Brevo vs ActiveCampaign — which should you choose?

Brevo and ActiveCampaign end up in the same comparison because both sell automation. In the price table, though, they look like products of different price classes, and there is a simple reason: Brevo’s cheapest plan does not include automation at all. This page recalculates the comparison so that both have the feature you came for.

The short answer

Choose Brevo if the list is large, the newsletter goes out rarely or data location in the EU is a buying criterion. At a 10,000-contact list automation-capable Brevo costs €55 a month, ActiveCampaign €149.

Choose ActiveCampaign if the list is small and a path of a few steps is enough automation: at 2,500 contacts the difference from automation-capable Brevo is two euros a month. If you need conditional content or lead scoring, the price is not €39 but €95 — they start on the Plus and Pro plans.

Comparison table

The table shows each one’s cheapest paid plan. That is the right figure for comparing price but misleading for comparing automation, and the next section corrects it.

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Prices exclude VAT, billed monthly unless stated otherwise.

• The price is the monthly price of the cheapest paid plan at that list size. The Free plan column shows when you do not have to pay.
• ActiveCampaign: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.
• ActiveCampaign: the smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts, so the 500-contact column shows that price.

The real price of automation at both

The whole comparison condenses into this table, and it is built from two limits read from the price lists. Brevo’s marketing automation and A/B testing are on the Standard plan, not on Starter. ActiveCampaign’s Starter has marketing automation, but the price list limits it to five actions per automation — conditional content starts on the Plus plan and lead scoring on the Pro plan. The right comparison price therefore depends on which you need.

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Read from the price lists (Brevo, ActiveCampaign) on 3 September 2026, monthly prices excluding VAT. Brevo’s package is set by sending volume, and the row shows the cheapest package whose contact quota covers that list: 5,000, 15,000 and 20,000 emails a month. On the largest row that means two newsletters a month. ActiveCampaign’s figures are monthly prices on annual billing — the monthly-billing price is not shown on the price list at all — and its smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts, so the 500-contact row shows the price for a thousand contacts. Brevo’s annual billing is 10 per cent cheaper. ActiveCampaign’s plan feature limits (“5 actions per automation” on Starter, “Conditional content” from the Plus plan) were read from the same price list on 6 September 2026.

The table flips the comparison twice. If a path of a few steps is enough automation, at 500 contacts the price is the same €15 and at 2,500 contacts ActiveCampaign is two euros cheaper. If you need conditional content, the comparison is Brevo’s Standard against ActiveCampaign’s Plus — and then Brevo is cheaper at every list size, by €54 a month at 2,500 contacts.

At a large list the direction is the same with either requirement: at a 10,000-contact list ActiveCampaign costs €189 a month where Brevo’s Standard costs €55, i.e. €1,608 a year more. Note also that ActiveCampaign’s Starter at that list size is €149, only €40 cheaper than Plus — the five-action limit therefore saves hardly anything at a large list.

The reason is one step in Brevo’s price list. In the 20,000-email package the contact quota jumps from 2,500 to 500,000, so after that list growth does not raise the price at all — only sending pace does. ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, prices by contact tier, and its tiers climb more steeply than any other tool we compare.

Sending pace flips the calculation

The figure above for 10,000 contacts assumes two newsletters a month, i.e. 20,000 emails. If you write weekly, 40,000 emails accumulate and Brevo’s Starter costs €41 a month. At ActiveCampaign sending pace does not affect the bill at all, so its price stays put regardless of pace.

Rule of thumb: multiply subscribers by sends per month and take the figure to Brevo’s price list. The more often you write, the smaller the gap shrinks. Both pricing models opened up: two pricing models.

What each one’s automation does

• At both: scheduled email sequences, segmentation and paths triggered by a form.
• Only at ActiveCampaign: conditional content (from the Plus plan up), lead scoring (from the Pro plan, through the Pipelines add-on) and over 1,000 connectors — the widest coverage in the comparison, and in practice decisive if the platform is a rarer one.
• Only at Brevo: text messages and WhatsApp, transactional emails and a CRM in the same account. Some are priced separately: Sales Essentials costs €26.08 a month and removing the Brevo logo on the Starter plan €8.10 a month.

