Brevo vs Mailchimp — which should you choose?

Mailchimp is still the first name that comes to mind for a newsletter. Brevo is the European challenger that bills on an entirely different basis. The price difference is the biggest in this comparison — but it is not the only measured difference, and the other one points the other way.

The short answer

Choose Brevo if price or data location decides. It is cheaper at every list size, and at a 10,000-contact list the difference is €811 a year. The data stays in the EU, which is a shorter entry in your own documentation.

Choose Mailchimp if the integrations have already been built around it or if you want list checking inside the app. Omnivore checks imports automatically; Brevo shows deliverability scores, but clean-up is manual work.

Comparison table

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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.

Prices side by side

Both are in euros, so the figures are directly comparable. The gap grows steeply with the list and never flips.

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Cheapest paid plans (Brevo Starter, Mailchimp Essentials) read from the price lists (Brevo, Mailchimp) on 3 September 2026, monthly prices excluding VAT. Brevo’s figure assumes two newsletters a month, because its price follows sending volume. Mailchimp’s figure is the list price after the first-year discount.

Two things deepen the gap outside the table. Mailchimp’s price is the list price after the first year: the first 12 months are sold cheaper, so the comparison is often made at the discounted price and the bill rises only later. And Mailchimp’s contact tiers are bands (1,501–2,500, 5,001–10,000), so the price does not rise evenly but in jumps: one subscriber over the band’s edge moves the whole bill to the next tier. Overage fees and their logic are opened up separately: Mailchimp’s overage fees.

On Brevo’s side the equivalent caveat is sending pace. The table’s €28 for 10,000 contacts holds at two newsletters a month, i.e. 20,000 emails. A weekly newsletter to the same list is 40,000 emails and costs €41 a month — still clearly below Mailchimp’s €95.59, but the gap narrows.

Why the gap grows with the list

The services count different things. Mailchimp bills for contacts, Brevo for emails sent. Brevo’s price list has one step that explains the whole table: in the 20,000-email package the contact quota jumps from 2,500 to 500,000. After that growing the list does not raise the bill at all.

The practical rule of thumb is therefore the same as throughout our comparison: multiply subscribers by sends per month. If the figure stays below about twice the list size, the volume-based model is cheaper. Both models in full: two pricing models.

How contacts are counted — a hidden cost at only one

The price list says what a thousand contacts cost. It does not say what counts as a contact, and in this pair the difference is money directly.

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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.
• Mailchimp. An unsubscribed contact counts toward the monthly limit, as do non-subscribers who ended up in the account by other routes. Archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not count, so lowering the bill takes a separate step: the contacts have to be archived, not just allowed to unsubscribe.

At Mailchimp an unsubscribed contact counts toward the monthly limit until it is archived separately. The same applies to non-subscribers who ended up in the account by other routes. In practice this means the bill grows with the list’s history rather than its current size, unless you archive regularly. The 2,500-contact band therefore fills up faster than the subscriber count would suggest.

At Brevo the question does not exist the same way, because the price does not follow contact count. The flip side is that the same list costs more the more often you write to it. All seven services’ rules side by side: how contacts are counted.

Deliverability: this is where the help pages differ most

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 Mailchimp was the steadiest of the five we compare — average 87.6%, range 81.6–95.5% — and Brevo the most volatile, average 82.7% and range 67.7–96.3%. The series ended in January 2024.

Read from the help pages, this is the point where the comparison differs most. Mailchimp’s Omnivore checks every import and send automatically and blocks the send if the predicted bounce or complaint risk is too high; Brevo’s help page tells you to clean by hand. In the other direction: Brevo shows a deliverability score in the app, and on the Professional plan you get a dedicated IP with automatic warm-up and three hours a year of a deliverability expert. Mailchimp’s help pages and price list mention neither a dedicated IP nor a deliverability team.

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 the United States

Here the difference is sharpest. Brevo is a French company and stores the data in the EU. Mailchimp is part of the US Intuit group, and the transfer of personal data outside the EU relies on the Data Privacy Framework and standard clauses. Both read from the services’ own privacy policies on 3 September 2026.

The transfer is not prohibited and using Mailchimp is not unlawful. The difference is in the amount of work and in what you have to explain: a transfer outside the EU is recorded in your own policy with its transfer basis, and when a customer asks, the answer is longer. If you answer customers’ data protection questions regularly, this is a practical difference, not a matter of principle. What to check and what to record: email marketing and GDPR.

Free plans: neither goes far

Mailchimp’s free plan holds 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, and the daily limit is 250 emails. Brevo does not limit list size but does limit sending: 300 emails a day. Neither, then, carries a growing list far.

The practical difference is in direction. On Mailchimp’s free plan the list fills up; on Brevo’s free plan the campaign is cut short. If the size of the free plan is a selection criterion, neither is the answer: EmailOctopus gives 2,500 subscribers and Systeme.io 2,000 contacts. All seven side by side: free email marketing.

A third option if you are leaving Mailchimp

Brevo is the cheapest option for a large list, but it is not the only direction. If the list is under 2,500 names, EmailOctopus handles it for free and the paid plan costs €16 a month. If, on the other hand, you want to keep a familiar way of working and a predictable bill unaffected by sending pace, MailerLite vs Mailchimp compares exactly that option. All directions and savings: Mailchimp alternatives.

Which one for you