Brevo vs Mailchimp: Pricing, Limits and Fit

These two look interchangeable until you price them against your own list. Mailchimp asks how many contacts you keep. Brevo asks how many emails you send. A store with 40,000 past customers and one newsletter a month gets two very different quotes from those two questions. So does a coach with 800 subscribers who emails three times a week.

Ownership differs too. Intuit acquired Mailchimp in 2021. Brevo, founded in 2012, still lists Sendinblue SAS and Sendinblue, Inc. among its group companies, and that's the name older articles still use.

The short answer

• Choose Brevo for large lists with low send frequency, multichannel messaging, and teams that want transactional email and a sales pipeline without a second vendor.
• Choose Mailchimp for small lists with frequent sends, for A/B testing on the cheapest paid plan, and for marketers who want more hand-holding and 300+ integrations.
• Price both if you sit in the middle: work out your monthly sends and your total contacts, then run each number through the matching calculator.

Brevo vs Mailchimp at a glance

Pricing and plans

Brevo pricing (as of November 2026)

Brevo lists four paid plans on its pricing page. Starter is $9 a month, or $8.08 a month billed yearly, for 5,000 emails. Standard is $18 a month, or $16.17 billed yearly, and adds unlimited automation, A/B testing, send time optimization, click heatmaps and one landing page. Professional is $499 a month, or $449.08 billed yearly, for 150,000 emails and 10 seats, and adds WhatsApp, popups, mobile push and phone support. Enterprise shows "starting from $2,499 per month" and goes through sales.

Here's the catch in the small print. The email tier also caps stored contacts: 500 contacts at 5,000 emails, 1,500 at 10,000 and 2,500 at 15,000. Only at 20,000 emails a month does the cap jump to 500,000. So a 5,000-person list can't sit on the $9 tier even if you only email it once. Brevo's plan builder prices that 20,000-email tier at $32 a month on Starter or $69 on Standard. Removing the Brevo logo on Starter costs another $12 a month ($10.80 billed yearly).

Mailchimp pricing (as of November 2026)

Mailchimp's pricing page starts Essentials at $13 a month and Standard at $20 a month, both for up to 500 contacts, rising with your contact tier. Premium starts at $350 a month with 10,000 contacts (the page also showed a 12-month offer at $297.50). The monthly send limit is 10, 12 or 15 times your contact limit respectively. Essentials tops out at 50,000 contacts on a $385 tier and Standard at 100,000 on an $800 tier; beyond that, Mailchimp points you to a custom Premium plan.

Two details bite. Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward your total, so an uncleaned list costs real money. And if you pass your contact limit on a paid plan, it doesn't stop sending: you see an extra charge on the bill. There is also a Pay As You Go option that buys email credits instead of a subscription, with the same features as Essentials, aimed at infrequent senders.

What the billing difference does to your bill

Two sums show it. A big list first: Mailchimp Standard at 100,000 contacts is the $800 tier, with 1.2 million sends a month included. Brevo Standard at 100,000 emails comes to $139 a month ($18 base plus $121), enough to reach that list once. At its top tier, 500,000 emails, it comes to $429 ($18 plus $411), which covers five sends. Email those people twice a week and Standard no longer fits, so you'd be looking at Professional.

Now a small list. With 500 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, Mailchimp Standard costs $20. Brevo Standard needs its 10,000-email tier, which is $35 ($18 plus $17). Same plan name, and the cheaper vendor has flipped. Your send count decides this, not the logo.

Free plans compared

If you just want to start without paying, Brevo's free plan is the more generous one by a wide margin: 300 emails a day with no time limit and no card, automation for up to 2,000 contacts, and storage for 100,000 contacts. The daily cap is the real limit. Send a campaign to 1,000 people and only 300 go out that day; you resend to the rest by hand.

Mailchimp's free plan is tighter: 250 contacts, 500 sends a month, a maximum of 250 a day, no scheduling, only a preview of automation flows and email support only for the first 30 days. Go over 250 contacts and sending pauses until you upgrade or trim the list. It does include landing pages, which Brevo holds back until Standard.

Automation and segmentation

Brevo gives every plan real-time event triggers, multiple entry points and abandoned cart recovery, but caps automation at 2,000 contacts until you reach Standard. Mailchimp splits it differently: a preview on Free, flows limited to 4 steps on Essentials, and up to 200 flows on Standard and Premium. If automation is the reason you're buying, both vendors effectively push you to their Standard plan, and Brevo's costs less at the entry tier.

Segmentation leans the other way. Brevo includes advanced segmentation filters from the Free plan, but contact scoring and AI segmentation wait for Professional at $499. Mailchimp saves its advanced and predictive segments, behavioral targeting and customer lifetime value data for Standard, which starts at $20. For a small store that wants purchase likelihood without a big plan, that's a point for Mailchimp. A/B testing also starts lower at Mailchimp (Essentials) than at Brevo (Standard).

On AI, Brevo includes its Aura assistant on every plan, plus an MCP connection for managing campaigns from ChatGPT or Claude. Mailchimp offers generative features through Intuit Assist on Standard and Premium, which it labels beta and limits to certain users, select countries and English.

