Pricing comparison
Brevo vs Mailchimp: Send-Based vs Contact-Based Pricing
By Marcus Hale · Updated Oct 2026
Brevo bills for the emails you send; Mailchimp bills for the contacts you keep. Brevo's Free plan allows 300 sends a day and stores up to 100,000 contacts, while Mailchimp's Free plan stops at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. For a coach, course seller or consultant whose list runs from a few hundred to a few thousand and goes out once or twice a month, Brevo is the better pick: it starts free and its $18 Standard plan covers 5,000 emails a month. Mailchimp wins when the same list is mailed often, when up to five people need seats, or when the first-year rate of $50 a month at 2,501-5,000 contacts decides the budget.
Who should pick which
Pick Brevo when your list is larger than your mailing schedule. A coach with 8,000 lead-magnet and webinar signups who writes one newsletter a month sends 8,000 emails, not 96,000, and Brevo's bill follows the 8,000. The Free plan also stores up to 100,000 contacts, so a big dormant list costs nothing to keep while you decide who to re-engage. For the first real program, go straight to Standard at $18: its feature list opens with marketing automation, A/B testing and advanced reports, and it is the plan that comes without a Brevo logo in your emails.
Pick Mailchimp when the list is mailed hard relative to its size, because its price is flat inside a contact band. At 2,501-5,000 contacts Standard allows up to 60,000 sends a month for $100 ($50 for the first 12 months), which is twelve emails to every person. Launch weeks, daily sequences and a weekly newsletter on top fit inside that allowance without moving you up a tier. It also suits a team: Standard lists 5 seats, and Mailchimp's page names Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, Wix and WordPress among its integrations for people who also run a shop or events.
Decision snapshot
| Area | Brevo | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 300 sends a day, storage for up to 100,000 contacts, marketing automation for up to 2,000 contacts | 1 audience, 250 contacts, 500 sends a month (250 a day) |
| What sets the price | The monthly email volume you choose on a slider, campaigns and transactional mail counted together | The contact band, with a send allowance of 10x, 12x or 15x your contacts depending on plan |
| Entry price | Starter $9 and Standard $18, both starting at 5,000 emails a month; yearly billing takes 10% off | Essentials from $13 and Standard from $20 at 500 contacts |
| Prices further up | Professional from $499 a month at 150,000 emails a month, 10 seats | Standard $100 at 2,501-5,000 contacts and $135 at 5,001-10,000; Premium from $350 |
| First-year offer | None quoted beyond the 10% yearly discount | Standard shown at half price for 12 months: $50 at 2,501-5,000 contacts |
| Other channels | SMS, WhatsApp campaigns, web and mobile push, transactional email, sales tools | SMS marketing, transactional email, and integrations such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, Wix and WordPress |
| Seats | Professional lists 10 seats | 3 on Essentials, 5 on Standard, unlimited on Premium |
Cost at 500, 5,000 and 10,000 contacts
The two tools charge for different things, so one list produces different bills depending on how often you write to it. Brevo's help page says the email volume you select sets the pricing tier, and its Starter and Standard plans both open at 5,000 emails a month. Mailchimp sets the price by contact band and then allows a multiple of that count as sends: 10x on Essentials, 12x on Standard, 15x on Premium. The figures below come from Brevo's pricing page and Mailchimp's pricing page, read on 2026-10-07, and each row assumes every send goes to the whole list.
