Four platforms, two completely different ways of charging you. Kit, beehiiv and Mailchimp bill by the size of your list, in tiers. Brevo bills by how many emails you send. This guide compares the meter itself — what counts as a billable contact, where the free plans stop, and what a list really costs at 500, 3,000 and 10,000 subscribers.
Free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers. Creator, with automations, is $390/year billed annually at up to 1,000 subscribers.
Free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers. Lite is $49/mo billed annually ($59 monthly) at up to 1,000 subscribers.
Essentials from $13/mo and Standard from $20/mo, both at up to 500 contacts. Free plan is capped at 250 contacts.
Starter from $9/mo for 5,000 emails/month. Standard, with automation, from $18/mo. Priced by sends, not list size.
| Kit | beehiiv | Mailchimp | Brevo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Creators monetizing a list with products, paid newsletters and sequences | Newsletter publishers focused on growth and ad / subscription revenue | Small businesses that want a general-purpose marketing suite | Senders with a large list and a low sending frequency |
| What you pay for | Confirmed subscribers, in tiers. Sends are unlimited | Subscribers, in tiers. Sends are unlimited | Contacts stored, in tiers. Sends capped at 10–15× your contact count | Emails sent per month, in volume tiers. List size is not the meter |
| Who counts toward the bill | Confirmed, active subscribers only. Unsubscribed, unconfirmed and bounced addresses do not count — but inactive "cold" subscribers do | Unique addresses currently subscribed to your publication | Subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count. Only archived, cleaned or deleted contacts drop out | Nobody, by headcount — you pay per send. Note: small volume tiers have been reported to cap how many contacts you can store, so check the current limit |
| Free plan | $0 up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited broadcasts — but no automations or sequences, and Kit branding stays | $0 up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends — but no automations, paid subscriptions or ad network | $0 up to 250 contacts and 500 sends/month (250/day). No automations, no scheduling, branding shown | $0 at 300 emails/day, contacts up to 100,000, Brevo logo in emails |
| Paid entry | Creator $39/mo monthly, or $390/year billed annually (up to 1,000 subscribers) | Lite $59/mo monthly, or $49/mo billed annually (up to 1,000 subscribers) | Essentials $13/mo, Standard $20/mo (up to 500 contacts) | Starter $9/mo (5,000 emails/mo). Standard with automation $18/mo (5,000 emails/mo) |
| Price at 10,000 subscribers | Creator $139/mo monthly, or $1,390/year billed annually. Still $0 on Free if you send by hand | Lite $139/mo monthly, or $119/mo billed annually | Essentials $110/mo, Standard $135/mo — and the count includes unsubscribed contacts you have not archived | Depends on frequency: about $35/mo (Standard) if you send once a month, about $97/mo if you send weekly |
| Standout features (published specs) | Tag-based subscribers, visual automations, sequences, paid newsletters and digital products, creator recommendation network | Recommendation network, referral program, ad network, paid subscriptions at a 0% platform take rate, website and podcast hosting included | Large template and integration library, customer journeys, stores and landing pages, generative design tools on higher plans | Marketing automation (Standard and up), transactional email, SMS and WhatsApp as add-ons, built-in CRM |
| Trade-off to know | The generous free plan is a manual newsletter tool: the moment you want a welcome sequence, you are on a paid tier priced by your full list | Paid plans start at the 1,000-subscriber tier even though Free runs to 2,500, and removing beehiiv branding requires the Pro plan, not Lite | The contact definition is the product: unsubscribed people keep costing you money until you archive them, and the free plan was halved in February 2026 | Frequent sending erases the advantage — volume tiers climb with every campaign, and removing the logo / unlocking automation means the Standard plan |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. beehiiv renamed its plans in October 2026 (Launch → Free, Scale → Lite, Max → Pro) and raised prices at the same time; older articles using the old names and prices are out of date. Brevo's mid-tier is now called Standard (formerly Business). Plans change — always confirm the current price and what counts toward it on the vendor's site before you buy.
