Updated September 28, 2026 · Prices verified from vendor pricing pages, September 2026 · Affiliate disclosure

Brevo vs Mailchimp, Priced on Two Axes: Contacts Stored Against Emails Sent

The 30-second answer

• Small list, plain campaigns, lowest steady bill: Brevo Starter at $9 a month, or $8.08 a month billed yearly.
• Small list, and you want the cheapest first year: Mailchimp Essentials at $6.50 a month for twelve months — then $13 from month thirteen.
• Large list you email occasionally: Brevo, because the contact count is not what it bills.
• Smaller list you email heavily: Mailchimp, because its send allowance is a multiple of the contact band — 15x on Premium at the smallest band, against 5,000 emails a month on Brevo's entry anchor.
• Free tier: a tie on paper and a difference in shape — Mailchimp caps contacts at 250 with 500 emails a month or 250 a day; Brevo caps sending at 300 emails a day and prints no contact ceiling at all.
• Automation on the entry tier: not on Brevo Starter. Multi-step automation starts at its $18 Standard plan.

Why there is no single comparison table

A comparison table has to price the same unit in every row. These two do not sell the same unit. Mailchimp's price is a function of how many contacts sit in your audience, and the plan then hands back a monthly send allowance of ten, twelve or fifteen times that count. Brevo's published plan price is a function of monthly email volume, and contacts are stored rather than counted — its own entry anchor is stated as 5,000 emails a month.

The practical consequence is that "who is cheaper" has no answer until you say which shape your list is: a large list you mail rarely, or a smaller list you mail often. The two vendors are cheapest for opposite businesses, which is why so many comparisons hedge. Below is what each one actually prints, and where the prints run out.

USD unless stated, read from each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026. The Mailchimp figures are the smallest contact band on the US page; the same page carries twenty bands from 0–500 to 1,000,000+ but renders one plan's price at a time.

Mailchimp's three tiers at 500 contacts, and the year that doubles

Mailchimp's US page publishes something most comparison posts never print: all three paid tiers at the same contact band, each carrying the same promotional rate. At 0–500 contacts the list prices are $13 for Essentials, $20 for Standard and $350 for Premium — and the page halves every one of them for the first twelve months, with the promotion following you if you switch tiers mid-year.

USD, Mailchimp's US pricing page, September 2026. Year totals are the published monthly rate multiplied by twelve; the page states the promotional rate runs for twelve months and the plan "then starts at" the list price. Send allowances are calculated from Mailchimp's own multiplier (10x, 12x, 15x contacts) at the smallest band.

Two things follow. The first is that the promotional year is exactly a half rather than a percentage that varies by tier — 6.50 against 13, 10 against 20, 175 against 350 — so the step in month thirteen is a 100% increase on all three, and the tier you chose does not protect you from it. The second is that at 500 contacts a reader comparing only entry plans is looking at the wrong gap: the $7 difference between Essentials and Standard at list price becomes $7,200 a year between Essentials and Premium, set by limits (three seats, custom reporting, unlimited audiences) rather than by mail volume.

The remaining charges that sit outside these stickers — automatic overages, SMS credits that expire at month end, the contact band that prices its ceiling rather than your count — are mapped line by line in our Mailchimp pricing and hidden costs guide.

What Brevo publishes, in six currencies

Brevo's pricing page carries structured plan data in every billing region it sells into, so unlike Mailchimp's US page the same four plans can be read in all of them at once. Every region shows the same shape: a free tier, three priced tiers, a quote-only Enterprise tier, and about 10% off for prepaying twelve months.

Read from Brevo's own pricing page, September 2026. Currencies are listed as published and never converted. The euro annual total for Professional is not printed on the page — the entry carries a US dollar amount under the euro region, so we record the euro monthly price and leave the annual cell unstated rather than infer it. Starter includes 5,000 emails a month, Standard adds unlimited multi-step automation, A/B testing and web tracking, and Professional is published from 150,000 emails a month with 10 seats.

Two structural notes on that table. Brevo's regional spread is wider than Mailchimp's at the entry tier — $9, €7, £6, CA$10, AU$12, ₹625 for the identical plan — so the currency your account is billed in matters as much as the plan you pick. And the annual rate is a flat 10% shape in every currency: $9 becomes $8.08 a month, £6 becomes £5.42, AU$12 becomes AU$10.83. Brevo's page also prices three add-ons separately, including removing its logo from your emails at $10.80 a month — which is $129.60 a year against a Starter plan that costs $96.96 billed annually.

The three list sizes, and which cells exist

Here is the same question at the three sizes above, printed as published. Empty cells are empty because the vendor does not publish a figure at that size, not because we could not find one.

USD, official pages, September 2026. Mailchimp's page lists its bands explicitly — 0–500, 501–1,500, 1,501–2,500, 2,501–5,000, 5,001–10,000 and on to 1,000,000+ — while rendering one plan price at a time, which is why a static read of the page yields the smallest band only. Brevo's calculator combines contact count and monthly email volume, and no combination of the two is printed in the page.

