What is a good newsletter open rate — why the figure tells you little now and what to track instead
The open rate is counted from an invisible image, and Apple Mail loads it on the recipient’s behalf even if the message is never opened. Here is how an open is measured, what Apple, Google and the email tools themselves say about the figure, what three tools’ own benchmarks show and what to track instead.
The open rate appears in every email tool’s campaign report, but some of the recorded opens are not human opens at all. This page explains how an open is measured, why the figure no longer tells you much on its own and what to track instead. Every claim and figure is read from Apple’s, Google’s or an email tool’s own help page or report.
The short answer
There is no common “good” open rate. In Brevo’s own benchmark, based on its 2025 customer data, the average was 20.73% with Apple Mail’s automatic opens left out and 33.87% with them counted. The same data therefore gives two different answers. Compare your figure first and foremost with your own previous sends, counted the same way, and track the click rate, unsubscribes and the spam rate alongside it.
How the open rate is measured
An open is recorded from an image. According to Mailchimp’s help page, a tiny, transparent image is included in every message, and opens are counted from how often the image is loaded. The open rate tells you what share of successfully delivered messages were opened. GetResponse, ActiveCampaign and EmailOctopus describe the same method.
The method has two known weaknesses, and the tools point out both themselves. First, an open goes unrecorded if images are not loaded. Mailchimp notes that open tracking is therefore not 100% accurate, and according to ActiveCampaign, opens of a plain-text message cannot be tracked at all. Second, an open can be recorded even though nobody opened the message. According to EmailOctopus, some email clients, firewalls and antivirus programs load a message’s images as soon as it is received, and this cannot be told apart from a real open. The same help page mentions that Google, too, may preload images in some situations.
The tracking image is also a data protection matter. According to EmailOctopus’s help page, under the service’s terms a sender who uses open and click tracking is responsible for obtaining any consent required by local data protection law. The list’s other data protection obligations are covered in our guide to email marketing and GDPR.
Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates the figure
According to Apple’s privacy description, the Protect Mail Activity setting loads a message’s remote content in the background by default “regardless of whether you engage with the email”. The content passes through two separate relays run by different entities, so the sender cannot see the recipient’s IP address. According to Apple’s iPhone User Guide, the feature “prevents senders from seeing if you’ve opened the email message they sent you”.
The tracking image is remote content, so it loads, and the tool records an open. According to ActiveCampaign’s help page, Apple Mail reports a 100% open rate for contacts who have turned the feature on, so opens can no longer be relied on as a key metric. Brevo’s help page describes the same thing: messages are marked as opened on delivery, which inflates open figures and makes them less accurate. Brevo points out that this only concerns the Apple Mail app, not other email apps used on Apple devices.
The tools handle these opens in different ways, which makes their figures hard to compare. Brevo has counted system-detected opens, such as Apple MPP, in the open rate since 6 February 2025 and bot activity since 8 July 2025, but they can be excluded from reports. ActiveCampaign counts them in reports, and the Apple Privacy filter can leave them out. Mailchimp recommends excluding Apple MPP and other bot activity from reports so that open and click figures are more accurate.
Google does not track the open rate
Google’s sender guidelines are direct about this: “Google doesn’t track open rates.” According to the guidelines, Google also cannot verify the accuracy of open rates reported by third parties, and a low open rate is not necessarily a reliable indicator of deliverability or spam problems. A falling open rate alone therefore does not prove that your messages are going to spam, and a high one does not prove the opposite.
The tools’ own benchmarks
Brevo, GetResponse and Mailchimp publish an average open rate from their own customers’ sends. The figures are not comparable with each other: the data, the year, the minimum list size and the handling of Apple opens all vary. The table shows each publisher’s own figure and data as published.
| Publisher and data | Open rate | Click rate | Unsubscribes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo: more than 175,000 active customers, year 2025 | 20.73% (33.87% with Apple MPP) | 2.27% | 0.46% |
| Brevo, same data, Europe | 22.83% (36.90% with Apple MPP) | 2.29% | 0.51% |
| GetResponse: more than 4.4 billion messages from 2023, senders with at least 500 contacts | 39.64% | 3.25% | 0.15% |
| Mailchimp: campaigns to at least 1,000 subscribers, data from December 2023 | 35.63% | 2.62% | 0.22% |
Sources: each tool’s own benchmark page, read on 25 September 2026.
The clearest finding in the table is Brevo’s two columns. Calculated from the same data, the difference is about 13 percentage points depending on whether Apple Mail’s automatic opens are counted. GetResponse says itself that the rise in engagement figures from the previous year is partly explained by automatic opens on Apple devices. Mailchimp, for its part, notes that Apple MPP may affect the accuracy of open figures, and the body text of the same page gives 34.23% as a target, a different figure from the one in the page’s table.
So if you compare your own figure with these, first check whether your tool counts Apple opens. If you are still choosing a tool, prices and free plans are in the comparison of email marketing software, and the differences between two common options in the MailerLite vs Brevo comparison.
What to track instead of the open rate
Apple MPP only affects opens. According to Brevo’s help page, all other tracking works normally, and Brevo advises segmenting by clicks and using clicks, replies, forms or page visits rather than opens as automation triggers.
- Click rate. According to Mailchimp, it shows what share of successfully delivered messages registered at least one click. According to Brevo and Mailchimp, however, bot activity, such as security software checking links automatically, can inflate clicks too, so it is worth excluding it from reports if your tool allows.
- Unsubscribes. The three tools’ benchmarks are in the table. An unsubscribe is not just a loss: according to Google’s sender guidelines, an easy way to unsubscribe can improve open rates, click-through rates and sending efficiency.
- Spam rate. Google’s sender guidelines require keeping the spam rate shown in Postmaster Tools below 0.30% and advise keeping it below 0.10%. According to the Postmaster Tools help page, its data only covers messages sent to personal Gmail accounts, and data may be missing if the daily volume is too low.
- Bounces. Google’s sender guidelines advise automatically unsubscribing recipients whose messages have bounced several times.
If your list is still small, the free email marketing comparison shows the limits of the free plans.
What to do now
- Check how opens are counted. See in your tool’s help pages whether Apple MPP opens are included in the open rate, and choose one setting permanently.
- Compare with yourself. Track your own open and click rates from send to send with the same setting.
- Move automations to clicks. An automation or segment based on opens also reacts to Apple Mail’s automatic opens.
- Set up Postmaster Tools. If you send to Gmail accounts, the spam rate is the figure that Google’s limit applies to.