Software profile Email and inbox
Shortwave
Shortwave is a Gmail-only AI client built around search and AI threads: it indexes your whole Gmail history and answers questions about it. It is the strongest AI layer in this class and the most expensive mainstream option at 30 USD per seat and month.
- From
- €27.60
- Free plan
- No
- Trial
- 14 days
Best for
Google Workspace teams that want the best AI search over years of mail and can accept US processing
Strengths / Weaknesses
Strengths
- AI search over the full Gmail archive is genuinely better than anything else here, it answers questions rather than matching keywords
- AI threads let you ask follow-up questions about a conversation inside the client
- States that most AI workloads run on hardware it controls and that only OpenAI, Anthropic, Pinecone and Google Cloud are used
- Explicit commitment that mail content is never used to train third-party models
Weaknesses
- Gmail and Google Workspace only, Microsoft 365 and Exchange are not supported
- Data is stored in Google Cloud and the privacy policy says personal data is transferred to facilities and servers in the United States, with no EU data residency option
- No DPA or sub-processor list is published, the security page tells GDPR customers to contact sales
- Most expensive of the mainstream options, three times the price of Spark Plus
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Unit | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business | Price on request | per seat / month | 30 USD per seat per month, converted at 1 USD = 0.92 EUR |
| Premier | Price on request | per seat / month | 45 USD per seat per month, converted at 1 USD = 0.92 EUR |
| Max | Price on request | per seat / month | 120 USD per seat per month, converted at 1 USD = 0.92 EUR |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Verdict
If your mail lives in Google Workspace and you measure an AI client by how well it finds and summarises things, Shortwave wins on merit and it is not close. The cost is jurisdiction: the mail sits in US data centres, the DPA is a sales conversation rather than a document, and the published sub-processor information is prose on a docs page. For a buyer whose lawyer signs off first, that is the deal breaker. For everyone else it is the best AI email product on the market.
Other Email and inbox software
Where we write about it
Where these numbers come from
- [1] Shortwave pricing accessed 2026-11-11
- [2] Shortwave security and privacy accessed 2026-11-11
- [3] Shortwave privacy policy accessed 2026-11-11
- [4] Use Shortwave with other email providers accessed 2026-11-11