Home › Guides › Kit vs Mailchimp
Updated October 1, 2026 · Prices verified from vendor pricing pages, September–October 2026 · Affiliate disclosure
Both vendors price by subscriber count, and both lead with a free plan — but the two free plans end at different universes. Kit's free tier covers up to 10,000 subscribers, with unlimited sends, unlimited landing pages and forms, on one user seat, per its own pricing page. Mailchimp's free tier stops at 250 contacts with 500 email sends a month, and Mailchimp pauses sending when the cap is crossed. Forty times the ceiling, on the same $0. The first-paid-year table shows what the gap is worth at the three list sizes this site prices everywhere:
| Subscribers | Kit, published bill | Mailchimp, published bill |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $0 — inside the free plan | Essentials $78 year one, $156 year two · Standard $120 year one, $240 year two (0–500 band, promo halves the first twelve months) |
| 2,500 | $0 — inside the free plan | Not published per band — the US page renders one contact band at a time inside the plan selector |
| 10,000 | $0 — the last free subscriber | Not published per band; annual plans exist only for Premium and for Standard at 10,000 contacts, through sales |
| 10,001 | First paid bill lands — the step is not printed statically (see below) | Not published |
USD. Kit figures read from kit.com/pricing on October 1, 2026; Mailchimp figures are its published US prices, read September 2026. Mailchimp's promotional rate is 50% off for the first twelve months and reverts to list price at month thirteen — the cliff is documented in our Mailchimp hidden-costs guide.
The last row of that table is the one nobody prices. At 10,000 subscribers the comparison is absurd on its face — $0 against a paid plan at every Mailchimp band above the first — but the moment the list adds one more name, Kit's free plan is over, and what happens next is instructive. Kit's plan terms upgrade the account automatically rather than pausing sending, so the first bill arrives whether or not the buyer has seen a number for it, and Kit's pricing page does not print one: bands above 1,000 subscribers sit behind a 45-position slider, one band rendered at a time. Mailchimp, for its part, publishes no per-band US figure above 0–500 contacts either. The single largest list size in the pairing is the one where neither vendor prints a price — which is why the useful comparison happens at the numbers both do print.
A free plan that runs to 10,000 subscribers is not charity; it is a different revenue line. Kit's pricing page prints its commerce fees in the feature table of every plan, free and paid alike:
| Kit charge | Published figure | Applies to | Mailchimp equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital-product sales | 3.5% + $0.30 per sale | Every plan, including Free | None — no per-sale fee on any plan |
| Paid Recommendations earnings | 23.5% — "Kit's fee for any earnings paid through Paid Recommendations," per the page's own feature table | Creators who monetize through Kit's recommendation network | None |
| Plan price past the free ceiling | Creator $390/yr · Pro $790/yr at 1,000 subscribers, billed yearly | Lists above 10,000 subscribers | Contact-band tiers, published only at 0–500 |
USD, read from kit.com/pricing on October 1, 2026. The 3.5% + $0.30 figure appears in the feature rows of all three plans on the page itself.
The per-sale fee deserves an example, because it scales with revenue rather than list size. A creator selling a $50 course who rings up 100 sales in a month — $5,000 of revenue — pays Kit 3.5% of the total plus 30 cents a sale: $175 + $30 = $205 that month, $2,460 a year, on the free plan, with the plan price still at $0. That is arithmetic from Kit's own printed rates, not a quote, and it only applies to sales made through Kit's commerce; the newsletter itself stays free. The point for a buyer is structural: Kit bills the money you make, Mailchimp bills the people you keep. A 10,000-subscriber list that sells nothing costs $0 on Kit and real money on Mailchimp; a 400-subscriber list selling $5,000 a month of digital products pays Kit more than any Mailchimp tier at that size.
Both pages are honest about what they print and quiet about what they don't, and the gaps don't overlap. Kit prints its free ceiling (10,000 subscribers), its yearly prices at the 1,000-subscriber view, its per-sale fees, and its saving claims — and hides every band above 1,000 behind a 45-position slider, plus the monthly rates behind a toggle. Mailchimp prints its whole 0–500 band on three plans with the promotional rates beside them — and hides every band above 500 inside a selector that renders one number at a time. Two consequences worth spelling out:
Kit's figures — the 10,000-subscriber free ceiling, Creator at $390 billed yearly with the $33 monthly equivalent and the $78 stated saving, Pro at $790 with $158, the 3.5% + $0.30 sales fee, and the 23.5% Paid Recommendations fee — were read from kit.com/pricing on October 1, 2026, cross-checked against the page's own saving claims, and the slider-only bands above 1,000 subscribers are reported as unpublished rather than estimated. Mailchimp's figures are its published US prices for the 0–500 band, read in September 2026, with the promotional structure (50% off for twelve months on all three tiers) taken from the same page. Where a vendor's page prints nothing, this site prints the gap — the same rule applied in our free-plan breakdown, where Kit's ceiling anchors the category. To price your own list size across every plan that publishes one, use the list-size cost calculator. Our methodology and affiliate disclosure explain how prices are verified and how the site earns.
Yes, per Kit's own pricing page: the free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends, unlimited landing pages and forms, on one user seat. Mailchimp's free plan stops at 250 contacts and 500 email sends a month. Kit's free tier is the largest subscriber ceiling we could verify among the six platforms we price.
Kit's pricing page prints a fee of 3.5% plus 30 cents on sales of digital products, and the same figure appears on all three plans, paid and free. It also takes 23.5% of earnings paid through its Paid Recommendations network, per its own feature table. Mailchimp charges no per-sale fee on any plan; its extra charges are the contact overage and add-ons such as SMS credits.
Below 250 subscribers, both are free. From 251 to 10,000 subscribers, Kit costs $0 while Mailchimp moves onto paid tiers — its published US price for the 0–500 band is $13 a month on Essentials ($78 in the promotional first year, $156 in year two) or $20 on Standard ($120, then $240). Above 500 contacts Mailchimp publishes no per-band figure. On published prices alone, Kit is cheaper at every list size up to 10,000 subscribers.
Yes — a monthly toggle sits beside the yearly default — but the static page prints the yearly figures: $390 billed yearly for Creator at 1,000 subscribers, shown as $33 a month, with a stated saving of $78 a year. That saving only works against a $39 monthly list price ($39 × 12 = $468, minus $390), and $390 ÷ 12 is $32.50, which the card rounds to $33. Read the $33 as the yearly-billed monthly equivalent, not the monthly rate.
Kit's plan terms upgrade the account automatically rather than pausing sending, so the first bill arrives the moment subscriber 10,001 lands. The exact paid step at that size is not printed on the page — the pricing page exposes one subscriber band at a time through a 45-position slider, and our static read captured only the 1,000-subscriber view — so budget the crossing as "paid, amount unpublished" rather than a known number.
Yes. Kit is the current name of the company long known as ConvertKit, and both names point to the same product; the pricing page and plan names (Free, Creator, Pro) are the ones to compare against today. Some older reviews and comparison pages still file it under the previous name.