The Best Email Archiver for Mac, Picked by What You Need

There is no single best email archiver for Mac. The right one depends on where your mail lives today and how you want to read it in ten years. In short: Mail Archiver X for a dedicated archive of several mail apps, MailVault to keep provider accounts as plain files for free, and Thunderbird with ImportExportTools NG for a free open source setup. This page compares seven tools that run on current macOS, by use case, with prices and limits taken from each vendor's own site. MailVault is our app and is on the list once, with its limits. If you first want to understand archiving itself, formats and how to check an archive, read our guide to email archiving for Mac.

How we judged them

• Storage format. Plain .eml or mbox files open in other apps for years. A private database can search faster but ties you to one app, so we check whether it exports.
• Search. Can you find a message from 2014 by a word in its body or attachment?
• Sources. Does it read from your provider (Gmail, Outlook.com, iCloud, IMAP), from a desktop app's local store, or both?
• Automation. An archive that needs you to remember is an archive that goes stale.
• Price and licence. One-time, subscription or free, and what happens to access if you stop paying.
• Open source. Whether you can read the code that handles your mail.
• Apple Silicon. Native, or relying on Rosetta 2.

The seven tools side by side

Last checked: October 2026. Prices in US dollars before tax, from each vendor's site. Check current pricing on their sites before you buy.

The picks, by use case

1. Mail Archiver X: best dedicated archive of several mail apps

Moth Software's Mail Archiver X (version 8.2.4, September 2026) pulls mail from Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Postbox, IMAP accounts including Gmail and iCloud, and mbox files into one archive with simple and filtered search across sender, subject, body and attachments. It can export to mbox and to PDF, which is handy when someone needs a readable record without the app. This is the most complete pure archiver on the list, and the one to pick if your mail is spread over several desktop apps.

Watch out for: the archive lives in the app's own internal database, so plan to export if you ever leave. The standard licence is $49.95. The Pro server edition is a yearly subscription, and without a current Pro licence the app can still show your mail but cannot archive or export. An Easy edition is capped at 10,000 emails per archive and has no scheduling.

2. MailVault: best free way to keep provider accounts as plain files

MailVault is a free mail app for macOS, Windows and Linux that keeps a copy of your mail on your computer as one .eml file per message in Maildir-style folders. It signs in to Gmail and Microsoft 365 on their own pages, connects personal Outlook.com through Microsoft Graph and handles any IMAP account, including iCloud. There is no MailVault account and no MailVault server in the path of your mail. Search runs on a local index, offline, and in our published test the slowest search across 50,000 messages took 14 milliseconds. Manual backups are free and unlimited, and the vault can be exported as mbox.

Watch out for: MailVault archives from accounts, not from another app's local store, so mail that only exists in Apple Mail's On My Mac folders has to be exported as mbox and imported. The default backup covers only mail already in your vault; switch What to back up to All emails for a full copy. Scheduled backups, backup health counts, one-step Archive & Delete and search inside PDF and Office attachments are Premium ($4 a month or $25 a year at the early-access price for the first 100 subscribers; $6 or $39 after). On Outlook.com accounts, restoring an mbox file to the server and recovering deleted mail to the server are not available yet. MailVault is in early access.

3. Thunderbird with ImportExportTools NG: best free, fully open source setup

Thunderbird is free and open source, and Mozilla says current versions run natively on Apple Silicon. Out of the box it stores each folder as one mbox file; a file-per-message store exists, but Mozilla still calls it experimental. The ImportExportTools NG add-on (GPL-3.0, for Thunderbird 140 to 157) exports messages as EML, HTML, PDF, CSV or plain text, exports folders and subfolders as mbox, and can back up your whole profile on a schedule at shutdown. If you already read mail in Thunderbird, this costs nothing and keeps everything in open formats.

Watch out for: it is a do-it-yourself archive. For IMAP accounts Thunderbird mirrors the server, so the archive is only as complete as your last export or profile backup. See MailVault vs Thunderbird for a closer look.

4. MailSteward: best searchable database of Apple Mail or Gmail

MailSteward (version 18.2.2, released September 2026) copies mail from Apple Mail accounts and Gmail into a relational database on your Mac. It comes in three editions: Lite ($24.95, without saved searches or export), standard ($49.95) and Pro ($99.95, built for enterprise-scale archives and needing a MySQL server). The vendor says it is tuned for Apple Silicon, it needs macOS 12 or later, and a free version handles up to 15,000 emails, which is a fair way to test it.

Watch out for: sources are limited to Apple Mail and Gmail, and the archive is a database, so check the export options of the edition you buy.

5. EagleFiler: best for mail and documents in one library

C-Command's EagleFiler (version 1.9.22, October 2026) is a general archive for mail, web pages, PDFs and other files. It converts mail from Apple Mail, Outlook, .eml and other formats to standard mbox, and keeps its library as regular files and folders that other apps can open. Its live search covers messages and attachments. If you want an invoice email next to the PDF and the web page that go with it, nothing else here does that. There is a 30-day trial; a licence is $69.99.

Watch out for: it works from mail you already have in Apple Mail, Outlook or files; the vendor does not describe downloading straight from a provider. C-Command says EagleFiler currently relies on Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon and expects to be fully native before macOS 28.

6. Apple Mail Export Mailbox: best one-off copy, nothing to install

In Mail, select one or more mailboxes and choose Mailbox > Export Mailbox. Apple says the result is in mbox format, and a later export never overwrites an earlier one; it creates a new numbered file. It is free and already on your Mac. It is not an archiver: there is no schedule, and to read an export you import it back into a mail app.

7. Got Your Back (GYB): best for Gmail from Terminal

GYB is an open source (Apache-2.0) command-line tool that backs up Gmail and Google Workspace accounts to a folder on your computer through Gmail's API, and can restore mbox and .eml files to an account. It installs on macOS with a script and, being a command-line tool, fits into your own scripts. It covers Google accounts only, and everything runs in Terminal.

Not on the list: MailStore Home, a popular free archiver, is Windows only. MailStore lists Windows 10 and Windows 11 as the supported systems. If you are coming from it, see MailStore alternatives compared.

Frequently asked questions

What to do next

Pick the row in the table that matches where your mail lives, try that tool on one account, and open a few archived messages outside it before you trust it. Our IMAP backup tool checklist lists what to test. If MailVault fits, it is a free download with no account to create.

Related: email archiving for Mac, step by step, archiving IMAP email locally, MailVault's offline search and Free and Premium compared.