The entry prices above describe a list you may outgrow in a month. The table below is our own arithmetic on the vendors' published tier prices — no testing involved, just the price ladders applied honestly. To keep the comparison fair, each column uses the cheapest plan that includes automations: Kit Creator billed annually, beehiiv Lite billed annually, Mailchimp Standard billed monthly, and Brevo Standard assuming one send per week (four sends a month, so monthly volume is four times your list size).
| List size | Kit Creator (annual) | beehiiv Lite (annual) | Mailchimp Standard (monthly × 12) | Brevo Standard (weekly sends) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 subscribers | $390/year | $588/year | $240/year | $216/year |
| 3,000 subscribers | $590/year | $1,140/year | $1,200/year | $828/year |
| 10,000 subscribers | $1,390/year | $1,428/year | $1,620/year | $1,164/year |
Three things stand out. First, Mailchimp's $20 headline is the cheapest start and the most expensive seat at 3,000 contacts, because its tiers rise steeply — and that 3,000 figure assumes every contact is someone you can still email. Second, Kit's row has a shadow: if you are willing to send broadcasts by hand with no automations, the same lists cost $0 on its free plan all the way to 10,000 subscribers. Third, Brevo wins this table only because of the frequency assumption. Send to a 10,000-person list once a month instead of weekly and Brevo Standard drops to roughly $35/mo; send eight times a month and its volume tier climbs past Kit's flat subscriber price, which does not move no matter how often you send.
On subscriber-priced platforms, people who no longer read you still sit in your tier — but the details differ in ways that cost real money. Mailchimp counts unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts until you archive them: a 10,000-contact account where 30% have unsubscribed still pays the 10,000 tier, and even after archiving down to 7,000 contacts the tier (5,001–10,000) does not change, so the bill does not move until you get under 5,001. Kit does not count unsubscribed or unconfirmed addresses, but it does count confirmed subscribers who have gone cold — the saving grace is that its tiers are finer-grained, so pruning inactive subscribers crosses a tier boundary sooner; the catch is that moving down a tier after pruning requires asking support, it is not automatic. beehiiv counts unique addresses subscribed to your publication, so the same pruning logic applies at its coarser tiers. Brevo sidesteps the issue entirely: a dormant contact you never email costs you sends of zero — which is exactly why its model rewards large, quiet lists and punishes active ones.
Kit is built around a single tag-based list: a subscriber is counted once no matter how many of your forms or products they touch, and billing follows your count of confirmed, active subscribers. The free plan is the most generous here on headcount — up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, forms and landing pages, and the ability to sell digital products and paid newsletters (a 3.5% + $0.30 transaction fee applies on every plan). The limits are functional, not numerical: no visual automations, no email sequences, no RSS campaigns, one user, and Kit branding you cannot remove. Creator ($39/mo monthly or $390/year billed annually at up to 1,000 subscribers; $59/mo at 3,000; $139/mo at 10,000) unlocks automations, sequences and integrations, and Pro adds engagement scoring, advanced reporting and a referral system for roughly $40–50/mo more per tier. Sends are unlimited on every plan, tiers upgrade automatically as you grow — and only downgrade when you ask support to do it.
beehiiv was built specifically for newsletters rather than general email marketing, and its published feature set reflects that: a recommendation network that cross-promotes publications, a built-in referral program, an ad network, and paid subscriptions with a 0% platform take rate on paid plans (Stripe's standard processing fee still applies). Every plan includes unlimited sends, a website and podcast hosting. The free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers but holds back the business layer — no automations beyond a basic welcome email, no paid subscriptions, no ad network, no A/B testing. Lite ($59/mo monthly or $49/mo billed annually at up to 1,000 subscribers; $119/mo billed annually at 10,000) unlocks monetization and automations. Pro (from $109/mo monthly or $95/mo billed annually) is the only tier that removes beehiiv branding. Note the quirk: paid tiers start pricing at 1,000 subscribers even though the free plan runs to 2,500, so upgrading early for features means paying for a tier below your actual list size.
