Email platform cost calculator

Two pricing axes, not one

The reason a like-for-like comparison is hard is that the platforms charge on different things. Mailchimp and Klaviyo price by contact count, so your bill climbs as your list grows whether or not you email those people. Brevo prices by emails sent, with unlimited contacts, so a large dormant list costs nothing extra until you mail it. That single difference is what flips the cheapest choice from one business to another.

Which one wins for you

The deciding number is your contacts-to-sends ratio. If you have a big list you mail occasionally, a send-based platform like Brevo is usually far cheaper, because you are not paying to store people you rarely contact. If you mail a smaller list heavily, with lots of automated flows hitting every contact, contact-based pricing can come out ahead and the per-contact features often suit that style. The calculator makes the crossover concrete instead of leaving it to a feature grid.

Honest limits

Real plans are tiered step functions, not the smooth linear rates used here, so this is a planning estimate to frame the decision, not a quote. The default rates are anchored to verified June 2026 reference points and are all editable, so the accurate move is to drop in your own current tier from each provider before you choose. Deliverability, automation depth and SMS pricing matter too, and are not modelled here.

The line this calculator does not compute: what counts as a billable contact

The estimate applies one contacts number to both Mailchimp and Klaviyo, but the two do not count a contact the same way, so the same stored list is a different billable base on each. Mailchimp counts subscribed, non-subscribed and unsubscribed contacts alike toward your billed total; only archived, cleaned (repeatedly bounced) and deleted contacts drop out. So the people who opted out years ago keep costing you until you archive them by hand. Klaviyo bills on active profiles, so suppressed, unsubscribed and deleted profiles do not count, but suppression is not automatic: a profile you stopped emailing keeps counting until it unsubscribes or you suppress it. Brevo sidesteps the question with unlimited stored contacts, billing on emails sent instead.

The practical effect is that a single shared contacts figure understates whichever provider carries more dead weight. If your list has a long tail of opt-outs and stale signups, the Mailchimp column is billing for them while a cleaned Klaviyo account is not, so read the winner with that in mind: enter each provider its own billable count, your not-yet-archived Mailchimp total and your unsuppressed Klaviyo profile count, rather than one number for both. On either contact-priced platform, list hygiene lowers the base directly, archiving on Mailchimp and suppressing on Klaviyo. For where a Klaviyo bill actually goes, read your Klaviyo bill is mostly contacts you never email.

Who this is for

Ecommerce and B2B teams choosing or switching an email platform, and anyone whose bill jumped after their list grew and wants to see whether a different pricing model would be cheaper. For which pricing model stays cheapest as your list grows, read Mailchimp vs Klaviyo vs Brevo.

Email platform cost questions, answered

Related reading: which of the three is cheapest for your ratio, and where your email-marketing bill actually goes.