Mailchimp vs Brevo (2026)

Brevo costs less for most lists because it charges by the emails you send, while Mailchimp charges by the contacts you store. At 10,000 contacts emailed twice a month, Brevo Starter is $32 a month and Mailchimp Essentials is $110 (prices checked November 4, 2026). Pick Mailchimp if you want 300+ integrations, more team logins on cheap plans, pop-up forms on every plan and 24/7 chat support from the first paid tier. Pick Brevo if you have a big list you email a few times a month, want a free plan that sends 300 emails a day, or need transactional email on the same account at no extra cost.

Pricing compared

The two tools measure you differently, and that decides most of the price gap. Mailchimp bills by the number of contacts you store, then caps your monthly sends at a multiple of that number: 10 times on Essentials, 12 times on Standard and 15 times on Premium. Brevo bills by the number of emails you send each month, and the number of contacts you may store rises with that email tier.

Monthly prices in US dollars, checked November 4, 2026:

Your list	Mailchimp Essentials	Mailchimp Standard	Brevo Starter	Brevo Standard
500 contacts, up to 5,000 emails a month	$13	$20	$9	$18
2,500 contacts, up to 15,000 emails a month	$45	$60	$25	$49
10,000 contacts, 20,000 emails a month	$110	$135	$32	$69
10,000 contacts, 100,000 emails a month	$110	$135	$82	$139

Brevo wins once your list is large and you email it a few times a month. From the 20,000-email tier, Brevo's Starter and Standard plans store up to 500,000 contacts, so a 10,000-contact list costs the same as a 200,000-contact list if you send the same number of emails. Mailchimp's price climbs with every contact tier, whether you email those people or not, and its plans top out sooner: Essentials stores up to 50,000 contacts, Standard 100,000 and Premium 200,000 before you need a custom quote.

The gap closes when you email often. Ten emails a month to 10,000 people puts Brevo Standard at $139, slightly above Mailchimp Standard's $135. Watch Brevo's low tiers too: at 5,000 and 10,000 emails a month, the paid plans store only 500 and 1,500 contacts, so a list of 2,500 needs the 15,000-email tier even if you send less.

At the top, Mailchimp Premium starts at $350 a month for 10,000 contacts and 150,000 emails, and Brevo Professional starts at $499 a month for 150,000 emails and up to 2 million contacts. Brevo takes 10% off if you pay yearly: Starter is $97 a year and Standard $194 at 5,000 emails. Branding costs extra at Brevo's bottom tier: Starter emails carry the Brevo logo unless you pay $12 a month to remove it, while Standard removes it and Mailchimp drops its own branding from Essentials up. Both sell credits for occasional senders. Brevo's pay-as-you-go credits do not expire, and Mailchimp's Pay As You Go option comes with the same features as Essentials. Mailchimp was also showing a 15% discount on the first 12 months for some plans and list sizes when we checked.

Automation, segments and testing

Mailchimp's Free plan has no automated flows. Essentials allows flows of up to 4 steps, enough for a short welcome series, and Standard and Premium raise the limit to 200 flow points. A/B tests start on Essentials. Standard adds multivariate testing, predictive segments, which group contacts by how likely they are to buy, and custom reports.

Brevo's Starter plan has segmentation and sign-up forms that send a follow-up email when someone joins, but its marketing automation starts on Standard. That $18 plan runs an unlimited number of multi-step workflows, adds A/B tests for subject lines and content, and lets Brevo send each email at the time a contact is most likely to engage. Web and event tracking on Standard can start a workflow when someone visits a page or does something in your app. Contact scoring (including RFM and lifetime value) and AI-suggested segments wait for Professional.

For AI writing help, Brevo's content generator drafts subject lines and copy from Starter, and its MCP connection lets you manage campaigns and contacts from ChatGPT or Claude on the same plan. Mailchimp's Intuit Assist comes with Standard and Premium at no extra cost, but Mailchimp labels it a beta, in English only, in selected countries.

For automation on a list of a few thousand or more, Brevo Standard costs less. For a list of a few hundred that you email several times a week, or for predictive segments without a $499 plan, Mailchimp Standard is the cheaper route.

Forms, transactional email and other channels

Mailchimp puts pop-up forms on every plan, including Free, though it marks them as a limited beta on Free and Essentials and offers custom pop-ups on Standard. Brevo gives every plan sign-up forms, but its own pop-ups come only with Professional, together with WhatsApp campaigns and web and mobile push.

Transactional email is the reverse. Every Brevo plan, Free included, sends receipts, password resets and other app email through a REST API or SMTP relay, with outbound webhooks and unlimited log retention. Mailchimp's transactional email (formerly Mandrill) is an add-on for Standard and Premium only, sold in blocks of 25,000 emails at $20 a block for up to 500,000 emails a month, and unused emails do not carry over. If you run an app or a shop that sends order emails, Brevo saves you a second bill.

Both sell SMS on top of email. Mailchimp's SMS is an add-on to paid plans in selected countries, with monthly credits that expire if unused. Brevo sells SMS credits separately on any plan. For integrations, Mailchimp lists more than 300 and Brevo more than 150, including Shopify, WordPress, Stripe and Zapier.

Ease of use and setup

Both tools give you a drag-and-drop email builder and ready-made templates on every plan, so a first campaign takes about the same work in each. Brevo sorts its templates by industry and use case. Mailchimp's Free plan gets a limited set of templates, and only Standard and Premium let you send your own coded templates.

Mailchimp has free iOS and Android apps for creating campaigns, reading reports and adding contacts on your phone, and Standard includes one onboarding session in your first 90 days. Its 14-day trial of Essentials or Standard asks for payment details at sign-up and bills you when it ends unless you cancel. On paid plans, Mailchimp charges you automatically if you go over your contact or send limit. On Free, it holds sending once you pass 250 contacts until you upgrade or trim the list.

Brevo needs only an email address and an organization name to start, and you can upload contacts right away. You cannot send until Brevo approves your account for sending. We could not confirm a full mobile app for campaigns on Brevo's own site, so plan to work in the browser. Logins are tighter too: Starter allows one user, so a team of two needs Standard.

Support

Mailchimp gives Free users email support for their first 30 days. Essentials and Standard get 24/7 email and chat, and Premium adds phone and priority support plus four onboarding sessions with a dedicated specialist.

Brevo's Starter and Standard plans get email support from its customer care team, in 6 languages. Phone support starts on Professional, which also includes 3 hours a year with a deliverability specialist. Pay-as-you-go accounts do not get phone support. If you want to reach someone by chat on a cheap plan, Mailchimp is the better choice.

Who each one suits

Choose Mailchimp if you have a few hundred contacts you email several times a week with long automated flows, or if you value 300+ integrations, 24/7 chat support and phone apps. It also suits small teams, since Essentials includes three logins.

Choose Brevo if your list is in the thousands or tens of thousands and you send a newsletter or promotion a few times a month. You will pay a fraction of Mailchimp's price at that size, get unlimited automation workflows on Standard, and send your app's transactional email from the same account. It also has the more useful free plan if you want to send to more than 250 people without paying.

If neither fits, MailerLite bills by subscriber with a free plan, and Klaviyo builds email and SMS around store order data. If you want to see which email, link or source brought in each sale, Platformly keeps email, SMS, automations, an inbox and revenue reports on the same contact records, and it has transactional email and an SMTP relay too.