The short version
This comparison is built from both official pricing pages captured on 2026-09-14 in a real browser. A methodological note up front, because it affected the capture: both pages defaulted to Japanese yen on our network egress (the same geo-pricing behavior we documented on Figma). We switched each page’s own currency control to USD manually and captured both states; the contact/email limits are currency-independent, and the USD prices below come from the switched page, not a conversion. We did not create an account or send a campaign in either product — this is terms-level analysis.
The single difference that decides most small-business choices:
- Brevo meters email volume. Free forever: 5,000 emails/month, “free forever, no credit card needed,” with contacts managed without a contact-count ceiling — SMS is sold separately, and free emails carry the “Sent with Brevo” footer.
- Mailchimp meters contacts. Free: under 250 contacts, with 5,000 monthly email sends on the current feature table — and the page warns “sending will be paused if contact or email send limit is exceeded.” Importing contact #251 moves you onto a paid band; Brevo’s equivalent trigger is sending email #5,001.
Free tiers side by side
| Free tier (captured 2026-09-14) | Brevo Free | Mailchimp Free |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing axis | monthly email volume | contact count |
| Monthly emails | 5,000 (campaigns + transactional) | 5,000 sends shown on the current plan table |
| Contacts | no contact-count cap on the free tier | under 250 |
| Daily cap | no daily sending limit on paid email credits; free is monthly-metered | — |
| Branding | “Sent with Brevo” footer (removal paid) | Mailchimp branding |
| Other channels | SMS/WhatsApp credit sold separately; web push 1,000 subscribers included | email-focused free plan |
| Onboarding | no credit card | sign up free; paid plans run 14-day trials, “send up to 100 emails without payment info” |
| Over-limit behavior | upgrade by email-volume pack | sending pauses until you move to a paid band |
Two readings matter:
- A growing list favors Brevo. A sender with 3,000 contacts who emails once a month (3,000 sends) stays on Brevo free forever; the same list is already eleven bands deep into Mailchimp paid (contact bands start 0–500, 501–1,500, 1,501–2,500, 2,501–5,000…).
- A tiny, high-frequency list can favor Mailchimp free. With 200 contacts you could send ~20 campaigns/month under the 5,000-send cap on Mailchimp free; Brevo free also covers that (5,000 sends), so the real Mailchimp constraint is almost always the contact number, not the send number — and the page hard-enforces it by pausing sending rather than overage-billing.
Paid entry prices — and a Mailchimp promo caveat
From the USD-switched pages:
Brevo (monthly / yearly, yearly −10%):
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly per month | Email volume from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $9 | $8 | 5,000/mo |
| Business | $18 | $16 | mid volumes, marketing automation, advanced stats |
| BrevoPro | $499 | $449 | 150,000/mo, dedicated IP, deliverability specialist |
Brevo’s plans are anchored to email volume sliders (5k / 10k / 15k … 100k …), and the page also sells email credits: “price based on number of emails. No daily sending limit, no expiration date.” Removing Brevo branding is an added line item, and SMS/WhatsApp are priced separately by destination.
Mailchimp (USD, current page — read the asterisks):
| Plan | Page entry price (0–500 contacts) | What the number actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | from $7.40/mo | 14-day free trial then paid; $7.40 is a promotional entry (“save 50% for 12 months” banner region; standard then-price higher) |
| Standard | from $11.26/mo | same promo structure, “then starts at” a higher rate per the card |
| Premium | $188.68/mo for 12 months, then $221.98/mo | a large-contact figure; the card prints both prices |
| Free | under 250 contacts | not a trial — a permanent band |
The honest comparison at entry: Mailchimp Essentials’ $7.40 looks cheaper than Brevo Starter’s $9, but $7.40 is a time-boxed promotional price for the first year (“save 50% for 12 months” in the same capture; the card itself shows “then starts at $X/month”), and it is still billed against contact bands that step up as the list grows. Brevo’s $9/$8 is the standing email-volume price with no list-size escalation — a 20,000-contact list that sends 4,000 emails/month stays on Brevo Starter but sits several Mailchimp bands up. We did not capture Mailchimp’s post-promo standard Essentials price for 0–500 contacts as a clean static number (the page renders promo and then-price dynamically), so we are not printing a hard “regular” figure; verify at checkout.