We do not assess the usability of either editor and give no scores for them, because that cannot be read from the documentation — how we compare. What can be read from the price lists is this: ActiveCampaign’s caveat is that the cheapest plan limits automation to five actions and has no conditional content, and Brevo’s that the price follows sending volume — the same list costs more the more often you write to it.

How contacts are counted

In the contact-based model the counting rule is part of the price. Of these two it concerns only ActiveCampaign — and there the rule depends on when the account was created.

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The rules are read from the providers’ own help pages. “Not read” means the rule could not be opened in the original source — we do not guess it in either direction.

• Brevo. The price is set by monthly sending volume rather than contact count, so the question of counting unsubscribed contacts does not apply to Brevo the way it does to the others. The flip side is that the same list costs more the more often you write to it.
• ActiveCampaign. The rule depends on the account creation date. ActiveCampaign’s own help article gives two answers: on accounts created on or after 3 November 2025, all contacts count toward the limit regardless of status, i.e. unsubscribed, unconfirmed and bounced too; on accounts created on or before 2 November 2025, only active ones. A new account is therefore in the same group as Mailchimp in this comparison. The help page opens only in a browser (HTTP 403); the text was read through the help centre’s own API on 5 September 2026.

ActiveCampaign’s own help page gives two answers: on accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 all contacts count toward the limit regardless of status, i.e. unsubscribed, unconfirmed and bounced too; on accounts created before that, only active ones. A new account is therefore in the same group here as Mailchimp, and in practice that means the 10,000-contact tier comes up earlier than the subscriber count would suggest.

At Brevo the question does not exist the same way, because the meter is emails sent. The flip side has already been said: the same list costs more the more often you write to it. The rules for all seven services: how contacts are counted.

Deliverability: one measures, the other cleans

We do not test deliverability ourselves. Below are two things: Tooltester’s 2017–2024 series as history — it ended in January 2024, and the source no longer stands behind its method — and eight points from the services’ own help pages, which are the current basis of this comparison.

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Tooltester ended the series with the January 2024 round and explained why in August 2026: seed lists proved unreliable and providers started optimising for them. The figures are therefore history, not a measurement of current deliverability.

Source: Tooltester deliverability test, 12 rounds 8/2017–1/2024. About 80 seed addresses, 28 providers, shared IP addresses. Average across all platforms in the latest round 83.1%. Average and range calculated from the published rounds.

Deliverability features from the help docs

Eight points read from each provider’s own help pages on 13 September 2026. This replaces percentages as a buying basis: a feature can be checked and dated, a seed-list result no longer can. Every cell links to the article it was read from.

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Yes = the help page describes the feature. No = the help page says it is absent or points to an external tool. — = not found in the help pages; that does not mean the feature is absent.

As history: in Tooltester’s series ActiveCampaign’s average was 90.8% and Brevo’s 82.7%, and Brevo’s range of 67.7–96.3% was the widest of the five we compare. The series ended in January 2024, and it should no longer be read as a buying basis.

Read from the help pages, the difference splits. Brevo shows a deliverability score in the app and recommends actions based on it; ActiveCampaign’s equivalent meters are visible only on reseller accounts. ActiveCampaign has a built-in cleaning tool for removing inactive subscribers, while Brevo’s help page tells you to do the same with a segment and by hand. Brevo promises a deliverability expert only on the Professional plan — on a small business’s plans there is none.

Most of deliverability is still the sender’s own responsibility — authentication, list quality and sending pace: what Gmail and Yahoo require of senders.

Data location: the EU against five countries

Brevo is a French company and stores the data in the EU. ActiveCampaign’s privacy policy lists transfers to the United States, Australia, Ireland, Brazil and Costa Rica. Both read from the services’ own privacy policies on 3 September 2026.

ActiveCampaign is, alongside Mailchimp, one of the two tools we compare whose data does not stay in the EU. The practical consequence is an entry in your own policy and a longer answer to a customer, not unlawfulness. What to check with the processor: email marketing and GDPR.

A third option if automation is not the reason

If you landed on this page because of price and do not build conditional paths, neither is the cheapest. EmailOctopus handles a 2,500-subscriber list for free and a 10,000-subscriber list for €36 a month, but its automations lack conditional branches. MailerLite costs €29 at 2,500 subscribers and keeps the bill the same regardless of sending pace.

The line between Brevo and the cheapest option runs at about 5,000 subscribers, and it is calculated out separately: Brevo vs EmailOctopus.

Which one for you