MailerLite vs Mailchimp — which should you choose?

Mailchimp is the best known, and MailerLite is the one people most often switch to from Mailchimp. The prices are closer to each other than many assume — at the smallest list the difference is 30 cents a month — but in the free plans and data location the difference is clear.

The short answer

Choose MailerLite if you are starting now or your list is growing. The free plan sends five times more emails, the price is lower at every list size, and an EEA customer’s data stays in the EU.

Choose Mailchimp if the integrations have already been built around it or you need its reporting and segmentation. For a new list it is an expensive starting point.

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.

The price gap grows with the list

The price difference is not constant but grows with list size. At 500 contacts it is about four euros a year, but at 10,000 contacts the difference becomes about €199 a year — enough to buy a whole year’s domain and web hosting.

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Monthly prices on the cheapest paid plan excluding VAT, read from the price lists on 3 September 2026. At MailerLite the plan is Comfort, at Mailchimp Essentials.

The free plan decides which one survives the start

Both free plans hold 250 contacts, so the contact count alone does not separate them. The sending limit does: MailerLite gives 2,500 emails a month, Mailchimp 500 plus a daily limit of 250 emails.

The practical difference is big. At a 250-name list Mailchimp’s free plan is enough for two newsletters a month, MailerLite’s for ten. If you plan a weekly newsletter, Mailchimp’s free plan runs out during the first month.

Overage fees against a tier change

Mailchimp bills the excess separately if the contact or sending limit is exceeded. That means the monthly bill can surprise you exactly when a campaign did better than expected. At MailerLite the limit is handled as a tier change, so the new price is known in advance. Neither model is wrong, but the predictability of the budget is in a different class.

Mailchimp’s price list also often shows a first-12-months offer price. The table above shows the list price, i.e. what you pay from the second year on.

The same list, two different sizes

The third difference does not show on the price list at all, but on the help pages: the services count contacts differently. According to Mailchimp’s help page, the monthly limit counts not only subscribers but also the unsubscribed and non-subscribers, and you only get off the counter by archiving, cleaning or deleting. According to MailerLite’s help page, the limit counts subscribers in Active status, and the unsubscribed and bounced do not count at all.

MailerLite has its own trap, though: the billing period is counted cumulatively, so an address that was active at any point in the period counts toward the limit until the end of the period, even if you delete it immediately. In practice both rules mean the same act at a different time — list cleaning should be done before the billing date, and at Mailchimp that means archiving, not waiting for unsubscribes. Help pages read 5 September 2026; the rules for all seven services: how contacts are counted.

Data location

According to MailerLite’s privacy policy, the contracting party for EEA, UK and Swiss customers is Irish MailerLite Limited, and the data is stored in a data centre within the EU. Mailchimp is part of the US Intuit group, so the transfer outside the EU relies on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and standard clauses.

Both are lawful. The difference shows when you have to record processors and transfer bases in your own documentation or justify the choice to a customer — data stored in the EU is the shorter explanation.

The picture of data location tool by tool and what demonstrating consent requires: email marketing and GDPR.

Integrations: Mailchimp’s only clear win

Mailchimp lists over 300 integrations in its directory, MailerLite over 130. The figures are the services’ own and not comparable one to one, but the difference in magnitude is real and it is Mailchimp’s strongest argument in the whole comparison.

The practical significance depends on your stack. WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, Zapier, Wix and Squarespace are at both, so with the most common small-business combination the difference does not show at all. It shows when you use a rarer point-of-sale, ERP or booking system: then the likelihood of a ready-made connector and a ready-made guide is higher at Mailchimp. Checked on the services’ own pages on 4 September 2026.

Free plans side by side

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From the price lists on 3 September 2026. Both free plans lack multi-step automations. MailerLite’s price list says logo removal is a paid-plan feature; Mailchimp’s price list takes no position on free plan branding, so we make no claim about it either way.

The contact count is the same, so the choice is settled by sending volume. At two newsletters a month Mailchimp’s free plan is already full; at the same pace MailerLite has five times the room. If the free plan is the main criterion for the choice, neither is the best in the comparison — EmailOctopus gives 2,500 subscribers and Systeme.io 2,000.

When neither is right

If your list is large and the sending pace moderate, both are expensive. A 10,000-contact list costs €79 a month at MailerLite and €95.59 at Mailchimp, while Brevo handles the same for €28 — it bills for emails sent, not list size. The difference is €612 a year compared with MailerLite and €811 compared with Mailchimp.

The other situation is the opposite: if you need conditional automation branches and lead scoring, neither of these is enough; among the tools compared they are found at ActiveCampaign: conditional content from the Plus plan up and lead scoring on the Pro plan, according to its own help pages.

Deliverability: two different tools

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 MailerLite had the higher average (90.9% against 87.6%) and Mailchimp the narrower range. The series ended in January 2024, and the source no longer stands behind its method.

Read from the help pages, both have a cleaning tool, but at a different point: Mailchimp’s Omnivore checks addresses before sending and blocks risky ones, MailerLite’s “Clean up inactive” removes the inactive afterwards. MailerLite offers a dedicated IP and a deliverability team to a sender of 50,000 weekly emails; Mailchimp’s help pages and price list mention neither. Mailchimp handles DMARC as part of setup, MailerLite points to a consultant.

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

Which one for you

If you are already on Mailchimp and considering switching, also go through the wider comparison of Mailchimp alternatives — MailerLite is not the cheapest alternative, but the closest.