We are not going to fill those cells with arithmetic. A vendor that prices by contact count and a vendor that prices by send volume cannot be compared at a size where only one of the two inputs is known, and a number we invent here would be the kind of figure that quietly costs someone a year of the wrong plan. If your list is between 2,500 and 10,000, the honest process is two quotes and a calculator run: ask Mailchimp for the band price in writing, and dial your exact send volume into Brevo's tool.

The free tiers are shaped differently, again

Both free plans stop the same list size in practice and stop it in different units. Mailchimp's free plan covers 250 contacts with 500 emails a month or 250 a day, one user and one audience, and its page states that sending pauses when either limit is exceeded rather than billing an overage. Brevo's free plan allows up to 300 emails a day once the account has been approved and prints no contact ceiling at all.

Read those two sentences against your own list: a 600-name list that mails monthly breaks Mailchimp's cap on day one and never touches Brevo's, while a 90-name list sending a campaign every working day breaks Brevo's daily allowance and stays well inside Mailchimp's monthly one. That difference — contacts as the cap versus sends as the cap — is the whole comparison in miniature, and it is the same difference that shows up in the paid tiers. Our read of six vendors' free plans prices what happens after each cap, and Brevo vs MailerLite covers the same volume model against a vendor that does publish its whole ladder.

Who should not switch

• Anyone inside Mailchimp's twelve promotional months. The discount is worth $78 on Essentials, $120 on Standard and $2,100 on Premium at the smallest band. Leaving in month four means paying two vendors to save less than the promotion you already hold.
• Lists built around automations that already run. Brevo's entry tier does not include multi-step automation; that is the $18 Standard plan. Rebuilding flows on a discount-tier plan costs more than the difference in stickers, and it is the single most common way a "cheaper" migration gets abandoned halfway.
• Senders whose volume, not their contact count, is the fixed number. If you email a 4,000-name list four times a month, a volume-priced platform is only cheaper while your send count stays inside its tier. Brevo's page will not tell you where that tier ends until you use the calculator, and a heavy month can move you up one.
• Anyone storing contacts they never mail. Brevo is the better model for this, and it is also the reason a switch in the other direction is expensive: on Mailchimp those dormant names bill at the contact band whether or not they receive anything, and unsubscribed addresses keep counting until each is archived.
• Two-person teams on the free tier. Mailchimp's free plan includes one user seat and one audience. A second person logging in is the upgrade trigger, before a single contact is added.

How we keep these numbers honest

Every figure above comes from the vendor's own page, read in September 2026: Mailchimp's three US tiers at the 0–500 band with its twelve-month promotion, its send multipliers of 10x, 12x and 15x, its seat and audience caps and its footnote that annual plans begin at 10,000 contacts; Brevo's four plans in all six currencies it publishes, its roughly 10% annual rate and its add-on prices. Where a vendor prints nothing at a list size, the cell stays empty and the reason is stated rather than an estimate inserted. If you are still deciding whether to move at all, our Mailchimp alternatives guide prices five more platforms from their official pages; if your list is small enough that the free tiers decide it, the free-plan comparison covers what each cap lets you do; and the list-size cost calculator prices every band we can verify on both billing cycles. Our methodology and affiliate disclosure explain how prices are checked and how the site earns.

Frequently asked questions

Is Brevo cheaper than Mailchimp?

On list price at the smallest band, yes: $9 a month for Brevo Starter against $13 for Mailchimp Essentials, $20 for Standard and $350 for Premium. But Mailchimp's page halves every paid tier for twelve months, so the answer depends on which year you count. Year one Essentials is $78 against Brevo's $96.96 — an $18.96 win for Mailchimp. From month thirteen the same plan bills $156 a year against Brevo's $96.96, a $59.04 win for Brevo on unchanged service.

How does the comparison change at 2,500 or 10,000 subscribers?

Both vendors stop publishing usable numbers. Mailchimp's page lists twenty contact bands but renders one plan's price at a time, so only the 0–500 band can be read; at 1,501–2,500 and 5,001–10,000 contacts nothing is printed. Brevo prices contacts and monthly volume together inside an on-page calculator, so nothing at those sizes is published either. We leave the cells empty and print the two rules instead: Brevo bills the sends, Mailchimp bills the contacts with a send allowance of 10x, 12x or 15x the contact count.

Does Mailchimp charge the same in every region?

The list prices are close but the discounts are not. The US page shows $13, $20 and $350 at 0–500 contacts, each halved for twelve months. The EU page shows €11.43, €17.59 and €307.80 with a promotion of roughly 15% instead. Brevo geo-prices too and publishes the entry tier at $9, €7, £6, CA$10, AU$12 and ₹625, with about the same 10% annual rate in every currency.

Do unsubscribed contacts still count?

On Mailchimp they do, until each address is archived or deleted by hand. Brevo counts sends rather than stored contacts, so a large dormant list carries no fee of its own. Neither vendor lets you lower a bill by tidying the list mid-cycle: Mailchimp prices the ceiling of the contact band you are in, so one name over a boundary moves the whole band.

Which should a small list pick?

Under 250 contacts, neither — both free plans cover that, with different caps. Above it, pick by which limit you expect to hit first: lists you store but rarely mail favour Brevo, and lists you mail often favour Mailchimp, where the send allowance rises with the contact band from 10x on Essentials to 15x on Premium.

Price your own list size →