Product-shape differences on the pages
- Brevo is a multi-channel suite with an email-metered core: email + transactional messages, SMS/WhatsApp (separate credit), web push, a CRM with segmentation, sales pipelines (a separate Sales package with a free 1-seat tier), forms and marketing automation. Free includes the drag-and-drop editor, templates, an AI content generator and transactional email — the paywalls are volume, branding removal and advanced reporting.
- Mailchimp is an email-marketing platform with contact-metered plans: marketing automation flows (up to 200 flows on Standard/Premium, up to 4 flow steps on Essentials), generative AI as a no-additional-cost add-on on the upper tiers (not included on Essentials), custom-coded templates gated above Essentials, and monthly send ceilings printed per plan (5,000 Essentials, 6,000 Standard, 150,000 Premium at the captured configuration).
- Enforcement philosophy differs in one sentence each, both quoted from the pages: Brevo sells more emails when you need them; Mailchimp states “sending will be paused if contact or email send limit is exceeded” and applies overages on paid plans. A paused newsletter is an operational risk a volume-add-on vendor doesn’t impose the same way.
One more geo-pricing data point
Both pricing pages served JPY by default to our (proxied) network location on 2026-09-14, including on Mailchimp’s contact-band sliders and Brevo’s plan cards. USD was one manual switch away on each (Mailchimp: a currency SELECT; Brevo: a currency button). This is the same trap we hit on Figma and worth stating for anyone comparing newsletter tools from outside the US: the numbers a scraper or a non-US browser quotes can be a different currency with no geo disclosure on the card, and listicle prices for both vendors should be checked with a capture date and a currency label.
Who should pick which (terms-level)
- Pick Brevo if your contact list will outgrow 250 quickly but your monthly send volume stays modest (the classic small-newsletter / transactional-email case), you want SMS/CRM in one bill, or you want free email credits with no expiry. Free tier covers real sending up to 5,000/month with no list-size wall.
- Pick Mailchimp if you are under 250 contacts for the foreseeable future, rely on its template/automation ecosystem and integrations, or you want the incumbent’s deliverability reputation — and you treat the $7.40 as a first-year teaser rather than the long-run price, budgeting for contact-band growth and the post-promo rate.
- The one sentence to take away: Brevo sells emails, Mailchimp sells audience size. Pick by which one your growth will break first.
No star rating: we sent no campaigns and built no automations on either product — this is a pricing-page terms comparison.
Methodology & sources
- brevo.com/pricing — captured 2026-09-14 via local egress proxy in a headless Chrome session, geo-default JPY state and manually switched USD state, with full rendered-text dumps; evidence in /reviews/brevo-vs-mailchimp/. Free-tier wording (“free forever, no credit card needed,” “from 5,000 emails per month,” email-credit terms) quoted from the page.
- mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing — captured the same day the same way, JPY default and USD via the page currency SELECT; “under 250 contacts? It’s free,” the 5,000/6,000/150,000 send rows, the pause-on-over-limit sentence, and the promotional/then prices quoted from the switched page.
- Third-party claims about either vendor’s legacy free tier (older articles cite different numbers) were deliberately not used: both vendors have changed pricing repeatedly, and every limit here is the 2026-09-14 page value.
- Checked 2026-09-14. Both pages are dynamic (sliders, promos, geo currency); re-verify before a budget decision.
Related pages
Brevo and Mailchimp are priced on sender volume, which is why we keep two sibling checks open jotform review — Jotform’s free-tier caps, screenshotted on a stated date; typeform pricing — Typeform’s free vs paid tiers, priced on the official page; saas — the full SaaS Comparisons index, where every page is labelled hands-on or official-page check.
