Yahoo Mail vs. Gmail: Which should you use? [2026]

Gmail and Yahoo Mail (a.k.a. Yahoo! Mail a.k.a. Ymail) are two of the biggest email providers. While the stats are hard to verify and seldom updated, Google's Gmail is reportedly responsible for over a third of opened emails and has 3 billion active users, while the partially Verizon-owned Yahoo Mail—despite launching in 1997—apparently has around 225 million active users per month. Whatever way you slice it, they both serve huge numbers of people. But what about you? If you're setting up a new email account, which one should you choose?

I'll admit to some nostalgia for Yahoo, which was my introduction to the entire concept of email back in the '90s. But like a lot of people, I switched to Gmail a decade later and never looked back. So I was curious to see how Yahoo has evolved over the years, and as it turns out, they've been busy: they cut storage by 98%, gave the app a major facelift, and—in one of the more head-turning tech collabs of the year—hired Cardi B to promote a new AI feature.

For this article, I set up fresh accounts with both Yahoo and Gmail to understand what the experience is like for new users. After spending time comparing the latest features of each app, here's how the Yahoo versus Gmail showdown looks.

Table of contents:

• Gmail vs. Yahoo at a glance

• Both Gmail and Yahoo handle the basics of sending emails

• Gmail offers more extras and integrations, including all the other Google apps

• Gmail is ahead on AI

• Both apps charge for extra storage, but Google gives you more for your money

• Gmail has a better security record

Ymail vs. Yahoo Mail

Before diving in, let's clear one thing up: Yahoo Mail isn't called Ymail. Some older email addresses used @ymail.com, and ymail.com still opens Yahoo Mail, but the company has moved away from the branding. Now, it's all about Yahoo Mail, and if you set up a new email account with Yahoo, you'll get an @yahoo.com email address. 

To clear two things up: it really is just Gmail, not Google Mail.

Gmail vs. Yahoo at a glance

Whether you go for Gmail or Yahoo, you'll get some pros and cons. Check out the table below for a quick comparison, or read on to get into the details.

One last note before diving in: any conversation about email gets complicated because there are two sides of it:

• Email services do the sending and receiving of email behind the scenes.

• Email clients are the apps you use to send and read your email. 

Both Gmail and Yahoo Mail are email services that also have email clients. But you can use any other email app you want—Outlook, Apple Mail, you name it—to check your Yahoo Mail or Gmail email.

If you really want, you could even use the Gmail client to check your Yahoo Mail account or the Yahoo Mail client to check your Gmail account (don't do that). For the purposes of this comparison, I'm assuming that you'll use both the relevant email service and its client app (or at least a third-party app that you love). It's the simplest way to get the best email experience where everything works smoothly, rather than battling your way through.

Both Gmail and Yahoo handle the basics of sending emails

For better or worse, most email apps are pretty similar. They allow you to send and receive emails, do their best to filter out spam, and generally fade into the background. When things are working well, you really shouldn't notice whether you're using Gmail or Yahoo Mail—you should just be sending and checking your email. 

Both Gmail and Yahoo Mail nail the basics. Despite being decades old, they've kept with the times and still feel like modern email clients. The web apps are fast and easy to use, the mobile apps work well on both iOS and Android, and they each have some neat extra features—like automatically sorting your emails into categories or making it easy to unsubscribe from marketing emails.

Gmail wins on the feature front with things like scheduled sending, confidential messages, and smart replies—though if you only want a basic email app, you can easily ignore them all. Certainly, if you're one of the 200-odd million people who rely on Yahoo Mail every month, you aren't going to get a radically different email experience by switching to Gmail, but you'll probably find some of the extra features useful.

Both apps have ads. Gmail's ads are far less obtrusive, partly because they're entirely text-based and partly because you won't see them at all unless you head over to your Promotions or Social inboxes.

Yahoo Mail's ads are far more aggressive. There's a text-based ad and a full sidebar ad in the inbox, plus a banner ad that shows up after you click to read your email.

Does it affect the user experience? Definitely. The most egregious example is the full-width video ad you have to scroll past just to reach your email.

Yahoo Mail is now majority-owned by a private equity group, so I can't say I'm surprised by the instinct to put ads everywhere—particularly if the end goal is to nudge users to sign up for a $5/month Yahoo Mail Plus subscription.

Gmail offers more extras and integrations, including all the other Google apps

Email services rarely stand on their own. They're just one part of ecosystems that include calendars, contact management, notes and documents apps, storage, and lots more. And this is where Gmail really stands out. 

Not only is Gmail an excellent email service, but Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Photos, and Google Drive are all best in class as well. And while you can sign up for a Google account without signing up for Gmail, you miss out on some great features.

When you need to attach a large file to an email, for example, it automatically gets uploaded to your Google Drive, and a link is added to your email. Or when someone emails you a Google Docs link, there's a little button to click to open it directly from Gmail. You can also send an email to someone to schedule Google Meet calls and Google Calendar events based on your availability. Google Calendar, Google Keep (a notes app), and Google Tasks (a to-do list app) are available in the sidebar straight from Gmail, so you can keep your life nicely organized. With Gmail, there are dozens of these handy features that make your email app less something you have to go out of your way to manage, and more a part of your regular work and personal life.

