Your Klaviyo bill is mostly contacts you never email
At 10,000 profiles Klaviyo runs about 150 dollars a month, but if you only email 6,000 of them the other 4,000 cost you about 720 dollars a year for nothing. Since 2025 Klaviyo bills on profiles, not sends.
Download the PDF guideMost people think a Klaviyo bill tracks how much email they send. It does not. Since February 2025 Klaviyo bills on active profiles, which means every contact you are storing and not suppressing costs money whether you email them or not. The list you forgot about is on the invoice.
What the tiers actually are
The email plan is free up to 250 profiles, then about 20 dollars a month at 500, 30 at 1,000, 100 at 5,000, 150 at 10,000, 400 at 25,000 and 720 at 50,000, before any SMS. The price steps with your profile count, full stop. Sending more email to the same list does not move it; growing the list does.
The part you are paying for nothing
Take a 10,000 profile account at about 150 dollars a month. If you only actually email 6,000 of them and the other 4,000 are one-time buyers and dead signups, roughly 40% of that bill, about 60 dollars a month or 720 dollars a year, is for contacts you never message. That is not a discount you can negotiate. It is list weight.
The fix is hygiene, not sending less
Because the meter is profiles, the fastest way to cut a Klaviyo bill is to suppress or delete the profiles you will never email again, which can drop you a whole tier without losing a single engaged subscriber. Cutting send volume does nothing; cutting dead weight does.
SMS rides a different meter
The tiers above are the email bill. SMS is billed separately, on credits, and the two meters do not move together. A US text segment costs one credit, a picture message (MMS) costs three, and a message longer than 160 characters, or 70 once it contains an emoji, splits into more segments that each cost a credit. Klaviyo includes a small monthly credit allowance, credits do not roll over, and above a few thousand the US rate settles near a cent per credit. That figure is list pricing that moves and it varies by country, so confirm your own. The point of shape is that SMS cost tracks how many messages you send and how long they are, not how many profiles you store.
This changes the fix. Suppressing dead profiles drops your email tier, but it does nothing to the SMS line, because the contacts you suppressed were not costing you credits anyway. If your bill is high and you send SMS, read it as two invoices in one: trim profiles to cut the email meter, and cut segment count, with shorter copy, fewer emojis and tighter audiences, to cut the credit meter. A 10,000 profile account that also texts can owe well beyond the 150 dollars the email tier alone suggests.
How it differs from Mailchimp and Brevo
This is also why a flat Klaviyo-versus-the-rest price comparison misleads. Mailchimp bills by total contacts and Brevo by monthly send volume with unlimited stored contacts, so for a large list that sends rarely Brevo can be far cheaper, while for heavy senders the gap narrows. The right comparison uses your real profile count and send frequency, which is what the estimator is for.
See your own number
Put your active-profile count and the share you actually email into the tool and it shows your monthly cost from the verified tiers and what your dormant profiles are costing you. The tier prices are verified list pricing; SMS is an editable estimate, so confirm against your own account before you plan around it.
Frequently asked questions
Does Klaviyo charge by emails sent or by contacts?
By active profiles, not sends. Since February 2025 Klaviyo bills on the contacts you store and do not suppress, so sending more email to the same list does not raise the bill; growing the list does.
Why am I paying for contacts I never email?
Because billing is per active profile. A 10,000-profile account is about 150 dollars a month; if you only email 6,000, the other 4,000 dead signups are roughly 40% of the bill, about 60 dollars a month or 720 dollars a year, for nothing. Suppressing or cleaning them lowers the bill.
How do I lower my Klaviyo bill?
Suppress or delete profiles you never email, since the price steps with profile count (free to 250, about 100 dollars at 5,000, about 150 at 10,000). Trimming dead contacts drops you into a lower tier. The calculator shows what your dormant contacts cost.
Does Klaviyo charge separately for SMS?
Yes. SMS runs on its own credit meter, billed on top of the per-profile email plan rather than folded into it. A US text segment costs one credit, an MMS costs three, and a message past 160 characters (70 once it has an emoji) splits into more segments that each cost a credit. So your SMS cost tracks messages sent and their length, not the profiles you store.
Does cleaning my contact list lower my Klaviyo SMS cost?
No. Suppressing or deleting profiles drops your email tier because email is priced per profile, but SMS is priced per message credit, so a smaller list does not cut the SMS line on its own. To lower SMS cost you send fewer segments: shorter copy, fewer emojis (an emoji drops the per-segment limit from 160 to 70 characters), and tighter audiences.
Run the numbers for your own case
Every figure above comes from a free tool you can use in your browser, with no signup.
Estimate your own Klaviyo billWhat to actually do about it
The first fix costs nothing: suppress or delete the dead profiles, since Klaviyo bills on stored profiles and trimming them can drop you a whole tier. If after that the bill is still high because your list is large but you mail it rarely, the platform you are on is the problem, not the list:
- Move a large, low-cadence list to Brevo (coming soon)Brevo bills by emails sent with unlimited stored contacts, so the dormant profiles you are paying Klaviyo for cost nothing. It is the honest fit when you store far more contacts than you mail each month. If you are a heavy sender who mails the same list constantly, the Klaviyo per-profile model can still come out ahead, so check your real contacts-to-sends ratio first.
If you buy through a link above we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which option we call the cheaper or better fit; the math on this page is the same either way.
Get the next cost breakdown by email
We publish a new honest, tool-backed breakdown like this every few days. Leave your email and we will let you know when the next one goes up. One confirmation link, nothing else until you click it.
More data-stories
Mailchimp, Klaviyo or Brevo: the one number that decides which is cheapest
Mailchimp and Klaviyo bill by contacts stored; Brevo bills by emails sent. In the calculator default of a 10,000-contact list mailed 40,000 times a month, that is about 100, 150 and 32 dollars a month. The deciding number is your contacts-to-sends ratio.
Why your cold email lands in spam, and the three records that fix it
Since February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo filter bulk senders who fail SPF, DKIM or DMARC, or who let spam complaints climb past 0.3 percent. Here is the setup that keeps cold mail in the inbox.
Shadow AI is already in your company. Here is how to govern it before an audit asks.
Your team is using more AI tools than anyone has written down, each one quietly fed company data under no contract. The fix is two artifacts: an honest register and a usage policy. Here is what goes in each.