MailerLite vs Brevo: which one costs less for a SaaS list
MailerLite prices by how many subscribers you hold. Brevo prices by how many emails you send. A 10,000-subscriber list mailed four times a month costs $89 on MailerLite Comfort and $97 on Brevo Standard, but the same list mailed 15 times a month costs $129 on MailerLite Power, which has no send cap, against $179 on Brevo Standard. Send volume, not list size, decides which tool is cheaper.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
Pick MailerLite if your list is under roughly 10,000 and you want automations without counting sends: Comfort is $19 at 1,000 subscribers and $89 at 10,000. Pick Brevo if you mail a large list a few times a month, because its Standard plan is $139 at 100,000 emails where MailerLite Comfort at 25,000 subscribers is $179, or if you want transactional email and SMS in the same account. Frequent senders with a mid-size list should price MailerLite Power, which sends without a limit.
Four sending patterns, priced
The numbers below come from each vendor's pricing page on 7 October 2026, using monthly billing for both so the columns line up. Brevo's slider moves in email-volume stops, so a scenario lands on the nearest stop at or above its sends. Comfort and Brevo Standard are the like-for-like pair, since both include automation workflows.
| Scenario | MailerLite Comfort | MailerLite Power | Brevo Starter | Brevo Standard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 subscribers, 4 sends (4,000 emails) | $19 | $39 | $17 at the 10,000-email stop | $35 |
| 10,000 subscribers, 4 sends (40,000 emails) | $89 | $129 | $56 at the 50,000-email stop | $97 |
| 25,000 subscribers, 4 sends (100,000 emails) | $179 | $239 | $82 | $139 |
| 10,000 subscribers, 15 sends (150,000 emails) | Over its 100,000-email allowance | $129 | Not read above 100,000 | $179 |
Read across the rows and the lead changes hands. At 1,000 subscribers Comfort is $16 below Brevo Standard ($35 minus $19). At 10,000 it is $8 below ($97 minus $89). At 25,000 sending four times a month, Brevo Standard is $40 below Comfort ($179 minus $139), which is $480 a year. In the last row Brevo has no cheap answer at all: the only way to send 150,000 emails on Brevo's Standard slider is $179, while MailerLite Power stays at $129 because it never counts sends. That is $50 a month, or $600 a year, in MailerLite's favour for a frequent sender.
One detail on Brevo's side matters at small sizes. Its slider ties stored contacts to the email tier on the lower stops: the 5,000-email stop at $9 stores 500 contacts, the 10,000-email stop stores 1,500 and the 15,000-email stop stores 2,500, and from 20,000 emails up the readout shows 500,000 contacts. So a 1,000-subscriber list cannot sit on the cheapest Brevo stop even if it sends little, which is why the first row uses the 10,000-email stop.
What the free plans really let you do
MailerLite's Free plan stops at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, with two user seats. Brevo's Free plan is built differently: it stores up to 100,000 contacts but caps sending at 300 emails a day, and only 2,000 contacts can sit in marketing automation. Over a 30-day month, 300 a day adds up to 9,000 emails, so a Brevo account with 5,000 subscribers can mail all of them on the free plan if each send is spread over enough days. A MailerLite account with 5,000 subscribers has to pay, and the cheapest tier for that size is Comfort at $49. The catch on Brevo is the daily ceiling: a single send to 5,000 people cannot go out in one day.
Branding is the other trade. Brevo's Starter plan sends with a "Sent by Brevo" sticker, and its help center prices the Remove Brevo logo add-on at $9 a month; the Standard plan lists "No Brevo logo". MailerLite lists removing its logo among the Comfort features.
Transactional mail and billing events
Brevo lists transactional email as part of the platform, and its webhook documentation names event values such as request, delivered, soft_bounce, hard_bounce, spam and unsubscribed. MailerLite's pricing page splits the product: marketing is one tab and transactional is another, sold as MailerSend. For a SaaS that sends receipts and password resets alongside onboarding mail, Brevo keeps both in one contract; with MailerLite it is two products and two sets of domain records.
Neither vendor documents a ready-made connector for your own subscription lifecycle (trial ending, card declined, plan cancelled), so the work sits in a handler you write for your billing webhooks. On Brevo that handler calls the Events API: event_name is required, at least one identifier such as an email id or an ext_id must be supplied, and event_properties can carry values like plan name or amount. Brevo's docs list triggering workflows among the uses of events. On MailerLite, the handler adds the subscriber to a group or updates a custom field, and the automation starts from one of the seven default triggers, which include Joins a group and Updated field. Power allows up to three triggers per automation.
MailerLite does have a Stripe connection, but it is built around selling through MailerLite: connected Stripe products appear as checkout blocks, and an Action after checkout setting can add buyers to a group or update a field. That helps a creator selling a course; it does not read the invoices of your own SaaS plans. MailerLite's webhooks (subscriber.created, subscriber.added_to_group, subscriber.unsubscribed, subscriber.bounced among them) flow the other way, reporting list activity back to your app. They are signed with an HMAC header and your endpoint must answer within three seconds.
Switching either way
- Export subscribers with their group or list membership and every custom field, and keep unsubscribed and bounced addresses in a separate file so they are imported as suppressed, not as active.
- Add the new sending domain's SPF and DKIM records before you import, and keep the old provider's records in place until the new domain has delivered a few normal sends.
- Rebuild automations one at a time and run the old and new versions side by side for a send cycle, so a welcome series does not go out twice.
- Move the billing handler last: point the Stripe or Paddle webhook at the new endpoint only after the new tool has the same groups, fields or event names the automations expect.
Which one to choose
- MailerLite Comfort fits a list from a few hundred to about 10,000 that wants automations, landing pages and a cleaner editor, and sends a handful of times a month.
- MailerLite Power fits a mid-size list that mails often, since sends are unlimited and the price follows subscribers only.
- Brevo Standard fits a big list on a low-frequency schedule, or a team that wants transactional email, SMS and campaigns billed together.
- Brevo Free fits a prototype with a large contact table and small, spread-out sends.
Related reading: Mailchimp vs MailerLite, Mailchimp vs Brevo, ActiveCampaign vs Brevo, Customer.io vs MailerLite and email marketing tools. The full list lives on the comparisons page.
MailerLite vs Brevo: common questions
Is Brevo cheaper than MailerLite?
It depends on how often you send. For 25,000 subscribers mailed four times a month (100,000 emails), Brevo Standard is $139 against $179 for MailerLite Comfort. For 1,000 subscribers on the same schedule, MailerLite Comfort is $19 against $35 for Brevo Standard. Both figures are monthly billing from each pricing page on 7 October 2026.
Does MailerLite limit how many emails I can send?
On Comfort, yes: its pricing page says the plan gives you 10 times the ceiling of your subscriber tier each month, so the 10,000-subscriber tier allows 100,000 emails. Power has unlimited monthly emails. The Free plan allows 2,500 emails a month for up to 250 subscribers.
Can either one send transactional email for my app?
Brevo lists transactional email as part of its platform, with webhook events such as delivered, hard_bounce and spam. MailerLite does not send transactional email itself; its pricing page points to MailerSend for that. If receipts and password resets must come from the same account as your newsletters, Brevo is the shorter path.
How do I get billing events like a failed payment into either tool?
Neither page documents a connector for your own SaaS billing events, so the usual route is a small handler in your backend that receives the Stripe or Paddle webhook. For Brevo it posts to the Events API, which takes an event_name, an identifier for the contact and optional event_properties. For MailerLite it adds the subscriber to a group, since Joins a group is one of its seven default automation triggers.