Klaviyo vs Braze: Pricing, Channels and Fit

Klaviyo and Braze show up on the same shortlists, but they describe themselves very differently. Klaviyo calls itself the autonomous B2C CRM and builds marketing, service and analytics around shoppers and orders. Braze sells a cross-channel engagement platform with its own data platform and AI suite, and lists industries such as retail, financial services, travel, media, gaming, on-demand and quick-service restaurants. If you sell sneakers on Shopify, the choice is usually quick. If you run an app with a few million users, it gets more interesting.

The short answer

• Choose Klaviyo for ecommerce and retail brands that want store-driven email and SMS, a free starting point and published pricing.
• Choose Braze for app-first or multi-market brands that need in-app and web messaging, real-time triggers and warehouse data at high volume.
• Look at both if you are a growing retailer adding an app: compare the cost of Klaviyo's Marketing plan at your profile count with a Braze quote at your monthly active users.

Klaviyo vs Braze at a glance

Pricing and plans

Klaviyo pricing (as of October 2026)

Klaviyo prices by active profiles (contacts who can receive marketing) and the products you include. The Free plan covers up to 250 active profiles, 500 email sends a month, $5 of mobile messages and $5 of Composer usage a month, with email support for the first 60 days. At 500 active profiles the US pricing page estimates the Email plan at $20 a month (5,000 emails a month) and the Marketing plan at $90 a month. Marketing adds mobile push and in-app messages, predictive analytics, segment performance reports, social marketing tools and Customer Hub features such as onsite personalization, product recommendations, loyalty rewards and order tracking. Composer is also sold on its own at $20 a month. See Klaviyo pricing.

Braze pricing (as of October 2026)

Braze sells four Platform Editions: Braze Go for early-stage growth teams, Braze Select (more orchestration, security and user provisioning), Braze Pro (predictive AI, AI recommendations and message prioritization) and Braze Enterprise. A contract combines the edition, a number of Monthly Active Users and profiles, a pool of Action Credits and support services. Braze counts a Monthly Active User as anyone who records a session on your Braze-connected app or site in a calendar month, and you decide whether to track anonymous visitors. Action Credits are one currency spent across email, SMS, MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, LINE, KakaoTalk, Content Cards, Banners, webhooks and the BrazeAI Agent Console; in Braze's own example an SMS may cost 1 credit and a WhatsApp message 5. Prices are quoted; see Braze pricing.

Channels

On paper the overlap is large. Klaviyo lists email, SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, mobile app push and in-app messages, social marketing and website personalization, all reading from one profile, with Reviews and a Helpdesk as extra products. Braze lists email, push, SMS, MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk and LINE, plus in-app messages, Banners, Content Cards, landing pages, feature flags, webhooks and Audience Sync, with paid media integrations for Criteo, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Snapchat and TikTok. The difference is depth inside a product. Braze's in-app messages, Content Cards and Banners are built for brands that talk to users while they are inside an app. Klaviyo's strength is owned channels around a store. If push is the channel you care about most, our roundup of push notification services compares specialists too.

Automation and journeys

Klaviyo automations are flows built on profile and store data: abandoned-cart reminders on each customer's preferred channels, order confirmations, review requests, recommendations and loyalty touchpoints. Klaviyo AI adds personalized send time, channel affinity (picking email, text, push or WhatsApp per person) and flow anomaly detection, and one visual interface plans campaigns and flows across channels.

Braze journeys are built in Canvas, a visual journey builder that connects multi-message steps into one flow. Every edition includes Campaigns and Canvases, engagement testing, frequency capping and rate limiting, and locations and geofences. Braze Pro adds predictive AI, AI recommendations and message prioritization. The practical gap: Braze triggers journeys from sub-second behavior across apps and sites, while Klaviyo is designed around commerce events. Both handle an abandoned cart well.

Data and integrations

The Klaviyo Data Platform unifies behavioral, transactional and engagement data in real time, with an Advanced KDP add-on for teams that need more. Klaviyo lists 350+ pre-built integrations, connects to Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix stores, and offers an MCP server that connects outside AI agents and tools directly to Klaviyo data. Its attribution reporting supports multi-touch and custom attribution windows.