| List and schedule | Emails a month | Brevo | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 contacts, weekly newsletter | 500 x 4 = 2,000 | Starter $9 or Standard $18, both starting at 5,000 emails; Free also fits | Essentials $13 (5,000 sends) or Standard $20 (6,000 sends) |
| 5,000 contacts, one email a month | 5,000 | Starter $9 or Standard $18 | Standard $100, or $50 for the first 12 months (60,000 sends) |
| 5,000 contacts, weekly newsletter | 5,000 x 4 = 20,000 | Above the 5,000-email entry volume, so priced by Brevo's slider | Standard $100, or $50 for the first 12 months (60,000 sends) |
| 10,000 contacts, one email a month | 10,000 | Above the entry volume, so priced by the slider | Standard $135, or $67.50 for the first 12 months (120,000 sends) |
500 contacts: Brevo is cheaper plan for plan
A weekly newsletter to 500 people is 2,000 emails, well inside the 5,000 that Brevo's entry volume covers and inside the 5,000 or 6,000 that Mailchimp allows at this size. Brevo Starter at $9 is $4 a month below Mailchimp Essentials at $13 ($48 a year), and Brevo Standard at $18 is $2 below Mailchimp Standard at $20 ($24 a year). Mailchimp's extra 1,000 sends on Standard are irrelevant at 2,000 sends. The free plans settle it before the paid ones do: Brevo Free takes a 500-person list, while Mailchimp Free stops at 250 contacts.
5,000 contacts: one send favours Brevo, four sends need a calculation
A single email to the full list is 5,000 emails, exactly Brevo's entry volume: $9 on Starter or $18 on Standard. Mailchimp Standard is $100 a month at 2,501-5,000 contacts, shown as $50 for the first 12 months. Over a year that is $216 for Brevo Standard on monthly billing (the page shows $16.17 a month on yearly billing, $194.04 a year) against $600 in Mailchimp's first year and $1,200 from the second. The gap narrows with every extra send, because each one adds another 5,000 to the volume Brevo prices. A weekly newsletter is 20,000 emails, a step above the entry volume that Brevo prices on its slider and that this page does not quote, while Mailchimp's $100 stays $100 up to 60,000 sends. Before deciding, set the slider on Brevo's page to 20,000 and compare the result with $100, or $50 in year one.
10,000 contacts: the allowance becomes the limit
One send to everyone is 10,000 emails, double Brevo's entry volume, so that figure is also read off the slider. Mailchimp Standard at 5,001-10,000 contacts is $135 a month, or $67.50 for the first 12 months, with up to 120,000 sends: twelve emails per person. Over a year that is $1,620 at the full rate and $810 in a first year at the promotional rate. The top of Brevo's range matters here too: its Professional plan starts at $499 a month for 150,000 emails and includes 10 seats, which equals fifteen sends to a 10,000-person list. A coach will rarely mail that often, but a launch month with a daily sequence, a newsletter and webinar reminders can reach twelve touches per person, and that is where Mailchimp's flat band stops being a bonus and its allowance has to be checked against your real schedule.
The free plans: 300 a day against 500 a month
Brevo's help page lists the Free plan as 300 daily email sends with storage for up to 100,000 contacts, and a limit of 2,000 contacts in marketing automation. Mailchimp's pricing page lists Free as one seat, one audience, 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with no more than 250 in a day. The limits are different in kind: Mailchimp's is a monthly total, Brevo's is a daily rate. Over a 30-day month, 300 a day allows about 9,000 sends, but they leave the building at 300 a day.
| Contacts | Days to email everyone once on Brevo Free | Mailchimp Free |
|---|---|---|
| 250 | 1 day | Fits the contact cap, but 500 sends a month is two full emails |
| 1,000 | 4 days (1,000 / 300 = 3.3) | Over the 250-contact cap |
| 2,000 | 7 days (2,000 / 300 = 6.7) | Over the 250-contact cap |
| 5,000 | 17 days (5,000 / 300 = 16.7) | Over the 250-contact cap |
The daily cap is the thing to understand before launching from a free account. An email saying enrolment closes tonight is of little use if the last third of a 1,000-person list receives it on day four. Brevo's help page lists no daily sending limit from Starter at $9, so Free is best used to build the list and test an automation, not as the plan you sell from. On Mailchimp the equivalent trigger is the 251st contact, after which you move to Essentials from $13 or Standard from $20. Brevo's 2,000-contact automation limit is a separate ceiling: a 3,000-person list on Free can be mailed, but not all of it can sit inside a marketing automation.
