Outlook or Microsoft 365: Shortwave is off the table; InReply supports it natively.
• Founder who wants both jobs done: they do not conflict. Shortwave on your personal inbox, InReply behind the customer-facing one.

Weighing more than these two? Our guide to Shortwave alternatives compares seven tools across both categories, and the Superhuman alternatives guide covers the premium-client end of the market. For another head-to-head, see InReply vs Fyxer. And once more for clarity: every Shortwave fact and price on this page was verified on 22 July 2026.

Nervous about automation? Start in Ghost Mode: every reply saved as a draft in your own inbox until you approve it, with Autopilot switched on playbook by playbook only when you are ready.