Home › Tools › List-size cost calculator
Updated September 22, 2026 · Prices verified from vendor pricing pages, September 2026 · Affiliate disclosure
Choose a subscriber count and a billing cycle. The table lists every plan we can price at that band, cheapest first, then the plans that publish no number there.
Working out the bill…
| Plan | Published bill | What sets that number |
|---|
Annual figures are the per-month equivalent of each vendor's annual prepay price, rendered the way the vendor itself presents it. Promotional rates are marked and are time-limited. Figures checked September 2026 — see how we verify prices.
The table below is the whole dataset behind the calculator, so you can check any number in it against the vendor's own page. Where a cell says not published, we could not read a price for that combination from an official source — so we left it empty rather than fill it with arithmetic.
| Plan | Band verified | Monthly | Annual prepay | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite Comfort | 500 – 30,000 subscribers, ten bands | $12 – $229 | $10.80 – $206.10 | Full feature set from the cheapest paid band; 10% off on annual prepay at every band |
| MailerLite Power | 500 – 30,000 subscribers, ten bands | $25 – $279 | $22.50 – $251.10 | Same toolset plus unlimited forms, for several brands or funnels |
| Mailchimp Standard (US page) | 0 – 500 contacts | $20 list, $10 promotional | not published | Smallest of a 20-band ladder; the $10 rate runs 12 months, then the list price applies |
| Mailchimp Essentials / Standard / Premium (EU page) | smallest band | €11.41 / €17.55 / €307.11 | promotional ≈15% off | Billed in EUR; the same plans are priced region by region, so the ladder differs from the US page |
| Kit Creator | 1,000 subscribers | $33 | $32.50, or $390 a year | Free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends; digital product sales carry 3.5% + $0.30 |
| Kit Pro | 1,000 subscribers | $66 | $65.83, or $790 a year | Downgrades are requested by email, so a bill does not shrink on its own |
| ActiveCampaign Starter | 1,000 contacts | not published | $15 | Annual billing only in public; monthly checkout runs around 20% higher, automations capped at 5 actions and 1 user |
| GetResponse Email Marketing | 1,000 subscribers | $19 | not published | Unlimited sends; a 12-month prepay carries 18% off and its promotion advertises from $13.30 a month |
| Brevo Starter | priced by email volume | $9 | $96.96 a year, about $8.08 a month | Marketing automation is not included at this tier |
| Brevo Standard | priced by email volume | $18 | $194.04 a year, about $16.17 a month | Automation, A/B testing and landing pages start here, which doubles the entry price |
MailerLite is the one platform here that publishes its entire ladder, which makes it the clearest illustration of how band pricing behaves. Monthly and annual prices below are both from its own pricing page; the last column is the monthly price per 1,000 subscribers, which is the number worth comparing between platforms.
| Subscribers | Comfort monthly | Comfort annual | Power monthly | Power annual | Comfort per 1,000 subscribers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $12 | $10.80 | $25 | $22.50 | $24.00 |
| 1,000 | $19 | $17.10 | $39 | $35.10 | $19.00 |
| 2,500 | $33 | $29.70 | $49 | $44.10 | $13.20 |
| 5,000 | $49 | $44.10 | $69 | $62.10 | $9.80 |
| 8,000 | $69 | $62.10 | $99 | $89.10 | $8.63 |
| 10,000 | $89 | $80.10 | $129 | $116.10 | $8.90 |
| 15,000 | $129 | $116.10 | $179 | $161.10 | $8.60 |
| 20,000 | $159 | $143.10 | $219 | $197.10 | $7.95 |
| 25,000 | $179 | $161.10 | $239 | $215.10 | $7.16 |
| 30,000 | $229 | $206.10 | $279 | $251.10 | $7.63 |
Two things fall out of that column. First, the cost per subscriber is not a straight line: it bottoms out at the 25,000 band ($7.16 per 1,000 subscribers) and then rises again at 30,000 ($7.63), so a bigger list is not automatically a cheaper list per head. Second, the steps between bands are where the money moves. Going from the 1,000 band at $19 to the next published band at 2,500 costs $14 more a month, or $168 a year — and a single subscriber crossing the boundary is enough to trigger it.
