Klaviyo pricing in 2026: the profile-count curve
Monthly-only billing, a tier that must match your list, and an SMS meter that starts at $15. What the profile curve really charges you.
Klaviyo charges $20 a month at 500 active profiles and $150 a month at 10,000, always on monthly billing: the help center states that all plans bill monthly, so there is no annual discount at any size. Only Buttondown and SendGrid do the same among the 14 providers in our email pricing guide, and neither of them charges Klaviyo money. The price you see is the price you pay, and it moves in one direction as your list grows. Since February 2025 it moves automatically.
The plans
| Klaviyo plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per month flat | n/a | 250 active profiles, 500 email sends/mo, email support first 60 days only |
| Email (251-500 profiles) | $20 at 500 active profiles | n/a | ~5,000 email sends/mo (about 10x active profiles); mobile push included |
| Email (501-1,000 profiles) | $30 at 1,000 active profiles | n/a | ~10,000 email sends/mo |
| Email (1,001-1,500 profiles) | $45 at 1,500 active profiles | n/a | ~15,000 email sends/mo (this is the pricing page's default displayed total) |
| Email (to 5,000 profiles) | $100 at 5,000 active profiles | n/a | ~50,000 email sends/mo |
| Email (to 10,000 profiles) | $150 at 10,000 active profiles | n/a | ~100,000 email sends/mo |
| Email and SMS | $35 at 500 profiles + minimum SMS credits | n/a | Email plan + SMS credits; SMS minimum is $15/mo for 1,250 credits, credits priced per country/message type |
Prices checked August 2026 against the Klaviyo pricing page.
The free tier is a genuine trial of the real product: full feature access including flows and segmentation, capped at 250 profiles and 500 sends a month, with email support for the first 60 days only. Two details from the live page worth knowing: the pricing configurator's default display is $45, which is the 1,001-1,500 tier, not the entry price; and as of August 2026 the page sells a whole B2C CRM (Marketing, Service, Data and Analytics), of which classic email pricing is the Marketing component.
The math nobody shows
The curve, per profile
| Active profiles | Monthly bill | Effective cost per profile |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $20 | 4.0 cents |
| 1,000 | $30 | 3.0 cents |
| 1,500 | $45 | 3.0 cents |
| 5,000 | $100 | 2.0 cents |
| 10,000 | $150 | 1.5 cents |
The per-profile rate falls as you grow, which is fairer than flat-percentage scaling, but the absolute bill is 7.5x higher at 10,000 profiles than at 500, and each tier also caps email sends at roughly 10x your active profile count per month. Heavy senders hit upgrade prompts even in months when the list did not grow. Over a year, that 10,000-profile store pays $1,800 with no annual-prepay lever to pull; on most rivals a 10-17% discount exists for the asking.
February 18, 2025: the day the loophole closed
Klaviyo used to let accounts sit on a cheaper tier while the list outgrew it. That ended on February 18, 2025, when billing began requiring the plan tier to match or exceed the active profile count, with automatic upgrades at the start of the next billing cycle. The change was widely reported in ecommerce communities, with some bills nearly doubling overnight. Klaviyo did add relief valves at the same time: an optional auto-downgrade setting and "flexible sending," a temporary upgrade for high-send periods that steps back down afterward. The practical lesson is that your Klaviyo bill is now a live meter on list size, and list hygiene is a billing control, which brings us to the good news.
Cleaning your list actually lowers the bill
Suppressed and unsubscribed profiles are not billable: the help center (checked August 2026) confirms they leave the count once fully processed as suppressed. Mailchimp charges for its equivalent contacts; Klaviyo does not, and a quarterly purge of dormant profiles can hold you a full tier down the curve. One lock to respect: unsuppress a profile and you cannot re-suppress it for 90 days, so it stays billable for at least that long. Suppress deliberately.
The SMS meter
SMS is a credit system stacked on the email plan, with a $15/month minimum buying 1,250 US SMS credits; credit burn varies by country and by message type (MMS costs more). The Email and SMS bundle starts at $35/month at 500 profiles. Worked example: a 5,000-profile store that wants texting pays $100 for email plus at least $15 for SMS, so $115/month before a single credit above the minimum, monthly billing. Budget SMS as its own line item, because credits scale with how chatty your campaigns are, not with list size.
Is it worth it?
For an ecommerce store doing real revenue, usually yes. Storefront integrations that sync in real time, predictive analytics (lifetime value, churn risk), and revenue attribution on behavioral flows are the actual product, and they justify the curve if abandoned-cart and win-back flows are earning money while you sleep. The limitation to price in: the February 2025 enforcement means the bill tracks your list automatically, and there is no annual discount to soften it. Klaviyo has been public since September 2023, and revenue per account is what public markets watch.
Against Mailchimp specifically, similar money buys deeper store machinery; we referee that in Klaviyo vs Mailchimp.
For newsletter creators and ordinary businesses, the math reads differently. A 5,000-profile content list pays $100/month for flows it never triggers and attribution on revenue that does not exist. A flat-rate workspace covers the actual jobs (writing, sending, replying, list management) at one price: LetterDuck is $50/domain with unlimited subscribers and addresses, warm-up throttling, auto-suppression, and RFC-8058 one-click unsubscribe built in, though it is in waitlist mode and offers no SMS and no ecommerce integrations. If those two words are load-bearing for your business, stay on Klaviyo.
The flat-rate comparison
Billing-basis note: the Klaviyo column below is monthly billing because no other billing exists; there is no annual rate to quote. LetterDuck's number is flat at every size:
| Monthly cost at | Klaviyo | LetterDuck |
|---|---|---|
| 500 subscribers | $20 | $50 flat |
| 1,000 subscribers | $30 | $50 flat |
| 5,000 subscribers | $100 | $50 flat |
| 10,000 subscribers | $150 | $50 flat |
Public list prices, August 2026, annual billing where offered. Klaviyo: Email plan, billed by active profile count. Klaviyo publishes no annual discount on self-serve plans, so monthly is the effective price. LetterDuck is $50 per domain, flat, unlimited addresses and subscribers.