Brevo pricing in 2026: you pay for sending, not storing
One design decision explains every number on Brevo's price list: the meter runs on sends, and the contact list rides free.
Brevo charges for the emails you send each month and stores your contact list free: even the $0 plan holds 100,000 contacts. Every mainstream competitor meters the list itself, so this one inversion is the whole story of Brevo pricing. It is why a big, quiet list costs almost nothing on Brevo, and why a small, loud one costs more than you expect.
What Brevo actually costs in 2026
We verified every number on this page on August 7, 2026 against Brevo's live billing API (billing-v2.brevo.com, pricing version v5), the same endpoint the calculator on brevo.com/pricing queries. Third-party tables are widely stale here, because Brevo renamed its Business plan to Standard and inserted a $499 Professional tier in the v5 repricing; reviews written before 2026 describe a lineup that no longer exists. Older articles may also call the company Sendinblue, which rebranded to Brevo in May 2023.
| Brevo plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per month flat | $0/mo billed annually | 300 emails/day, 100k contacts, 1 seat, Brevo branding |
| Starter (5k emails/mo) | $9 per month at 5,000 emails/mo | $8.08/mo billed annually | 5k emails/mo included, no daily cap, 1 marketing seat, Brevo logo removal costs $12/mo extra, no marketing automation |
| Starter (20k emails/mo) | $32 per month at 20,000 emails/mo | $28.75/mo billed annually | same Starter features; price = $9 base + $23 email-volume tier |
| Starter (100k emails/mo) | $82 per month at 100,000 emails/mo | $73.75/mo billed annually | top Starter volume tier |
| Standard (5k emails/mo) | $18 per month at 5,000 emails/mo | $16.17/mo billed annually | adds marketing automation, logo removal included, 1 landing page, up to 3 seats ($12/mo per extra seat) |
| Standard (20k emails/mo) | $69 per month at 20,000 emails/mo | $62.08/mo billed annually | $18 base + $51 volume tier; Standard scales to 500k emails/mo ($429/mo) |
| Professional | $499 per month incl. 150,000 emails/mo | $449.08/mo billed annually | 10 marketing seats, 10 landing pages included; email volume scales to 10M/mo |
| Enterprise | $1,000 custom quote (site shows 'Custom Price') | n/a | sales-led; billing API placeholder $1,000/mo, real pricing negotiated |
Prices checked August 2026 against the Brevo pricing page.
Read Starter and Standard as a base price plus an email-volume ladder. Starter on monthly billing: $9 for 5,000 emails a month, $17 for 10,000, $32 for 20,000, $46 for 40,000, $82 for 100,000. Standard runs $18 for 5,000, $69 for 20,000, $139 for 100,000, and $429 for 500,000. Annual billing takes a flat 10% off every self-serve plan, so Starter at 20,000 emails works out to $28.75 a month, billed as $345 a year. Professional is a different animal: $499 a month on monthly billing, with 150,000 emails and 10 marketing seats included, for teams that have outgrown Standard.
The math nobody shows
Four line items decide what you really pay.
The logo. Starter puts Brevo's logo on every email you send, and removal costs $12 a month extra. That flips the ladder at the bottom: at 5,000 emails a month, Starter without the logo is $21 while Standard is $18 and already includes removal plus marketing automation. At 20,000 emails the order flips back, $44 against $69. On the smallest tier, if branding matters, the cheap plan is the wrong buy.
The free plan's cap is daily. 300 emails a day, not 9,000 whenever you like. A single newsletter to a 1,000-person list cannot leave in one day, so the free tier suits tests, trickles, and transactional volume rather than list mail.
Credit packs cost about triple. Pay-as-you-go packs with no subscription run $95 for 20,000 emails, against $32 for a 20,000-email Starter month (both monthly-billing figures). Packs fit people who send twice a year.
Seats and extras. Starter is one seat. Standard includes up to three, then $12 a month per extra seat, $24 a month for a pack of five more landing pages, and $251 a year for a dedicated IP. The sticker price is the floor, and the add-ons are where the bill grows.
When volume pricing beats contact pricing
A contact-billed ESP charges for the size of your list whether you mail it or not. Brevo charges only when you send. So the comparison is a frequency question: multiply your contacts by your sends per month, and price that number.
Take a 5,000-contact list on a weekly newsletter, about 20,000 emails a month:
- Brevo Starter: $28.75 a month on annual billing, $32 on monthly billing.
- Mailchimp Essentials at 5,000 contacts: $75 a month on monthly billing (Mailchimp publishes no per-tier annual prices). The full breakdown is in our Mailchimp pricing teardown.
- MailerLite Comfort at 5,000 subscribers: $44.10 a month on annual billing; see MailerLite pricing.
Brevo is 62% cheaper than Mailchimp there. Mail that same list monthly instead of weekly and Brevo drops to $8.08 a month while Mailchimp still charges $75, an 89% gap, because a contact meter does not care that you went quiet.
Now reverse it. A 1,000-contact list mailed daily is roughly 30,000 emails a month, which needs Brevo's 40,000-email tier at $46 on monthly billing. MailerLite's Power plan covers 1,000 subscribers with unlimited sends for $39 on monthly billing. High frequency on a small list is exactly where volume billing loses.
The rule of thumb: if your monthly send volume is about four times your contact count or less, Brevo's model works in your favor. Past ten times, price the unlimited-send plans first. Our email pricing guide runs this same test across every category, and the 2026 cost survey holds the raw numbers.
Is Brevo worth it?
For two buyers, clearly yes. If you keep a large list and mail it weekly or less, nothing contact-billed comes close at these sizes. And if you want marketing automation, CRM, transactional email, SMS, and WhatsApp under one login, Brevo bundles what would otherwise be two or three subscriptions.
The caveats are the gates. Automation requires Standard, which doubles the base price. Starter is single-seat. Standard caps at three seats before add-on fees, and the logo, landing pages, and dedicated IP all bill separately. Brevo's price list rewards people who read it closely and punishes people who buy the headline number.
Who should skip Brevo: daily senders with small lists, as the math above shows, and anyone allergic to add-on pricing. Who should skip LetterDuck: if automation journeys, a CRM, or SMS are on your requirements list, we do not build any of them, and Brevo does them well.
Brevo against a flat rate
| Monthly cost at | Brevo | LetterDuck |
|---|---|---|
| 500 subscribers | $8.08 | $50 flat |
| 1,000 subscribers | $8.08 | $50 flat |
| 5,000 subscribers | $28.75 | $50 flat |
| 10,000 subscribers | $41.42 | $50 flat |
Public list prices, August 2026, annual billing where offered. Brevo: Brevo bills by emails sent rather than contacts stored, so these figures assume a weekly send to the whole list. Starter plan on annual billing. LetterDuck is $50 per domain, flat, unlimited addresses and subscribers.
The subscriber rows assume a weekly newsletter, four sends a month, on annual billing. Read them honestly: at a weekly cadence Brevo undercuts LetterDuck's $50 flat at every size on this table, and at 10,000 subscribers it is still $41.42. The flat rate wins on different ground. Double the cadence and Brevo's meter doubles with it: 10,000 subscribers mailed twice a week is 80,000 emails and a $73.75 tier, while $50 stays $50. And the $50 covers work a sending tool does not price at all: unlimited addresses on your domain, a shared team inbox, and deliverability run for you, from authentication to the warm-up throttle to one-click unsubscribe.
Price it yourself in three steps: multiply contacts by monthly sends, find that number on the Starter ladder above, then compare it against your list size on a contact-billed tool. Whichever number is smaller, check what it leaves out before you buy.