Gmail also integrates with Zapier, which means you can connect it to thousands of other apps outside of the Google ecosystem. For example, you can automatically save Gmail attachments to cloud storage, turn starred emails into tasks, or send a Slack notification whenever a VIP client emails you. You can even use Gmail from your AI assistant—asking it to draft a reply, summarize a long thread, triage your inbox by priority, or send a follow-up email on your behalf, all without opening Gmail directly. Learn more about how to automate Gmail.

Yahoo has some similar ideas, but the execution is off. Yahoo Calendar, for example, is a poor purple imitation of Google Calendar. Yahoo's notes app is barebones, basic, and in the process of being shut down. The contacts app is a bit better, but it hardly makes a strong case for Yahoo Mail overall. And most damningly of all, if you want to send a large file using Yahoo Mail, you can't. You'll need to sign up for a cloud storage service like Google Drive, upload the file you want to send, and then add the link to your email. This is pretty poor form, especially since Yahoo Mail used to allow you to send files with Dropbox or, yes, Google Drive.

Gmail is ahead on AI

Google is implementing loads of Gemini AI features that allow you to do things like summarize email threads, ask questions based on the data in your inbox, and have AI draft entire emails.

Some of these features are available on free Gmail plans, including drafting emails and summarizing threads. On the fresh Gmail account that I created for testing, I clicked a button labeled "Help me write" and generated a gym membership cancellation email instantly. (A pretty good use case for AI, I might add.)

Other features are only available to users who pay for a Google AI plan, which makes sense given all the tokens these activities can burn. The most visible of these paid-only features is Ask Gemini, which shows up as a sidebar within Gmail and has the full context of your inbox at its disposal.

I have access to Ask Gemini through Google AI Plus on my main Gmail account. I can't say I use it regularly, but it's handy for pulling together scattered info—like flights, hotels, and package delivery dates—that would otherwise take several searches to track down.

Yahoo Mail has added AI features as well, including the ability to generate, rewrite, and summarize messages. The most innovative is Planner—yes, the one with the Cardi B ad campaign—which automatically pulls appointments, deadlines, and other actionable items from your email and adds them to a calendar and to-do list.

Still, Yahoo Mail is missing a Gemini-style AI assistant that has full inbox context. And in my experience, the other AI features it offers are generally less capable and buggier than Gmail's. For example, during my testing, I spent minutes waiting for Yahoo's AI email summary to load. (It never did.)

Both apps charge for extra storage, but Google gives you more for your money

Yahoo Mail once offered unlimited storage, before cutting it in 2013 to a still-generous 1 TB of space. In 2025, to the vocal frustration of long-time users, Yahoo dropped storage by a staggering 98% to 20 GB. (One user protested, "My mom made me my email as a child in the 90s. I have over 350,000 emails to sort through.")

Gmail offers slightly less storage, at 15 GB, and it has to be shared among Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Photos. If you hit Gmail's limit, you'll need to pay for Google One, the company's storage subscription service. You can get 100 GB of space for $1.99/month, or 200 GB of space for $2.99/month. 

If you need more than that, you can sign up for one of Google's AI plans to get additional storage and embed Gemini AI features into Gmail. Google AI Plus includes 400 GB of storage for $4.99/month, or you can opt for 2 TB of storage for $9.99/month. Google AI Pro, at $19.99/month, gives you 5 TB of storage and even more AI features.

Yahoo offers a premium email plan called Yahoo Mail Plus for $5/month. It gets you 200 GB of storage, an ad-free email experience, and a few extra email features. But if you're going to pay $60/year for email, there are much better options. 

You can also buy storage-only plans with Yahoo, including $1.99/month for 100 GB of storage or $9.99/month for 1 TB of storage. Unfortunately, these don't include Yahoo Mail Plus's ad-free benefit or extra features.

Gmail has a better security record

Yahoo has the unique dishonor of having the largest discovered data breach. In two separate attacks in 2013 and 2014 (though only disclosed in 2016), hackers accessed data from all three billion Yahoo accounts. This included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, security questions and answers, dates of birth, and more. The attackers were likely able to use faked web cookies to log in to any account. 

While Google has also suffered data breaches—including one that exposed private data from more than 50 million Google+ users—its security record is generally better.

Really, if you reuse a terrible password, someone can probably get into your account whatever email service you use. But for the most part, Google has historically done a better job than Yahoo at keeping user data secure—at least as far as we know. 

Thankfully, passwords are on the way out. Google and Yahoo have already enabled passkey support, where account authentication is handled using public-key cryptography instead of a password.

Gmail vs. Yahoo Mail: Which should you use?

If you have a Yahoo Mail email address and are happy with it, then there's no need to rush out and change to Gmail—though you will get a lot more features, some of which you might find incredibly useful. On the other hand, if you're setting up a new email address right now, Gmail is an overwhelming winner.

Yahoo has tinkered with its email product recently, and it now has a much-needed facelift and even a handful of AI features. But with its obtrusive ads and lack of support for large uploads, the only real reason to choose it was its massive 1 TB of storage—and that's gone now.

Of course, if you're switching from Yahoo Mail and you really don't want to use a Google product, there are other email options too. I'd suggest checking out Proton Mail as a solid Gmail alternative.

Related reading:

• The best email apps

• Gmail vs. Apple Mail: Which should you use for your inbox?

• How to mass delete emails on Gmail

This article was originally published in October 2022 by Harry Guinness. The most recent update was in October 2026.