The Braze Data Platform is built for data teams. Cloud Data Ingestion syncs from Amazon Redshift, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Microsoft Azure and AWS S3; zero-copy segmentation builds audiences from your warehouse without duplicating data; and Braze lists 180+ partner integrations, automated identity resolution and anonymous user tracking. Its documentation covers standard and custom Shopify integrations. If your customer data already lives in a warehouse, that matters more than any channel list.

AI features

Klaviyo's two agents are Composer, which audits flows, segments and forms and builds a campaign from a prompt, and Customer Agent, which answers shoppers and can check order status. Its built-in AI scores predicted lifetime value, churn risk and RFM groups, and Klaviyo has apps for Claude and ChatGPT. Braze includes BrazeAI Operator (describe a campaign, Canvas or segment and it builds a draft), BrazeAI Agent Console, generative AI, Personalized Paths and Content Optimizer in every edition. BrazeAI Decisioning Studio, its 1:1 decisioning product, is not on that every-edition list, and Braze sells add-ons across its BrazeAI suite. Both have moved fast here; check what is generally available in your edition before you sign.

Who each is for

• Klaviyo fits direct-to-consumer and retail brands, from a first store on the Free plan up to enterprise accounts, whose marketers want to run email, SMS and onsite messages from store data.
• Braze fits consumer apps and large brands (retail, financial services, media, travel, gaming, on-demand and quick-service restaurants are its listed industries) that can send real-time events through Braze SDKs, APIs or a data warehouse, and have a team that owns lifecycle programs.

Limits of each

• Klaviyo: most multichannel and personalization features sit in the Marketing plan, which is estimated at $90 a month against $20 for the Email plan at 500 active profiles.
• Klaviyo: its product pages center on the store; Braze puts more weight on in-app messaging (Content Cards, Banners) and zero-copy activation from a data warehouse.
• Braze: no free plan and no published prices, so you cannot model cost without a sales conversation.
• Braze: credits, MAU and editions interact, so forecast message volume by channel before you commit.
• Braze: real-time triggers depend on your events reaching Braze through its SDKs, APIs or warehouse connections, so plan implementation time.

Which should you choose

Start with where the purchase happens. If it happens in a web store and most of your messages answer store events, Klaviyo will cover more of what you need for less setup, and you can start free. If it happens inside an app, or you run several brands and markets with a data team behind them, Braze is built for that shape. A useful test: write one real journey (say, a first-purchase series with an SMS fallback), then ask each vendor to show it built with your data and priced at your volume. The gap will be obvious.

Alternatives worth a look

If neither fits, see our list of Klaviyo alternatives, our Braze alternatives and our guides to Bloomreach alternatives and Insider One alternatives. For Klaviyo against an all-in-one CRM, read Klaviyo vs HubSpot.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Klaviyo or Braze better for a Shopify store?
For most Shopify and other online stores, Klaviyo is the simpler fit: it calls itself a B2C CRM, prices by active profiles, has a free plan, and builds flows around store events such as abandoned carts, order confirmations and review requests. Braze also documents a Shopify integration, but it is sold by contract (Platform Editions run from Braze Go for early-stage growth teams to Braze Enterprise) and is built around real-time, cross-channel engagement across apps and websites.

Does Braze have a free plan?
No. Braze says it does not offer a free plan at this time, but it offers free trials, startup programs and other entry plans. Klaviyo has a free plan for up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month.

How do Klaviyo and Braze charge?
Klaviyo prices by active profiles and the products you add; at 500 active profiles its pricing page estimates the Email plan at $20 a month and the Marketing plan at $90 a month as of October 2026. A Braze contract combines a Platform Edition (Go, Select, Pro or Enterprise), Monthly Active Users and profiles, a pool of Action Credits for messaging and some AI features, and support services, priced through sales.

Which has more channels?
Both cover email, SMS, RCS, WhatsApp and mobile push. Braze adds in-app messages, Content Cards, Banners, web messaging, LINE, KakaoTalk, landing pages, feature flags and Audience Sync. Klaviyo adds social marketing tools, onsite personalization through Customer Hub, reviews and a helpdesk.

Can a brand move from Klaviyo to Braze later?
Yes. Plan the move around your event data: Braze triggers journeys from real-time behavior and can read data from warehouses such as Snowflake, BigQuery and Databricks, so clean event names and identifiers matter more than copying templates.