Customer.io Pricing 2026: Plans, Overages and Billing
Short answer
Customer.io publishes its prices. Braze and Iterable send you to a sales call; Customer.io shows a starting price, a profile tier table and the overage rates. The real cost still depends on details that are easy to miss, like deleted profiles that still count toward your bill. Here's how the plans work and what actually moves the invoice.
Customer.io pricing at a glance
| Plan | Price (as of October 2026) | Plan term | Profiles | Emails a month | Built for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | From $100 a month | Monthly | 5,000 included, more by tier | 1 million | Teams getting started with data-driven messaging |
| Premium | From $1,000 a month | Annual (billed yearly) | Custom volume and pricing | Custom volume and pricing | Teams scaling across channels with custom workflows |
| Enterprise | Contact sales (Let's talk) | Annual | Best pricing on profile volume | Best pricing on email volume | Organizations that need dedicated infrastructure and support |
All prices are in US dollars. User seats are unlimited on every plan, so a growing team doesn't push the price up. Profiles and messages do.
Essentials price by profile count
Essentials scales with the number of profiles in your account. Customer.io publishes this ladder:
| Profiles (people + objects) | Essentials price per month |
|---|---|
| 5,000 | $100 |
| 10,000 | $145 |
| 20,000 | $235 |
| 30,000 | $325 |
| 40,000 | $415 |
| 50,000 and up | $505 and up |
Every extra 1,000 profiles adds $9 along this ladder, which matches the published overage rate of $0.009 per profile. Past 50,000 profiles the page shows "$505+", and at that size most teams will want to compare it with a Premium quote.
What each plan includes
Essentials
Essentials includes the AI Agent with core execution skills (plus 3 custom skills and 1 weekly Routine), the visual workflow builder, 2 object types, 2 workspaces, basic data integrations, and email and community support. Channels cover email (1 million sends a month), transactional email, unlimited push and in-app messages, mobile SDKs, WhatsApp, LINE and unlimited webhooks. SMS volume is custom on every plan. Reporting, A/B and multivariate testing, conversion tracking, the MCP server, reverse ETL, SSO and two-factor authentication, US or EU data centers and SOC Tier II compliance are listed on all three plans. What's missing: anonymous messages, data warehouse destinations, data replay, custom role permissions, managed deliverability and chat support.
Premium
Premium adds custom profile and email volume, 10 object types, unlimited workspaces, higher Agent session limits, 10 custom Agent skills, up to 5 daily Routines (scheduled Agent tasks), premium data integrations including a native Salesforce integration, data warehouse destinations, data replay, anonymous messages, custom collections, custom role-based permissions and managed deliverability. Support moves up to chat and email, 90-day onboarding support and a 2-hour first outreach response time. HIPAA compliance is available at extra cost.
Enterprise
Enterprise adds Customer.io's best pricing on profile and email volume, custom Agent limits, priority technical support, priority throughput and sending capacity (marked as extra cost), and audit logging and data governance (listed as available by consultation). A shared Slack channel is listed for Enterprise at extra cost.
What drives your Customer.io bill
The plan fee is only the starting point. Customer.io's billing documentation spells out what gets added, and most of it comes down to counting.
- Profiles, counted at the high watermark. Every profile that existed at any point in the billing period counts, even if you deleted it. Start a month with 3,000 profiles, add 250 and delete 50, and you're billed for 3,250.
- Every workspace counts. Profiles in workspaces named "test" or "dev" count, and the same person in two workspaces counts twice. An integration that re-adds deleted profiles in the same month doubles them on the bill.
- Email overages. Extra emails cost $0.12 per 1,000 on every plan. Any email that reaches the email service provider counts, including bounces and suppressed sends.
- SMS. If Customer.io bills your SMS, your plan includes a monthly number of segments (up to 160 characters each) and each extra segment costs $0.0120. Extra sender numbers cost $2.50 a month for toll-free or 10DLC numbers and $1,000 a month for a short code. If you use your own provider, such as Twilio, you pay that provider instead.
- WhatsApp. Customer.io doesn't charge for WhatsApp messages; Meta does, and so does Twilio if you send through it.
- AI credits. Only LLM actions inside automations use AI credits. Extra credits cost $10 per 100,000 on Essentials and Premium and are negotiated on Enterprise. The Agent, segment builder and content analysis don't use credits.
- Paid support options. A dedicated Customer Success Manager, migration support, a Technical Implementation Specialist and a shared Slack channel are marked as additional cost.
Billing mechanics matter too. Monthly plans are charged at the start of each period for the plan fee plus the previous period's overages. Monthly subscriptions are paid by credit card; annual subscribers can get an invoice and pay by ACH or wire. Sales tax may be added where it applies. One more thing before you plan a launch date: Customer.io manually reviews each new account before any outbound messages can be sent.
