Brevo vs Moosend: pay for emails sent, or pay for contacts stored
Brevo sets its price by how many emails you send each month and Moosend sets it by how many contacts you hold, so the cheaper one flips with your list size and send frequency. At 10,000 contacts sending 5 emails each, Moosend Pro is $88 and Brevo Standard is $97. At 50,000 contacts sending 2 each, Brevo is $139 and Moosend is $315. Brevo also includes transactional email and a permanent free plan, which matters for a SaaS product.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
Pick Brevo if your list is large compared with how often you mail it, if you want password resets and receipts sent from the same account, or if you want to start free. Pick Moosend if your list is modest and you mail it often, because its Pro plan does not meter sends. From about five emails per contact per month on a 10,000-contact list, Moosend's contact-based price is the lower one.
Two different meters
Prices below were read from Brevo's pricing calculator and Moosend's contact selector on 7 October 2026. Brevo's slider counts campaign and transactional emails together and ties contact storage to the volume you pick: at 5,000 emails the calculator lists 500 contacts, at 10,000 emails it lists 1,500, and from 20,000 emails it lists 500,000. Moosend's selector runs from 500 to 1,000,000 contacts with no send cap on Pro.
| Item | Brevo | Moosend |
|---|---|---|
| Free option | Free forever: 300 emails a day, up to 100,000 contacts, 2,000 contacts in automation | 30-day trial, no card; no ongoing free plan |
| Entry paid plan | Starter $9 a month at 5,000 emails ($8.08 on yearly billing) | Pro $7 a month at 500 contacts on annual billing, $9 struck through beside it |
| Plan with automation | Standard $18 a month at 5,000 emails; adds marketing automation, A/B testing, advanced reports and no Brevo logo | Pro includes automation, landing pages, subscription forms and an SMTP server |
| Top self-serve plan | Professional from $499 a month, 150,000 to 10 million emails, 10 seats | Moosend+ and Enterprise show no price on the page; credit packs from $350 |
| Transactional email | Counted inside the same volume | Not on Pro; add-on for Moosend+ |
Monthly cost by list size and send frequency
Both columns below assume monthly billing and an automation-capable plan, meaning Brevo Standard and Moosend Pro. The Brevo figures are the calculator's readouts at the nearest stop that covers the emails and the contacts. Moosend's are the struck-through monthly list prices at each contact count.
| Situation | Emails a month | Brevo | Moosend | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 contacts, 5 emails each | 5,000 | $0 on Free (300 a day cap) | $16 | Brevo $16 lower |
| 10,000 contacts, 5 emails each | 50,000 | Standard $97 | $88 | Moosend $9 lower (97 minus 88) |
| 10,000 contacts, 10 emails each | 100,000 | Standard $139 | $88 | Moosend $51 lower (139 minus 88) |
| 25,000 contacts, 2 emails each | 50,000 | Standard $97 | $160 | Brevo $63 lower (160 minus 97) |
| 50,000 contacts, 2 emails each | 100,000 | Standard $139 | $315 | Brevo $176 lower (315 minus 139) |
On annual billing the same rows read $87.25 and $125.08 for Brevo Standard at 50,000 and 100,000 emails, against $70, $128 and $252 for Moosend at 10,000, 25,000 and 50,000 contacts. Brevo's Starter, which drops automation, is $56 at 50,000 emails and $82 at 100,000. For very heavy sending Moosend also sells credits instead of a contact plan: 350,000 credits for $350, 500,000 for $500 and 1,000,000 for $1,000, never expiring, each credit one email to one recipient. That works out to $1 per 1,000 emails, so a 150,000-email month costs $150 in credits, against a Professional plan that starts at $499 on Brevo with a larger feature set.
One pitfall in Brevo's calculator is the contact tie-in. A 1,000-contact list does not fit the 5,000-email stop, which lists only 500 contacts, so the first paid stop that holds it is 10,000 emails at $35 on Standard. That is why the free plan is the sensible home for a small SaaS list. Its limits are the 300-a-day send cap and the 2,000-contact automation ceiling. Standard also removes the Brevo logo, which the Starter calculator sells as a $10.80 add-on.
What a SaaS product needs from the tool
- Transactional mail. Brevo's platform menu describes transactional messaging sent through an SMTP relay and API, and its slider counts those sends in the same monthly volume. Moosend's Pro column has an SMTP server but crosses out Transactional Emails, so receipts and resets would need the Moosend+ add-on or a separate sender.
- Events from your billing system. Brevo's developer docs describe an Events API for recording custom events that can trigger automation workflows, and its integrations menu names Stripe among 150-plus connected tools. Moosend's help centre describes a "When custom event is recorded" trigger fed by website tracking code, firing either every time or only the first time.
- Lifecycle states. Trial started, trial ending, payment failed, upgrade and cancel are all events your app or billing platform already produces. With either tool, the cleanest design is one event per state, sent from your backend after you verify the Stripe or Paddle webhook, rather than inferring state from list membership.
- Data handling. Brevo publishes a data processing agreement; its privacy policy discusses transfers outside the EEA and does not name a hosting region.
Moving a list from one to the other
- Export contacts with their attributes, and export unsubscribed and bounced addresses as a separate file so they can be loaded as suppressed, not active.
- Moosend counts unique email addresses across lists, so de-duplicate before importing in either direction to avoid paying for repeats.
- Going to Brevo Free, remember that a 5,000-address welcome mailing at 300 a day takes about 17 days (5,000 divided by 300), and that only 2,000 contacts can be in automations.
- Publish SPF and DKIM for the sending domain in the new tool before the first send, leave the old records in place, and run both for one billing cycle.
Which to choose
- Brevo suits a SaaS team with a big, mostly quiet list, one that wants transactional and marketing mail in one account, or one still pre-revenue and happy on 300 emails a day.
- Moosend suits a lean list that is mailed frequently, because Pro does not count sends, and teams that only need marketing automation, forms and landing pages.
- Either is a stretch if your lifecycle logic lives in billing events and you want a native Stripe trigger; both depend on you or a connector forwarding the event.
Related reading: all comparisons, Brevo vs GetResponse, Moosend vs GetResponse, Mailchimp vs Moosend, Klaviyo vs Brevo and the email marketing category.
Brevo vs Moosend: common questions
Does Moosend have a free plan the way Brevo does?
No. Moosend offers a 30-day trial with no credit card, which its pricing page says covers unlimited sends for up to 1,000 contacts, one published automation workflow and two team members. After that you pay. Brevo's free plan has no end date, allows 300 emails a day and stores up to 100,000 contacts, but only 2,000 contacts can sit in marketing automation.
Which is cheaper at 10,000 contacts?
It depends on how often you send. Moosend Pro at 10,000 contacts is $88 on monthly billing ($70 on annual), with unlimited sends. Brevo Standard, which is the tier with automation, costs $97 a month at 50,000 emails and $139 at 100,000. Five emails per contact favours Moosend by $9 (97 minus 88); ten emails per contact favours it by $51 (139 minus 88).
Can Moosend Pro send transactional email such as password resets?
Not on Pro. Moosend's pricing page marks transactional emails with a cross on the Pro column and lists Transactional Emails as an add-on for Moosend+. Brevo counts transactional and campaign emails together in the one volume you choose on its slider.
How would a failed-payment email from Stripe reach each tool?
Your backend or a connector receives Stripe's invoice.payment_failed webhook and passes it on. For Brevo, the Events API records a custom event that can start an automation. Moosend's own help article on its custom-event trigger describes events passed through website tracking code, so a server-side billing webhook is more likely to update a field or list membership through the API instead.