Updated September 26, 2026 · Prices verified from vendor pricing pages, September 2026 · Affiliate disclosure

Klaviyo vs Mailchimp: The Same $20 Start, and the $300 Cliff at 10,001 Subscribers

Q: What happens when my Klaviyo list passes 10,000?

Klaviyo's ladder steps in 500-profile rungs, and the step at 10,000 is the sharpest on the ladder: 10,500 profiles bill at $175 a month against $150 at 10,000 — $25 more, a 16.7% increase, or $300 more per year for one additional profile. The corridor from 10,500 to 13,500 keeps stepping $25 per 500 profiles, which makes those the most expensive marginal profiles Klaviyo sells. The next relief comes at 20,000, where $375 covers 5,000 more profiles than the $350 rung at 15,000.

Q: Do Klaviyo or Mailchimp offer annual discounts?

Klaviyo publishes monthly prices only, with no annual discount on the page as of September 2026, so its annual figure is arithmetic — twelve times the monthly price, not an offer. Mailchimp's own footnotes restrict annual plans to Premium and to Standard plans of 10,000-plus contacts, arranged through its sales team; below that line its only discount is the twelve-month promotional rate, which reverts to list price at month thirteen.

Q: Are Klaviyo and Mailchimp's free plans the same?

They stop at the same point with the same sending allowance — both cap free accounts at 250 with 500 emails a month — but the shape differs. Klaviyo's free plan bills 250 active profiles and includes a $5 SMS credit and a $5 email-design credit. Mailchimp's allows 500 emails a month or 250 a day, whichever comes first, on one seat with one audience, no automation flows and email support for the first 30 days only. Klaviyo does not charge for additional user seats on any plan.

Q: Which platform bills fewer inactive contacts?

Klaviyo, by its billing design. It prices on active profiles, so profiles that are archived or no longer mailable stop counting — closer to MailerLite than to Mailchimp on this axis. Mailchimp bills the contacts in your audience, including subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed addresses, until each one is archived or deleted by hand. The messier the list, the more this difference changes which platform's bill is actually bigger.

TL;DR: This is the pairing buyers ask about when the list is a store's customer file, and it starts as a dead heat: both platforms list $20 a month at 500 subscribers — Klaviyo's 500-profile rung against Mailchimp Standard's list price on its 0–500 band. Beyond that row the comparison goes one-sided: Klaviyo publishes its entire ladder — 49 rungs from $20 to $1,955 a month, every one of which we read from its own pricing engine — while Mailchimp renders one band at a time, so at 2,500 and 10,000 subscribers no verified Mailchimp price exists. The number that should reshape a growing store's budget is the cliff: 10,500 profiles bill at $175 against $150 at 10,000 — $25 more a month, $300 more a year, for one additional profile. Klaviyo publishes no annual discount; Mailchimp's annual plans start at 10,000 contacts through its sales team, and its $10 promotional year on the smallest band reverts to $20 at month thirteen. Their free plans are twins: 250 accounts, 500 emails a month, both.

The same starting line, two different ladders

Most platform pairs resist a clean comparison because they price different things — Brevo bills email volume, Kit hides paid tiers behind a slider. Klaviyo and Mailchimp both bill by list size: your contact count picks a rung, the rung sets the bill, and the rung also sets a monthly send allowance. At the smallest paid size they even agree on the number — $20 a month, Klaviyo for 500 active profiles, Mailchimp Standard for the 0–500 contact band.

What does not line up is access to the prices themselves. Klaviyo's pricing engine holds 49 rungs, and its page will render every one of them as you move the profile slider; we read all 49 on September 24, 2026, so every Klaviyo figure below is its own engine's output, not an estimate. Mailchimp's page holds roughly twenty bands but renders a figure only after you select a band, one plan at a time — which is why the 2,500 and 10,000 rows below carry one verified number instead of two, and why the cells we leave empty say so rather than guessing.

The three sizes buyers actually ask about

List size	Klaviyo Email plan	Klaviyo sends/mo	Mailchimp (published)	Mailchimp sends/mo
500	$20/mo · $240/yr (no annual discount published)	5,000	Standard $20/mo list · $10/mo for 12 months (0–500 band, US)	6,000 on Standard (12×)
2,500	$60/mo · $720/yr	25,000	Not published per band — renders only inside the plan selector	25,000 Essentials (10×) · 30,000 Standard (12×) · 37,500 Premium (15×)
10,000	$150/mo · $1,800/yr	100,000	Not published per band; annual billing only from this size, via sales	100,000 Essentials · 120,000 Standard · 150,000 Premium

USD, from each vendor's own pricing pages, September 2026; Klaviyo's ladder read from its pricing engine on September 24, 2026. Klaviyo's send allowance is ten times the rung ceiling; Mailchimp's are its published multipliers (10×, 12×, 15×) applied to the band. Klaviyo's annual figures are twelve times the monthly price because it publishes no annual discount — arithmetic, not an offer.