A quick worked example using those published rates: an Essentials account on the 5,000-profile tier that ends the month with 6,000 billable profiles and 1.2 million emails sent would owe $9 in profile overage (1,000 times $0.009) and $24 in email overage (200,000 extra emails at $0.12 per 1,000) on top of the $100 plan fee. Small numbers, but they compound when a sync job misbehaves.
Free trial and Startup Program
Customer.io advertises a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. AI credits aren't available on trial plans, so test LLM actions after you convert. The Startup Program is the bigger deal for young companies: up to 12 months free, including up to 30,000 profiles. To qualify, your business must have raised less than $10 million in total funding, must not have bought its contact lists, and must never have been a Customer.io customer. When the free term ends, Customer.io says you'll get notice and a graduation offer. Details are on the Customer.io pricing page.
How Customer.io compares on price
Published entry prices, read on each vendor's own site in October 2026:
| Platform | Entry price (as of October 2026) | What the bill is based on | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer.io | Essentials from $100 a month, billed monthly | Profiles (people + objects), plus email and SMS overages | 14-day free trial; Startup Program for eligible startups |
| Braze | Not published; quoted by sales | Platform Edition, Monthly Active Users and profiles, Action Credits and services | No free plan; trials and startup programs |
| Iterable | Not published; its pricing address redirects to the homepage | Not published | None listed; demo booking and platform tour |
| Klaviyo | Free plan; paid plans set in its plan builder | Configured in its plan builder; the free tier is capped by active profiles | Free plan up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month |
| Brevo | Starter $9 a month billed monthly ($8.08 a month billed yearly) | Monthly email volume (Starter from 5,000 emails, 500 contacts included) | Free plan, up to 300 emails a day |
Braze contracts combine a Platform Edition (Go, Select, Pro or Enterprise), Monthly Active Users, profiles and Action Credits; see Braze pricing and our full Braze pricing breakdown. Iterable doesn't show plans on iterable.com at all, so a quote is the only way in; our Iterable vs Customer.io comparison covers how the two differ beyond price, and Iterable vs Braze covers the other enterprise pairing. At the small end, the Klaviyo pricing page and the Brevo pricing page both start free, though they're built for different jobs: Klaviyo around online stores, Brevo around email volume.
If Customer.io looks too heavy or too light, our list of Customer.io alternatives and the Customer.io vs Braze guide are good next reads.
How to get an accurate quote
Essentials can be priced off the public ladder. Premium and Enterprise can't, so walk into the call with your numbers and these questions:
- How many profiles will we have at our peak month, counting objects (accounts, companies) and every workspace, including test ones?
- What is the Premium per-profile overage rate in our contract, and is it the $0.004 listed in your billing docs?
- How many emails and SMS segments are included, and what do sender numbers and 10DLC registrations cost us?
- Which support items (CSM, migration help, implementation specialist, Slack channel) are in the price and which are add-ons?
- Do we need HIPAA, audit logging or priority throughput, and what does each add?
- How many AI credits are included, and what happens when they run out?
- What is the contract term, and can we pay annually by invoice?
Then check your data hygiene before you sign. A clean profile count, with no duplicate workspaces and no sync job re-adding deleted users, is the cheapest discount you'll get.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Customer.io cost?
As of October 2026, Customer.io Essentials starts at $100 a month, billed monthly, for 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month. Premium starts at $1,000 a month, billed yearly, with custom profile and email volume. Enterprise is priced through sales. Overages, SMS and extra AI credits are billed on top.
Does Customer.io have a free plan?
No permanent free plan is listed. Customer.io offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and its Startup Program gives eligible companies (under $10 million in total funding, new to Customer.io) up to 12 months free with up to 30,000 profiles.
What counts as a profile in Customer.io billing?
A profile is a person or an object (a non-people record such as an account or a job posting). Customer.io bills on the highest number of profiles that existed in the billing period, including profiles you deleted, and counts profiles across all workspaces, test workspaces included.
What happens if I go over my Customer.io limits?
You pay overages. On Essentials, each extra profile costs $0.009 and every extra 1,000 emails costs $0.12. Customer.io's billing docs list $0.004 per extra profile on Premium and Enterprise. Overages from one billing period are charged at the start of the next.
Does Customer.io charge for SMS and WhatsApp?
SMS is billed either by Customer.io or by your own SMS provider such as Twilio. If Customer.io bills you, each SMS segment over your plan's allowance costs $0.0120. Customer.io does not charge for WhatsApp messages, but Meta (and Twilio, if you use it) does.
Is Customer.io cheaper than Braze or Iterable?
It is the only one of the three that publishes a price. Customer.io Essentials starts at $100 a month for 5,000 profiles. Braze and Iterable do not publish prices; both sell through sales conversations, so compare them on a written quote at your own volume.
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