Klaviyo vs Brevo: you pay for profiles on one and for sends on the other
Klaviyo prices by active profiles: $150 a month for 10,000 profiles, which includes 100,000 emails. Brevo prices by emails sent: $139 a month on Standard for 100,000 emails, with the contact allowance riding along. At the same 100,000 emails the gap is only $11, but the units diverge when your list and your send frequency do not match, and at 25,000 contacts sent four emails each Brevo costs $139 against Klaviyo's $400.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
If your list is large and you email it a few times a month, Brevo's volume-based pricing is usually cheaper, and you should start on Standard if you need automation. If your list is small and you send often, Klaviyo's profile tiers include ten emails per profile and cost about the same as Brevo's equivalent. Either way, price both on contacts and monthly emails together, because each vendor's cheaper case is the other's expensive one.
Two meters, one comparison
Klaviyo's tiers are named by active profiles and each includes ten times that many emails. Brevo's sliders are named by monthly emails, and the plan stores a contact allowance that grows with the volume you pick. The table matches the two where Klaviyo's included emails equal a Brevo slider stop. All prices are monthly billing, read on 7 October 2026.
| Emails a month | Klaviyo Email plan (profiles) | Brevo Starter | Brevo Standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $30 (1,000 profiles) | $17 | $35 |
| 50,000 | $100 (5,000 profiles) | $56 | $97 |
| 100,000 | $150 (10,000 profiles) | $82 | $139 |
| 250,000 | $400 (25,000 profiles) | No readout above 100,000 emails | Professional lists from $499 for 150,000 up to 10 million sends |
Sources: klaviyo.com/pricing, brevo.com/pricing and Brevo's plans help article. Brevo's yearly billing takes 10% off: Starter at 5,000 emails is $8.08 a month against $9 monthly, and Standard's $18 becomes $16.17.
Same list, different bills
The ten-emails-per-profile ratio in Klaviyo's tiers is just one way a list can behave. Here are two lists where Brevo's volume meter and Klaviyo's profile meter pull apart.
| List | Emails a month | Klaviyo | Brevo Standard | Difference per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 contacts, 10 emails each | 100,000 | $150 | $139 | $132 in Brevo's favour |
| 25,000 contacts, 4 emails each | 100,000 | $400 | $139 | $3,132 in Brevo's favour |
| 25,000 contacts, 2 emails each | 50,000 | $400 | $97 | $3,636 in Brevo's favour |
The last two rows are the reason to model before choosing: $400 less $139 is $261 a month, or $3,132 a year, and $400 less $97 is $303, or $3,636. Brevo's Standard readouts at 20,000 emails and above list a contact allowance of 500,000, so list size stops being the constraint. The picture reverses for a small, chatty list. A SaaS with 1,000 profiles sending 10 emails each month is 10,000 emails: $30 on Klaviyo and $35 on Brevo Standard, with Brevo Starter at $17 if you do not need automation.
Free plans, in different units
Klaviyo's free plan is 250 profiles and 500 emails a month. Brevo's lists 300 sends a day, which is up to 9,000 in a 30-day month, storage for up to 100,000 contacts and 2,000 contacts in marketing automation. The daily cap is what bites: a welcome email to 2,000 new signups in a launch week takes seven days to go out on Brevo's free plan. On Klaviyo's free plan 500 emails cover about 100 users receiving a five-email onboarding series.
Automation and events on the cheaper tiers
On Brevo, Starter lists email and SMS, a drag-and-drop editor, templates, advanced segmentation and forms. Marketing automation, A/B testing, AI send-time optimization and web and event tracking appear on Standard, and Standard includes up to 3 users, with each additional marketing seat $9 a month. Sales Essentials is a separate $31 a month add-on. A SaaS planning trial, upgrade and payment-failed flows should therefore start from Standard's $18, not Starter's $9.
On the API side, Brevo's create event endpoint takes an event name of up to 255 characters, restricted to letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores, for example payment-failed. Klaviyo's Create Event takes a profile identifier and a metric name, with limits of 350 requests per second burst and 3,500 per minute steady. Brevo lists transactional email and SMS campaigns as part of its platform. I found no transactional email offering described on Klaviyo's pricing page, so a SaaS that wants receipts and lifecycle mail under one bill should ask Klaviyo how it handles them.
Data protection, as far as the pages say
Brevo publishes a DPA and its privacy policy has a section on whether personal data is transferred outside the European Economic Area, though no hosting region is stated on the pages I read. Klaviyo's DPA could not be fetched when I tried, and its pricing page states no hosting region. If EU hosting is a requirement, ask each vendor to put its region and DPA terms in the contract.
Which to choose
- Brevo Starter at $9 to $82 a month suits a newsletter-style list with transactional mail and no automation.
- Brevo Standard at $18 to $139 suits SaaS lifecycle flows on a large, lightly emailed list.
- Klaviyo suits a small list that you email often, or a team that values its profile and metric model and its free plan to start.
- Above 150,000 emails a month, re-quote both: Brevo moves to Professional from $499, and Klaviyo's published ladder ends at $400 for 25,000 profiles.
Switching
- Export contacts with attributes, tags and consent history from the old platform.
- Import unsubscribed contacts as unsubscribed, and keep suppression lists from the old sender.
- Send your billing events to the new platform's API before rebuilding the flows, then run the trial and payment sequences on a test segment.
- Move domain authentication last and warm up gradually if volumes are large.
Related reading: Iterable vs Klaviyo, Customer.io vs Klaviyo, Customer.io vs Brevo, Mailchimp vs Brevo, the email marketing category and the comparison index.
Klaviyo vs Brevo: common questions
Is Brevo cheaper than Klaviyo?
Usually, when you send fewer emails per contact. At 100,000 emails a month Brevo Standard is $139 and Brevo Starter is $82, against Klaviyo's 10,000-profile tier at $150, which includes the same 100,000 emails. A list of 25,000 contacts sent 4 emails each is also 100,000 emails: $139 on Brevo Standard against $400 on Klaviyo's 25,000-profile tier. The order can flip at high volume: Brevo's Professional plan, listed for 150,000 emails and up, starts at $499, while Klaviyo's 25,000-profile tier at $400 includes 250,000 emails.
What do the two free plans include?
Klaviyo's free plan lists up to 250 active profiles, 500 emails a month and $5 of mobile messages. Brevo's free plan lists 300 email sends a day, which is up to 9,000 in a 30-day month, with storage for up to 100,000 contacts and 2,000 contacts in marketing automation. Brevo's cap is daily, so a launch-day send to 2,000 people takes seven days on the free plan.
Does Brevo's cheapest paid plan include automation?
Not by its own plan list. Starter, from $9 a month at 5,000 emails, lists email and SMS, a drag-and-drop editor, templates, segmentation and forms. Marketing automation, A/B testing and event tracking appear on Standard, from $18 a month at 5,000 emails. A SaaS that wants trial and payment flows should price Standard as its starting point.
How do I send billing events to each?
Brevo's API has a create-event endpoint at /v3/events that takes an event name up to 255 characters using letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores, tied to a contact. Klaviyo's Create Event call needs at least one profile identifier and a metric name, with stated limits of 350 requests per second in a burst and 3,500 per minute steady. Either works for webhooks from Stripe or Paddle once you map the event to the contact's email.