At 500 subscribers the tie is closer than it looks. Mailchimp's allowance on Standard is 6,000 emails against Klaviyo's 5,000, and Mailchimp's twelve-month offer cuts the first year to $120 against Klaviyo's $240 — or $221 counting the $19 first-month credit on Klaviyo's banner offer, which applies to the 500-profile rung only. From month thirteen Mailchimp's bill doubles back to $20 and the tie resumes. One more asymmetry hides in the fine print: Mailchimp's entry paid plan, Essentials, caps automation flows at four steps and users at three — the plan most stores actually need is Standard, which is the $20 figure in the table. Klaviyo does not tier its feature set by rung and does not charge for additional user seats at all.

The ladder Klaviyo publishes — and the cliff in its middle

Here is the part no Mailchimp-versus-alternatives roundup gives you: the actual rungs, from the vendor's own engine. These are the sizes buyers ask about; the full 49-rung read sits behind the same slider.

Active profiles	Monthly price	Sends/mo	What the step costs
500	$20	5,000	First paid rung
1,000	$30	10,000	+$10 for 500 profiles
2,500	$60	25,000	+$30 for 1,500
5,000	$100	50,000	+$40 for 2,500
10,000	$150	100,000	+$10 for the 3,500 profiles from 6,500 — the cheapest stretch on the ladder
10,500	$175	105,000	+$25 for 500 profiles — the cliff: +$300 a year per profile over the line
13,500	$325	135,000	Every rung to here steps +$25 per 500 profiles
15,000	$350	150,000	+$25 for 1,500
20,000	$375	200,000	+$25 for 5,000 profiles — half a cent each, the ladder's sweet spot
30,000	$500	300,000	+$125 for 10,000
50,000	$720	500,000	+$220 for 20,000
100,000	$1,380	1,000,000	Unit cost falls to about $0.014 per profile
150,000+	Talk to sales	—	Quote-only from here

Klaviyo Email plan, USD, read rung by rung from klaviyo.com's own pricing engine on September 24, 2026. Sends equal ten times the rung ceiling. "What the step costs" is the price difference from the previous rung shown.

The shape of that ladder matters more than any single rung. Between 6,500 and 10,000 profiles, $10 of extra spend covers 3,500 more profiles — the friendliest stretch Klaviyo sells. Then the ladder inverts: from 10,500 to 13,500, every 500 profiles cost $25 more a month, five cents per added profile, a 14–17% bill increase per step. A store whose list hovers at 10,200 active profiles pays $175 a month — $300 a year more than the identical store at 9,900, for a list difference a single campaign's signups can produce. The relief arrives at 20,000: $375 covers 5,000 more profiles than the $350 rung at 15,000, half a cent per profile. The practical budgeting rule for a growing store is to know which side of 10,000 your twelve-month list lands on, because the ladder does not price today's count — it prices the rung your count fits.

The free plans are twins — 250 and 500, twice over

	Klaviyo free	Mailchimp free
Cap	250 active profiles	250 contacts
Monthly sends	500	500/month or 250/day, whichever comes first
Credits included	$5 SMS · $5 email design	—
User seats	Seats not billed on any plan	1
Audiences	—	1
Automation flows	Not included	Not included
Email support	—	First 30 days only

Same cap, same sending allowance, and neither free plan includes automation — so the free tier decides nothing between them except whether you will send text messages. Both vendors price their free tier to expire at exactly the point a store's list becomes commercially useful, and both paid ladders begin at the sizes tabled above. What differs underneath is who keeps counting: Klaviyo's free cap and paid rungs both measure active profiles, while Mailchimp's contact count includes subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed addresses until each is archived or deleted by hand.

When the list grows: rungs versus overages

Klaviyo steps you up a 500-profile rung. Cross a rung's ceiling and the next rung's price applies — at the 10,000 line that is the $25 cliff described above. The cushioning fact is the billing unit: Klaviyo prices on active profiles, so addresses that are archived or no longer mailable stop counting. A store that prunes its customer file before a rung boundary pays the smaller bill — list hygiene is literally a line item.
Mailchimp invoices an overage instead of moving the plan. Exceed the contact band or the send allowance on a paid plan and the overage bills automatically; Mailchimp's own FAQ notes campaigns keep running as long as the overage is paid on time. And because its count includes unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts, the addresses that inflate the band are often ones nobody emails anymore. We map this charge — and the other six like it across six vendors — in our guide to email marketing hidden fees.
Both punish mid-cycle cleaning equally on timing. Delete 400 dead contacts on the 1st and neither vendor shrinks the bill until the cycle resets. Size the rung or band for the list you will have in twelve months, not the one you have today — on Klaviyo's ladder, the difference between sizing for 10,000 and drifting to 10,001 is $300 a year.