Starter or Standard: the logo add-on changes the sum
Brevo's pricing page shows Starter at $9 a month and Standard at $18, and its yearly toggle takes 10% off, which reads $8.08 and $16.17 a month, or $96.96 and $194.04 a year. Starter's list covers email and SMS, templates, forms and basic reporting. Standard's list opens with marketing automation, A/B testing, advanced email reporting, send-time optimization, event tracking, one landing page and no Brevo logo. Starter keeps the logo unless you buy the branding-removal add-on, which the pricing page prices at $10.80 a month and Brevo's help article at $9. Starter plus the add-on therefore comes to $18 or $19.80, the same as or more than Standard at $18, so a coach who sends under their own name will end up on Standard anyway, and should take it for the automation.
Mailchimp's ladder has the same shape with different gates. Essentials from $13 allows 3 seats and sends of 10x your contact count, and it can create custom-coded templates but has to upgrade before sending them. Standard from $20 at 500 contacts lifts that to 5 seats, 12x sends and sending custom-coded templates. Premium starts at $350 with unlimited seats and 15x sends. The like-for-like pairs are Starter against Essentials ($9 against $13) and Standard against Standard ($18 against $20 at 500 contacts). The gap widens sharply once the list reaches the 2,501-5,000 band, where Mailchimp Standard reads $100.
Transactional email, SMS and data processing
Brevo lists transactional email, SMS campaigns and transactional SMS, WhatsApp campaigns, and web and mobile push, and it sells separate sales tools. Its volume slider is labelled "campaigns & transactional", so a receipt, a booking confirmation and a password reset each use one email of the same monthly allowance as a newsletter. On Standard, 5,000 emails covers a 2,000-person list mailed twice (4,000) with about 1,000 left over for confirmations; a course platform sending an access email to each of 300 new students would use 300 of them. Most coaches never need to count these, because the checkout or course platform sends its own receipts, but a site with member logins and an automated booking flow does.
Mailchimp's pricing page also lists transactional email and SMS marketing, so neither is a Brevo-only feature. The difference is the billing unit: Mailchimp's plans allow a multiple of your contacts, 10x, 12x or 15x by plan, whereas Brevo's price follows the volume you choose, with transactional and campaign mail counted together.
Both vendors publish a data processing addendum: Brevo's DPA and Mailchimp's DPA. Brevo's privacy policy has a section on transfers of personal data outside the European Economic Area, and the material read for this page names no hosting region for either tool, so a coach with many EU subscribers should read those documents before choosing on price alone.
Which list suits which tool
A new coach with 200 subscribers: Brevo Free
A weekly newsletter to 200 people is 800 sends a month. Mailchimp Free's cap of 500 sends carries only two full emails to a list that size, so the third newsletter of the month would not go out. On Brevo Free the same newsletter is 200 sends in a single day, inside the 300-a-day cap, and 800 sends is under 9% of the roughly 9,000 a month that cap allows. Start here and move when the list outgrows 2,000 contacts in automation or when you need one email to reach everyone on the same day.
A course seller with 8,000 signups, mailed monthly: Brevo
On the free plan 8,000 emails would take 27 days to deliver (8,000 / 300 = 26.7), so a monthly newsletter needs a paid plan. At 8,000 emails a month you are above Brevo's 5,000-email entry volume, so read the slider at 8,000. Mailchimp's comparison point is the 5,001-10,000 band at $135 a month, or $67.50 for the first 12 months. A list that is large and quiet is where send-based pricing is built to win, and the free plan's 100,000-contact storage means the dormant tail costs nothing to keep while you decide whether to clean it.
A cohort coach launching twice a year with 3,000 contacts: Mailchimp
A 14-day launch with one email a day to 3,000 people is 42,000 sends, and four newsletters in the same month add 12,000, so the launch month totals 54,000. Mailchimp Standard at 2,501-5,000 contacts allows up to 60,000 sends for a flat $100 a month, or $50 in the first year, and the quiet months at 12,000 sends cost the same. On Brevo, read the slider at 54,000 to see what the launch month would cost and at 12,000 for the others. A flat band fits a spiky schedule better than a price that tracks volume.
