Mailchimp vs Brevo: a contact-band bill against an email-volume bill
Mailchimp Standard costs $20 a month at 500 contacts, $100 for 2,501 to 5,000 and $135 for 5,001 to 10,000, and it caps sends at 12 times your contact count. Brevo prices by monthly email volume, campaigns and transactional mail together: Standard is $18 at 5,000 emails and $97 at 50,000. A big list mailed a few times a month is cheaper on Brevo, and Brevo also puts transactional email, SMTP and webhooks on every plan, where Mailchimp sells transactional separately.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
Pick Brevo when one account has to carry both newsletters and product mail, your list is large relative to what you send, or you want to pay for volume rather than headcount. Pick Mailchimp when your sends per contact are high (its allowance is generous per band), your team already works in it, or you can use its 50% first-year offers and plan to re-price after twelve months.
Monthly cost at four list and volume combinations
Mailchimp figures are Standard-plan band prices from its pricing page; Brevo figures are monthly-billing readouts from the email-volume slider on brevo.com/pricing, both read on 7 October 2026. Brevo's Standard plan is the like-for-like tier because it adds automation, A/B testing and event tracking; Starter is shown for lists that only need campaigns.
| Contacts and sends per month | Mailchimp Standard | Brevo Starter | Brevo Standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 contacts, up to 5,000 emails | $20 (Essentials $13) | $9 | $18 |
| 5,000 contacts, 20,000 emails | $100 ($50 for the first 12 months) | $32 | $69 |
| 10,000 contacts, 50,000 emails | $135 ($67.50 for the first 12 months) | $56 | $97 |
| 10,000 contacts, 100,000 emails | $135 (allowance is 120,000) | $82 | $139 |
At 20,000 emails to 5,000 contacts, Standard against Standard is $100 against $69, which is $31 a month or $372 a year in Brevo's favour. At 50,000 emails to 10,000 contacts the difference is $38 a month, $456 a year. The advantage disappears as you mail each contact more often: at 100,000 emails Mailchimp's $135 band is $4 below Brevo Standard's $139, because Mailchimp's allowance for that band is 120,000 sends and Brevo's price keeps climbing with volume.
The first-year column matters. In year one Mailchimp's discounted $50 and $67.50 undercut Brevo Standard's $69 and $97 by $19 and $29.50 a month. From month 13 the list prices apply.
Where the price comes from
Mailchimp's plan includes a set number of contacts and a send ceiling tied to them: Essentials 10 times your contacts, Standard 12 times, Premium 15 times. After the trial, it says, it bills overages automatically instead of pausing campaigns. Its annual plans are offered only for Standard and Premium accounts with 10,000 or more contacts, through sales.
Brevo's slider asks how many emails you send a month, with campaigns and transactional counted together, and the contacts the tier stores follow from that choice: 500 at 5,000 emails, 1,500 at 10,000, 2,500 at 15,000, and a 500,000-contact ceiling from 20,000 emails upward. Its pricing page says there is no daily sending limit on paid plans and no expiry on the volume. One add-on is easy to miss: the Starter card lists removing the Brevo logo at $10.80 a month, while Standard includes it.
Free plans
Mailchimp's free plan allows one audience of up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with 250 a day at most, and the page says sending is paused when you exceed either limit. Brevo's free plan sends up to 300 emails a day and stores up to 100,000 contacts, with marketing automation limited to 2,000 contacts. If your list is large and your sends are few, Brevo's free tier lasts much longer. If you have 200 subscribers and want tidy templates, the two are close.
Product events and receipts
Brevo's FAQ says all plans include transactional email with a REST API, SMTP, outbound webhooks and unlimited log retention, and Standard adds web and event tracking for custom events that trigger messages and segments. For a SaaS this means welcome mail, password resets and newsletters can run from one account, with one shared volume, so a spike in transactional mail raises the tier you pay for.
Mailchimp's marketing plans handle campaigns and flows. Its Transactional product has its own tab, its own pricing and its own API quick-start. On the marketing side, its Events endpoint can start a flow, multi-step on Standard and single-step on Essentials, but only for contacts already in your audience. Neither pricing page lists a Stripe or Paddle connector. In practice a billing webhook (invoice.payment_failed, customer.subscription.deleted) goes to your own handler, which calls either tool's API.
Moving from Mailchimp to Brevo or back
- Export the audience with status. Import people who unsubscribed or bounced as such, so they are never mailed again.
- Rebuild one welcome sequence in the new tool and authenticate your sending domain (SPF and DKIM) before the first send. Keep the old records for a week.
- Decide which system owns transactional mail. On Brevo, move it only after the marketing sends have shown stable delivery.
- Run both for one billing cycle and compare unsubscribe and bounce counts before you cancel the old account.
Which to choose
- Brevo suits SaaS teams that want newsletters and system mail on one invoice, and anyone mailing a 5,000 to 10,000 contact list a few times a month, where it is $31 to $38 a month cheaper at list price.
- Mailchimp suits teams that send often to a modest list, want 12 or 15 sends per contact included, or will take the 50% first-year offer and revisit the choice before the 13th month.
- Neither is built around subscription events. If trial and dunning emails are the main job, look at Loops vs Brevo.
Related reading: Klaviyo vs Brevo, MailerLite vs Brevo, Brevo vs Constant Contact, Customer.io vs Brevo, SaaS marketing automation guide and the comparison index.
Mailchimp vs Brevo: common questions
Is Brevo cheaper than Mailchimp?
At list prices, yes, at every volume worked out on this page except one: a 10,000-contact list sent about 100,000 emails a month costs $135 on Mailchimp Standard and $139 on Brevo Standard, so the two meet. The gap is widest for large lists mailed a few times a month, where Brevo Standard at 50,000 emails is $97 against Mailchimp's $135 for the 5,001 to 10,000 band.
Does Mailchimp include transactional email?
Not in the marketing plans. Mailchimp's pricing page puts Email Marketing and Transactional on separate tabs and its developer docs treat the Transactional API as its own product. Brevo's FAQ says every plan, including the free one, has transactional email with a REST API, SMTP and outbound webhooks. Brevo counts those sends against the same monthly volume as campaigns.
Which free plan lasts longer?
Brevo's, for a list with little sending: it stores up to 100,000 contacts and allows 300 emails a day. Mailchimp's free plan stops at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day). Brevo limits marketing automation on the free plan to 2,000 contacts, so it is not unlimited either.
How much do Mailchimp's first-year discounts change the comparison?
Enough to reverse it for twelve months. Its pricing page shows $50 for the 2,501 to 5,000 band and $67.50 for 5,001 to 10,000 in the first year, below Brevo Standard at $69 for 20,000 emails and $97 for 50,000. The list prices of $100 and $135 return in year two, and the offers shown differ between page versions, so budget on list price.