Paying a year up front — one platform sells it, one doesn't

Klaviyo: monthly prices only, with no annual discount on the page as of September 2026. The annual figure is arithmetic — twelve monthly bills, $1,800 at the 10,000 rung, $4,500 at 20,000 — and we label it as arithmetic, not an offer.
Mailchimp: annual plans exist only for Premium and for Standard at 10,000-plus contacts, arranged through its sales team — the same size where Klaviyo's rung is $150 and published. Below that line, the twelve-month offer ($10 Standard on the smallest band) is the only discount, and it reverts to $20 at month thirteen: $120 the first year, $240 the second, for the same service.

Run the first year at 500 subscribers on monthly billing and Mailchimp's promotion wins outright: $120 against Klaviyo's $240. Run into year two at list rates and the platforms tie at $240 each. The deciding number is therefore never the promotional one — it is the month-thirteen figure, and the rung your list will occupy by then.

Who should not switch

Anyone inside Mailchimp's twelve-month offer on a 0–500 list. $10 Standard is the best first-year price in this comparison and Klaviyo's smallest paid rung is $20. Put the decision in the calendar for month twelve, after the price reverts, and re-run the math against the rung your list will occupy then.
Stores wired into Mailchimp's commerce stack. Product sync, abandoned-cart flows and revenue reporting are rebuild work, not migration work — the same caution we give in every Mailchimp exit guide, and at the 500-subscriber tie there is no price gap to pay for the rebuild.
Lists destined to live in the 10,500–13,500 corridor. If your twelve-month projection lands between those rungs, every 500 profiles cost $25 more — the most expensive marginal profiles on Klaviyo's ladder. A store that can archive down to an even 10,000 active profiles saves $300 a year against one at 10,001; if your list cannot be pruned to a rung boundary, run the corridor arithmetic before committing.
Teams that budget by annual prepay. Klaviyo sells no annual rate, so its year is twelve invoices at list price. If your finance process needs a known annual figure with a discount attached, that conversation exists at Mailchimp — from 10,000 contacts, through sales — and at MailerLite, which prints a 10% yearly discount on every band.
Heavy senders on small lists. Klaviyo's allowance is a flat ten times the rung ceiling: 5,000 emails at the 500 rung. Mailchimp Standard allows 6,000 on the same band and Premium 37,500 at 2,500 contacts. If you send weekly to a full small list, the allowance gap narrows the tie at 500 before price even enters.

How we keep these numbers honest

Every Klaviyo figure comes from Klaviyo's own pricing engine, read rung by rung on September 24, 2026; its annual column is labeled arithmetic because the vendor publishes no annual rate. Mailchimp's US anchor and EU band prices were re-checked on September 24, 2026. Where Mailchimp publishes no figure — every US band beyond 0–500 — the cell says so instead of carrying an estimate, because its selector renders one price at a time and we do not extrapolate a ladder from one anchor; the same policy fills the empty cells in our MailerLite vs Mailchimp head-to-head, where both vendors bill by contact band and only one prints its prices. Mailchimp's own ladder and after-checkout charges are read line by line in our Mailchimp pricing guide, and five alternatives including both of these are priced in our Mailchimp alternatives guide. To price your own subscriber count across every plan we can verify, use the list-size cost calculator. Our methodology and affiliate disclosure explain how prices are verified and how the site earns.

Frequently asked questions

Is Klaviyo cheaper than Mailchimp?

At the only size where both prices are on the record, it is a tie: $20 a month at 500 subscribers. Klaviyo's $60 at 2,500 profiles and $150 at 10,000 are published; Mailchimp publishes no per-band US figure beyond 0–500 contacts, so no verified comparison exists at those sizes. Mailchimp's twelve-month offer brings Standard to $10 a month for the first year on the smallest band, then reverts to $20 at month thirteen.

What happens when my Klaviyo list passes 10,000?

The next rung, 10,500 profiles, bills at $175 against $150 — $25 more a month, $300 more a year, for one additional profile. Every rung from 10,500 to 13,500 steps $25 per 500 profiles, making those the most expensive marginal profiles on the ladder. The next relief is the 20,000 rung at $375, which covers 5,000 more profiles than the $350 rung at 15,000.

Do Klaviyo or Mailchimp offer annual discounts?

Klaviyo publishes monthly prices only as of September 2026, so its annual figure is twelve times the monthly price — arithmetic, not an offer. Mailchimp restricts annual plans to Premium and Standard plans of 10,000-plus contacts through its sales team; below that line the twelve-month promotional rate is the only discount, and it reverts at month thirteen.

Are Klaviyo and Mailchimp's free plans the same?

They stop at the same point with the same allowance — 250 accounts, 500 emails a month. Klaviyo's free plan counts active profiles and includes a $5 SMS credit and a $5 email-design credit. Mailchimp's allows 500 emails a month or 250 a day on one seat, with one audience, no automation flows and email support for the first 30 days only.

Which platform bills fewer inactive contacts?

Klaviyo, by its billing design: it prices on active profiles, so archived or unmailable profiles stop counting — closer to MailerLite than to Mailchimp on this axis. Mailchimp bills subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts in your audience until each is archived or deleted by hand. The messier the list, the more this changes which bill is actually bigger.

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