Brevo vs Mailchimp (2026): Paying for Emails, Not Contacts

Brevo and Mailchimp disagree about what email marketing costs money: Mailchimp bills the contacts you store, at every band from 0–500 up past a million, whether you email them or not; Brevo bills the emails you actually send, starting at $9 a month for 5,000 emails on its Starter plan. That single structural difference decides this whole comparison — everything else is detail.

The ratio that settles it is yours already: monthly emails sent divided by contacts stored. Send weekly to everyone and the two models price similarly. Store a big list you rarely mail, and volume pricing is close to a cheat code.

The two ladders, honestly labelled

We read both pricing pages on September 23, 2026. They can't share a table axis — one scales by contacts, one by email volume — so here they are side by side on their own terms.

One reading note: Brevo's page prices bigger volumes through a selector our reader couldn't drive, so we quote the entry steps and the structure rather than a full ladder — run your own volume on its page before deciding. Mailchimp's full band ladder is on our pricing breakdown.

Where volume pricing wins

Take a concrete shape: 10,000 stored contacts, one campaign a month. On Mailchimp that list sits in the 5,001–10,000 band — $135 a month on Standard after the intro year — every month, regardless of sending. The same behaviour is 10,000 emails a month at Brevo, low on its volume ladder, on a Starter plan that begins at $9 for 5,000 emails. The exact Brevo figure at your volume comes from its selector, but the shape is not in doubt: quiet lists pay for storage at Mailchimp and don't at Brevo. Nonprofits with big donor lists and occasional appeals, venues with seasonal blasts, product companies emailing at releases — that's the Brevo column.

Where Mailchimp's model fights back

Reverse the ratio and so does the answer. A 1,000-contact list mailed three times a week is roughly 12,000 emails a month: a small band at Mailchimp ($45 on Standard after intro) but a real volume at Brevo, climbing its selector. Frequent senders with small lists are contact-pricing's favourite customers. Feature depth also isn't symmetrical at the bottom: Brevo's $9 Starter includes the editor, segmentation and templates, but marketing automation and A/B testing start at its $18 Standard — while Mailchimp's Standard is its automation tier at $20 for the smallest band. And as everywhere in this series, Mailchimp's integration catalogue is the moat the price table can't see.

Brevo's free plan, and the SMS aside

Brevo's free plan is a daily-capped drip — up to 300 emails a day once your account is approved for sending — which suits steady low-volume senders better than campaign-day senders, who hit the ceiling at breakfast. Mailchimp's free cap, as its own page states it, is two different numbers; the free-plan guide has that story. Both platforms also sell SMS and other channels; we priced neither's SMS here, and if multi-channel is your real question, price it directly on both sites rather than trusting any email-first comparison, ours included.

The verdict, as a ratio

Under roughly one send per contact per month, Brevo's model is built for you; several sends per contact per month, and Mailchimp's bands stop being the villain of this particular story — though cheaper contact-counted rivals still undercut it at every size we track. In between, get both real numbers: your Mailchimp band from our ladder, your Brevo price from the selector on Brevo's own pricing page at your true monthly volume — a plain link that earns us nothing, since Brevo's programme does not accept sites at our size. Ten minutes with two pricing pages beats any verdict paragraph, and we say that as the people writing the verdict paragraph.

Finding your ratio before you decide

The whole comparison turns on your emails-per-contact-per-month number, and most senders have never computed it — so compute it before either pricing page gets your card. Your sending platform's own reporting has both inputs: total emails delivered in the last three full months (campaigns plus automations — automation volume is the part people forget, and drip sequences add up), divided by three for a monthly figure, then divided by your current stored-contact count. A 4,000-contact list sending one newsletter and a modest welcome flow might land near 1.1; the same list under a daily-send habit lands past 25. The number is stable for most organisations, which is what makes it a planning tool rather than trivia.

Then map it. Comfortably under 1, you're storage-heavy: Mailchimp's bands charge you monthly for contacts you rarely mail, and Brevo's volume ladder is structurally on your side — price your actual monthly volume in its selector and you'll usually be low on the ladder. Consistently over 4 or 5, you're volume-heavy: Brevo's selector climbs while Mailchimp's band holds flat until your list grows, and the contact-counted platforms with unlimited sends — GetResponse and Moosend in our table — deserve the shortlist more than either platform in this headline. Between those poles, the models price close enough that the decision should fall to features, the free tiers, or the migration effort you're willing to spend, not to the billing model.

One habit protects you in every case: re-run the ratio when your sending pattern changes. Adding a daily digest, launching an automation-heavy onboarding, or pruning a dead list all move the number — and a pricing model that was right for last year's ratio can quietly become the expensive one. The platforms won't send you a note when that happens; your own reporting will, if you ask it twice a year.

One caution on applying the ratio: it describes your pattern, not your peak. A list that averages one send a month but runs a December of daily promotions needs the December volume priced, not the average — volume pricing charges for the spike, while contact pricing has already charged you for the quiet months. If your year has a loud season, price both models at the loud month before deciding; it's the one they disagree about most.

Both vendors' pages will have moved by the time some readers arrive here, which is why every figure above carries its reading date — treat the structure as durable and the digits as perishable, and re-check the digits at the source before money moves.