No platform on this page charges per subscriber. Each publishes a set of list-size bands and prices the band your count falls into, which is why the step between bands matters more than the headline figure. Mailchimp uses twenty bands from 0–500 contacts upward; a list of 1,600 contacts sits on its 1,501–2,500 band and is billed as such. MailerLite publishes ten bands up to 30,000 subscribers. If you are choosing between two platforms, compare them at the band you will be on in six months, not the one you are on today.
The count that sets your bill is not always the count you see in your dashboard. MailerLite counts any address that was active at any point during a billing cycle — including contacts you deleted during it — and resets on your billing anniversary. Cleaning your list on the 20th of the month therefore does nothing to the current invoice, and the reduction only lands on the next cycle. Mailchimp prices a contact band and then applies a monthly send allowance on top (10x, 12x or 15x the contact count depending on plan), so a list that receives a lot of campaigns can hit a second limit that has nothing to do with how many people are on it.
Three different behaviours, three different invoices. Mailchimp's paid tiers bill overages automatically as long as sending continues; its free tier simply pauses. MailerLite upgrades the plan the moment a band is exceeded, which is convenient during a launch and expensive if you import a stale list. Kit does the same and then requires an email to support to move back down. None of these is hidden, but each one produces a bill that a calculator cannot predict — which is why the number here is the plan price, never a forecast of your year.
Eight of the ten plans in the table above cannot be priced at an arbitrary list size, and the reasons are worth reading as buyer intelligence rather than as gaps in our work.
Every price here was read from a vendor's own pricing page or published plan documentation in September 2026 and is dated on this page. Promotional rates are marked as promotional and separated from list prices. Where two sources disagree we publish the range. Where nothing official exists for a band, the cell stays empty. Our methodology page sets out the process and our disclosure explains how affiliate commissions do and do not touch what we publish. If you already know which platform is under review, the deeper reads are our breakdown of Mailchimp's three billing limits, the head-to-head Brevo vs MailerLite priced at every band, and the five best Mailchimp alternatives with each one's catch named.
The monthly bills we could verify in September 2026 are MailerLite Comfort $19, GetResponse $19, Kit Creator $33, ActiveCampaign Starter $15 billed annually, and Mailchimp Standard $20 on its smallest band of 0–500 contacts, promoted at $10 a month for twelve months. MailerLite's annual prepay equivalent is $17.10 a month.
Because several vendors do not publish a price per band. Brevo prices by email volume and keeps its matrix in an on-page calculator; Mailchimp renders one plan at a time and bills its EU page in euros; Kit, ActiveCampaign and GetResponse put higher bands behind a slider or a quote flow. We print what we can read and date, and label the rest as not published.
Not in a straight line. On MailerLite's Comfort plan the monthly cost per 1,000 subscribers is $24.00 at 500, $19.00 at 1,000, $13.20 at 2,500, $9.80 at 5,000, $8.63 at 8,000, $8.90 at 10,000, and $7.16 at 25,000 before rising to $7.63 at 30,000. Moving up a band can raise your unit cost.
No, and the difference is vendor by vendor. MailerLite takes 10% off at every band and GetResponse offers 18% off a twelve-month prepay, while Brevo's Starter is $9 a month or $96.96 a year. Mailchimp publishes no annual discount below 10,000 contacts, so on a small list the only discount lever is a time-limited promotion.
It steps up. On MailerLite the price moves from $19 on the 1,000 band to $33 on the next published band at 2,500 — $14 a month, $168 a year, potentially triggered by one new subscriber. Because the contact count is taken across the whole billing cycle, removing unsubscribed contacts mid-cycle does not lower the current invoice.