A consultant with an assistant and a freelancer: Mailchimp Standard
Three people editing campaigns is the case for seats. Mailchimp Standard lists 5 seats and Essentials lists 3, so a team of three fits Essentials from $13. Brevo's pricing page describes Starter as best for single users, shows the 10-seat figure only on Professional at $499, and gives its Standard card no seat count. For a team, Mailchimp's published seat numbers make the budget easier to plan.
A coach who also runs events or sells merchandise: Mailchimp
Mailchimp's pricing page names Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, Wix, WordPress and Canva among its integrations, which matters when the same list buys tickets, workbooks or branded items. Brevo lists sales tools and WhatsApp campaigns, which suit a team that follows up by message, but it does not name the same store connections on its pricing page.
Moving from Mailchimp to Brevo, or back
| Piece | Mailchimp to Brevo | Brevo to Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts and fields | Export the audience as a CSV and map Mailchimp merge fields to Brevo contact attributes before the import, or the values are dropped | Export contacts and map attributes onto merge fields; fields with no match have to be created first |
| Opt-outs | Export unsubscribed and cleaned contacts separately and import them as blocklisted before the first send | Export blocklisted contacts and import them as unsubscribed, not as active |
| Automations | Journeys are rebuilt by hand in Brevo; Standard is the plan whose list leads with marketing automation | Automations are rebuilt as journeys; check each against the plan's template and seat limits |
| Forms and landing pages | Rebuilt in Brevo, where Standard includes one landing page; embed code on your site changes | Rebuilt in Mailchimp; embed code on your site changes |
| What the bill counts | Emails sent, including transactional, so count the first month's sends before you cancel Mailchimp | Contacts in the audience, so clean duplicates and long-inactive addresses before the import |
Authenticate your sending domain in the new account before the first campaign and send first to people who opened recently, widening in steps; the sender reputation belongs to the domain and does not reset when the tool changes.
Where Brevo-to-Mailchimp comparisons go wrong
- Reading Brevo's 300 as a monthly figure. It is 300 a day, about 9,000 in a 30-day month, and a list of 1,000 needs four days to receive a single email on the free plan.
- Comparing Brevo Starter at $9 with Mailchimp Standard at $20. The like-for-like for Starter is Mailchimp Essentials at $13, and a Starter user who wants no Brevo logo pays the add-on and lands at or above Standard's $18.
- Counting only newsletters toward Brevo's volume. Receipts, booking confirmations and password resets draw on the same allowance, because the slider is labelled campaigns and transactional together.
- Judging the gap from Mailchimp's first year only. Against Brevo Standard at $194.04 a year on yearly billing, a 5,000-contact list mailed monthly costs $405.96 more on Mailchimp in year one ($600) and $1,005.96 more in year two ($1,200).
- Assuming Brevo Free is enough because storage runs to 100,000 contacts. Marketing automation on the free plan stops at 2,000 contacts, and the bill on paid plans follows emails sent, not contacts held.
Three numbers that settle it
- How many emails per contact do you send in a normal month? Divide monthly sends by list size. At one a month Brevo starts low: a 5,000-person list mailed once is 5,000 emails, $18 on Standard against $100 on Mailchimp Standard. Between two and eleven a month, read Brevo's slider at your volume and compare it with Mailchimp's band price. At twelve or more, Mailchimp Standard's 12x allowance is fully used and its flat band is the better value.
- Is the list under 250 contacts, between 250 and 2,000, or above? Under 250 both free plans work, though Mailchimp's 500 sends carries only two emails to a full list. Between 250 and 2,000 only Brevo Free fits. Above 2,000 you are on a paid plan with either tool, and Brevo Free's automation limit has been passed.
- How many people edit campaigns? One person is fine on any plan of either tool. Three need Mailchimp Essentials or higher, and five fit Mailchimp Standard. Brevo's pricing page lists 10 seats on Professional only.
If the first answer is "once or twice a month" and the second is "under 2,000", start on Brevo Free. If the first is "twelve or more" or the third is "three or more", price Mailchimp Standard. Otherwise price both on the same day, take the cheaper, and look again when the list crosses 5,000.