Mailchimp is the generalist: email campaigns, landing pages, stores, a large template and integration library, and customer-journey automations that deepen on the Standard plan. Its pricing is also the easiest to misread. Essentials starts at $13/mo and Standard at $20/mo, both for up to 500 contacts — but the tiers climb to $75 / $100 a month at 5,000 contacts and $110 / $135 at 10,000, sends are capped at 10× (Essentials) or 12× (Standard) your contact count, and the contact count itself is the trap: per Mailchimp's own help documentation, subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count toward your limit, and only archived, cleaned or deleted contacts stop counting. Let unsubscribed contacts pile up unarchived and you pay for an audience you are not allowed to email. The free plan was cut in February 2026 to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with no automations or scheduling and Mailchimp branding — treat it as a trial, not a home. Premium starts at $350/mo including 10,000 contacts.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the structural outlier: instead of charging per contact, it charges for emails sent per month, across Free, Starter, Standard and higher tiers, with email joined by SMS, chat, transactional sending and a built-in CRM. The free plan sends 300 emails a day and lets you manage a large contact database (up to 100,000 contacts), with the Brevo logo in your emails. Starter ($9/mo for 5,000 emails/month, rising to $32/mo at 20,000) removes the daily cap, but automation is not part of it — and logo removal on Starter is a paid add-on. Standard ($18/mo for 5,000 emails/month, $69/mo at 20,000, $97/mo at 50,000) is the realistic plan for most businesses: it adds marketing automation, A/B testing, landing pages and logo removal. Two cautions come from Brevo's own recent changes: smaller volume tiers have been reported to carry contact-storage caps (so a huge list may not fit the smallest tier even if you send rarely — verify the current cap before choosing), and the more often you send, the faster the send-meter runs.
If your list is large but you send rarely (a monthly update to years of customers), a per-send meter like Brevo's will almost always win. If you send several times a week, a subscriber meter with unlimited sends (Kit or beehiiv) caps your cost. Decide this first — it eliminates half the table.
Export your current list and count three numbers: people you can email, unsubscribed addresses, and contacts who have not engaged in a year. On Mailchimp all three bill you until archived; on Kit the first and third do. Price the tier for the billed number, not the audience you imagine.
On Kit and beehiiv, the free plans end at features (automations, paid subscriptions, ads) long before they end at list size. If you need a welcome sequence on day one, you are comparing paid plans from the start — and beehiiv's paid tiers begin at the 1,000-subscriber price even while its free plan runs to 2,500.
Multiply your realistic tier by twelve, at the list size you expect in six months, not today. Then re-check the two traps: archive your unsubscribed contacts before migrating or renewing, and if you prune a list on Kit, remember the cheaper tier is applied on request, not automatically.
Two published mechanics drive most of it. Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward your paid tier — only archived, cleaned or deleted contacts stop counting — so an aging list bills for people you cannot email. And in February 2026 its free plan was cut from 500 contacts and 1,000 sends to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, pushing small senders into paid tiers sooner. Neither fact requires leaving: archiving unsubscribed contacts regularly is the cheapest first move. But both are worth pricing before you renew.
It depends on what "usable" means for you. By headcount, Kit's free plan (up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited manual broadcasts) is the most generous, but it has no automations or sequences. beehiiv's free plan (2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends) runs a real newsletter site but cannot take paid subscriptions or run automations. Brevo's free plan suits tiny, frequent sends (300/day) against a large stored list. Mailchimp's free plan, at 250 contacts, is best treated as an evaluation tier.
No — it is cheaper exactly when your sending frequency is low. At one send a month to 10,000 contacts, Brevo Standard is roughly $35/mo against $110+ on contact-priced plans. At eight sends a month to the same list, Brevo's volume tier passes Kit Creator's annual-equivalent price, because Kit and beehiiv include unlimited sends while Brevo's meter keeps running. Work out your monthly volume (list size × sends per month) before comparing headline prices.
Subscriber lists export as CSV on all four, and Kit offers a free migration service on paid plans, including forms and automations. Two things do not travel automatically: your automations and sequences generally need rebuilding in the new tool's builder, and your suppression history matters — carry over unsubscribed and bounced addresses as suppressions rather than importing them as fresh subscribers, or you will email people who opted out and, on Mailchimp-style counting, pay for the privilege. Warm up sending gradually on the new platform, since sending reputation does not transfer with the list.
No, and you should be skeptical of any comparison that promises them. Vendors publish their own claims about their sending infrastructure, but inbox placement depends heavily on your list quality, engagement and sending practices, which no platform controls. That is why this guide compares published pricing structures and feature lists — the parts that can be verified from the outside — rather than repeating performance claims.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published specifications and pricing, not from hands-on testing. Where a judgment appears — for example, that per-send pricing suits quiet lists — it is arithmetic on the published price ladders, shown in the cost table above so you can redo it with your own list size and sending frequency.