SMS, WhatsApp and other channels

This is Brevo's clearest win. You can add SMS to any plan, including Free, by buying prepaid credits; Brevo says prices start at $0.0109 per message credit in the US and vary by country, and credits never expire. WhatsApp campaigns sit on Professional and Enterprise. Web push starts on Starter, mobile push on Professional, and Brevo also runs live chat and a chatbot.

Mailchimp's SMS is an add-on from Essentials up. You apply, get approved, register a sending number per country, and buy monthly credits that don't roll over. MMS needs Standard or Premium and only reaches the US and Canada. Its plan comparison doesn't list WhatsApp. If text is central to your plan, read our guide to SMS marketing platforms before you commit to either.

Transactional email and CRM

Order confirmations and password resets can force a second vendor on a small team. Brevo avoids that: every plan includes its REST API, SMTP relay and webhooks, and those emails share your monthly volume. Mailchimp Transactional is an add-on for Standard and Premium monthly plans, sold in blocks of 25,000 emails at $20 a block up to 500,000 emails a month. Mailchimp says it's designed for developers and requires HTML and API knowledge.

Brevo also bundles free sales tools: 1 pipeline, 50 open deals, and a connected calendar and inbox. The Sales Essentials add-on is $31 a month ($27.92 billed yearly) and needs at least Starter. Mailchimp's marketing CRM centers on contact profiles, tags and segments, and its plan comparison lists no deal pipeline, so a sales team would pair it with a separate CRM. For that setup, compare ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp.

Who each is for

• Brevo fits small businesses and ecommerce brands with large or seasonal lists, teams that want email, SMS and transactional messages under one roof, and solo operators who need automation on a free or low-cost plan.
• Mailchimp fits small marketing teams with tidy lists who send often, want landing pages from day one, value 24/7 email and chat support and need one of its 300+ integrations.

Limits of each

• Brevo: the low email tiers also cap contacts, so the $9 price only works for very small lists.
• Brevo: a big jump between Standard and Professional, from $18 to $499, and WhatsApp, popups, mobile push and phone support all sit behind it.
• Brevo: Starter has one user, and Standard tops out at 3 seats with each extra seat at $12 a month.
• Mailchimp: you pay for stored contacts, including unsubscribed ones, whether or not you email them.
• Mailchimp: Essentials limits flows to 4 steps and leaves out AI features, predictive segments and dynamic content.
• Mailchimp: no WhatsApp on the plan comparison, SMS only in select countries, and unused SMS credits expire.

Which should you choose

Do the sum first. Write down your total contacts and the number of emails you sent last month. The lower your sends are relative to your list, the better Brevo's model looks, and it gets you SMS and transactional email without another contract. The more often you email a small list, or the more you want predictive segments at a low plan price, the better Mailchimp Standard looks. Price both at your real numbers.

Then test the part you'll use daily. Build one real automation in each, a welcome series with a discount, on the free or trial plan. An afternoon with both should tell you which one you'd rather live in.

Alternatives worth a look

If neither fits, our Mailchimp alternatives list is a wider starting point. Selling online with store data behind every message? Read Klaviyo vs Mailchimp. Running a service business that wants events and phone support next to email? See Mailchimp vs Constant Contact.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Brevo cheaper than Mailchimp?
At the entry level, yes on list price: as of November 2026 Brevo Starter starts at $9 a month and Mailchimp Essentials at $13 a month. The bigger difference is the billing basis. Brevo charges by monthly email volume and Mailchimp by contacts stored, so Brevo tends to cost less for a large list you email rarely, and the gap narrows or reverses if you send often to a small list.

Which free plan is better, Brevo or Mailchimp?
Brevo's is larger. It allows 300 emails a day, up to 100,000 stored contacts and automation for up to 2,000 contacts. Mailchimp's Free plan allows 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day), with only a preview of automation flows, though it does include forms and landing pages. Both add their own branding to free emails.

Does Brevo limit contacts?
Yes, on the lowest paid tiers. Starter and Standard store 500 contacts at 5,000 emails a month, 1,500 at 10,000 emails and 2,500 at 15,000 emails. From 20,000 emails a month the limit rises to 500,000 contacts. Professional stores up to 2 million contacts.

Can you send WhatsApp messages from Mailchimp?
WhatsApp is not listed on Mailchimp's marketing plan comparison, which covers email and an SMS add-on. Brevo includes WhatsApp campaigns on its Professional and Enterprise plans, with message credits priced by country and template type.

Which is better for transactional email?
Brevo is simpler to start with, because every plan includes its transactional API and SMTP relay and those emails share the same monthly volume as campaigns. Mailchimp Transactional is a paid add-on for Standard and Premium monthly plans, priced at $20 per block of 25,000 emails at low volume, and it is designed for developers.

Can I move from Mailchimp to Brevo?
Yes. Brevo publishes a Mailchimp import guide and a migration page, and suggests importing a test segment and recreating one campaign before you switch fully. Budget time to rebuild templates, automations and integrations, because those are the parts that take longest.