Verdict: Brevo for big, quiet lists; Mailchimp for busy ones
For the coaches, course creators and consultants this site is written for, Brevo is the better first choice. Its free plan holds a real list (storage for up to 100,000 contacts and 300 sends a day, against 250 contacts and 500 sends a month on Mailchimp), its Standard plan at $18 covers 5,000 emails with automation, and its price follows what you send, which for most coaching businesses is a newsletter or two a month, not a daily stream. Take Standard rather than Starter once the program is real, so the Brevo logo is gone and automation is in the plan.
Mailchimp is the right call when the list is mailed hard, when a team of three to five needs seats, or when you want the first-year rate. At 5,000 contacts Mailchimp Standard is $600 in year one and $1,200 a year afterwards, and it covers up to 60,000 sends in each of those months; at 10,000 contacts it is $810 in year one and $1,620 afterwards for up to 120,000. If your schedule includes a daily launch sequence, price that month on both tools before you choose. Prices are from brevo.com/pricing and mailchimp.com/pricing.
Related comparisons
Two guides give wider context for a lean list: automation tools for small businesses and automation tools for creators. The alternatives hub covers other ways out of either tool.
- Kit (formerly ConvertKit) vs Mailchimp: Mailchimp against a creator-focused platform whose free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers, for people who sell courses and digital products.
- GetResponse vs Mailchimp: Mailchimp against a plan ladder in which the Creator tier bundles webinars and a course builder.
- Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign: The same Mailchimp contact bands priced against a tag-and-deal platform, for consultants who track inquiries.
- HubSpot vs Mailchimp: Mailchimp against a CRM-first marketing suite.
Frequently asked questions
Is Brevo's free plan better than Mailchimp's?
For list size and send volume, yes. Brevo's help page lists the Free plan as 300 daily email sends with storage for up to 100,000 contacts and 2,000 contacts in marketing automation, while Mailchimp's pricing page caps Free at one audience, 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. A 250-person list can receive about 36 emails a month on Brevo (300 sends x 30 days, divided by 250) against 2 on Mailchimp. The catch is the daily cap: a one-off email to 3,000 people takes ten days to go out on Brevo Free.
Which is cheaper at 5,000 contacts?
It depends on how often you mail them. One send to the whole list is 5,000 emails, which is Brevo's entry volume: $9 on Starter or $18 on Standard. Mailchimp Standard is $100 a month at that size, or $50 for the first 12 months. Every extra full-list send adds another 5,000 to the volume you pick on Brevo's slider, whereas Mailchimp's $100 band covers up to 60,000 sends, which is twelve full-list emails. Set Brevo's slider to your own contacts-times-sends figure and compare it with $100.
Do receipts and booking confirmations count against my Brevo volume?
Yes. The volume slider on Brevo's pricing page is labelled "campaigns & transactional", so both kinds of message share one monthly allowance. A 2,000-person list mailed twice a month is 4,000 emails; add 800 receipts and confirmations and the total is 4,800, still inside the 5,000 emails an entry tier starts with.
Does Brevo Starter put a Brevo logo in my emails?
Brevo's pricing page lists "No Brevo logo" under Standard and sells logo removal for Starter as an add-on: $9 a month on Brevo's help page, and $10.80 a month on the pricing page when it was captured. Starter at $9 plus the add-on comes to $18 to $19.80, the same as or more than Standard at $18, so anyone sending branded emails should start on Standard.
When does Mailchimp cost less than Brevo?
When the same list is mailed often. Mailchimp's price follows contacts and its allowance is a multiple of them, 12x on Standard, so a list that gets three emails a week uses most of what its band already includes. Brevo charges for every step up in volume. Mailchimp is also cheaper in year one on a 2,501-5,000 list at $50 a month, as long as you budget for the $100 that applies from month 13.
How do I move from Mailchimp without emailing people who opted out?
Export the unsubscribed and cleaned contacts from Mailchimp separately from the active list and import them into Brevo as blocklisted before the first send. Importing only the active list quietly re-opens the door to people who left, and your sending domain pays for the complaints.