Klaviyo vs Mailchimp pricing: what a store pays at 1k to 100k contacts

Mailchimp is cheaper than Klaviyo once your list passes about 10,000 contacts, and the gap gets wider as you grow. At 10,000 contacts Klaviyo Email is $150 a month and Mailchimp Standard is $135. At 100,000 it is $1,380 against $800. Up to 5,000 contacts Klaviyo costs the same as Mailchimp Standard or less, so at that size you should pick on features, not price.

Klaviyo prices were read on klaviyo.com/pricing on 25 October 2026 and Mailchimp prices on mailchimp.com/pricing on 10 November 2026, both in US dollars, billed monthly, before any discount. Prices change, so check both pages before you sign anything. Below you get the full table from 1,000 to 100,000 contacts, the send caps, what happens the month you go over, and the same list on a flat rate.

Mailchimp and Klaviyo pricing calculator

Pick your number of active contacts to see what each tool bills per month at its published price.

How Klaviyo prices

Klaviyo has one paid email plan, and its price is set by active profiles. Since February 2025 that means every profile in your account that can be emailed and is not suppressed, whether or not that person ever opted in to marketing; someone who typed an email into your checkout and never subscribed is an active profile. Suppressed and unsubscribed profiles stop counting once the suppression has processed, which Klaviyo says can take up to 72 hours. The free plan covers 250 profiles and 500 sends a month. Paid tiers start at $20 for 500 profiles and step up in small increments: $30 at 1,000, $60 at 2,500, $100 at 5,000, $150 at 10,000, then a steep climb to $350 at 15,000, $400 at 25,000, $720 at 50,000, $1,380 at 100,000 and $1,955 at 150,000. Those are the US monthly prices for the Email plan, read on 25 October 2026.

Two rules sit behind those numbers. First, Klaviyo's help center sets the send limit at 10 times the profile maximum of your plan, so the 25,000 tier includes 250,000 emails a month (we quote the rule in full in our Klaviyo pricing for Shopify guide). Go over and you either pay flexible overages at your plan's unit rate or get auto-upgraded to the next tier. Second, your plan must cover your active profile count at the end of each billing cycle; if it does not, Klaviyo moves you to a compliant tier automatically. If your profiles come mostly from a Shopify store, the checkout-driven growth and the February 2025 rules are covered in detail in Klaviyo pricing for Shopify stores.

How Mailchimp prices

Mailchimp has two paid plans most stores look at: Essentials and Standard. Both are priced by contact band, so you pay for the band your list falls in, not your exact count. Standard is $20 for up to 500 contacts, $45 at 501 to 1,500, $60 at 1,501 to 2,500, $100 at 2,501 to 5,000, $135 at 5,001 to 10,000, $310 at 20,001 to 25,000, $450 at 40,001 to 50,000 and $800 at 75,001 to 100,000. Essentials runs $13, $26.50, $45, $75, $110, $270 and $385 across the same bands and is not available at 75,001 to 100,000 contacts. The free plan is for lists under 250 contacts, and both paid plans have a 14-day free trial. All of this is the US list price, billed monthly, read on 10 November 2026.

Two things move the bill. The send cap is 12 emails per contact per month on Standard and 10 on Essentials: at 20,001 to 25,000 contacts that is 300,000 sends on Standard and 250,000 on Essentials. Going over does not pause your sending. Mailchimp's pricing page says "Overages apply if contact or email send limit is exceeded", and its FAQ says that after the free trial, "if you hit your contact or sending limit, Mailchimp will automatically bill you for your overages." The page also shows 15 percent off the first 12 months from 5,000 contacts, so Standard at 25,000 contacts is $263.50 a month in year one and $310 after that. Prices vary by region; the figures here are the US list.

Klaviyo vs Mailchimp pricing by list size

Here is the plan a store would actually pick on each platform, at typical list sizes, next to the equivalent MailingPlatform plan. Mailchimp Essentials is included because it is the cheaper Mailchimp plan and it disappears at 100,000 contacts. Our prices are in euro, billed monthly; yearly billing is about 20 percent less. Klaviyo and Mailchimp are US dollars as published, before the 15 percent first-year discount Mailchimp shows from 5,000 contacts.

Mailchimp prices by contact band, so the 10,000 row is the 5,001 to 10,000 band and the 25,000 row is 20,001 to 25,000. The 15,000 row is gone because Mailchimp no longer publishes a 15,000 band.

Read the table honestly and it says three things. Under 2,500 contacts Klaviyo matches or beats Mailchimp Standard, and Essentials is the cheapest of the three. Between 3,001 and 5,000 both Klaviyo and Mailchimp are cheaper than our Professional plan on the sticker. From 10,000 the per-contact model pulls away: at 25,000 contacts Klaviyo is $400 against €129, and at 100,000 the gap is $1,380 or $800 against €299. If your list is small and will stay small, the price is not the reason to switch. If it is growing, it is.

How Mailchimp compares to Klaviyo at 10k, 50k and 100k contacts

These are the three sizes where the two bills stop being close, and they are the sizes stores ask about. All figures are US list prices billed monthly, Klaviyo checked 25 October 2026 and Mailchimp 10 November 2026.

The first-year row is Mailchimp's published 15 percent off for the first 12 months, which it shows from 5,000 contacts. After month 12 the Standard row is the price. Essentials is cheaper than Standard at every size where it exists, and it is not offered once your list reaches 75,001 to 100,000 contacts.

What the prices buy you in sending volume is not the same. Klaviyo's limit is 10 times the profile maximum: 100,000, 500,000 and 1,000,000 emails a month at these three sizes. Mailchimp Standard is 12 times the contact count, which works out to 120,000 sends at 10,000 contacts, 600,000 at 50,000 and 1,200,000 at 100,000. If you actually send that much, Amazon SES at $0.10 to $0.16 per 1,000 emails adds about $12 to $19 at 10,000 contacts, $60 to $96 at 50,000 and $120 to $192 at 100,000, on top of the MailingPlatform plan. Even at the top of that range, 100,000 contacts costs €299 plus up to $192 in sending, against $800 on Mailchimp and $1,380 on Klaviyo.

What the sticker price leaves out

• The send cap decides your calendar. 10 or 12 sends per contact sounds generous until you run a weekly newsletter plus abandoned cart, welcome, post-purchase and back in stock flows. Stores that send more than twice a week during peak season hit the Klaviyo cap and pay overages or get bumped a tier for the whole month.
• Who counts is the other half of the bill. Klaviyo counts every active, non-suppressed profile, which includes checkout emails that never subscribed. A Shopify store can easily pay a tier above its real subscriber count that way. Our list cleaning guide covers the hygiene side; the billing side is that unsubscribed, bounced and suppressed contacts never count here.
• Tier jumps are not smooth. Klaviyo goes from $150 at 10,000 to $350 at 15,000: crossing 10,001 profiles more than doubles the bill, and the move is automatic at the end of the cycle. Mailchimp's next published step after the 5,001 to 10,000 band ($135) is the 20,001 to 25,000 band at $310.
• Features are a tier too. Mailchimp splits what a store needs across Essentials and Standard, and Essentials is not available once you reach 75,001 to 100,000 contacts. Every MailingPlatform plan has every feature, so the only thing that moves the price is audience size.

What a flat rate actually means here

MailingPlatform prices by audience size band: Starter is €39 a month for up to 3,000 active subscribers, Professional €129 for up to 25,000, Scale €299 for up to 100,000, and Unlimited €499 above that. Every plan includes every feature: all automation triggers, segmentation, the AI builder, signup forms, validation, the REST API and the Shopify and WooCommerce apps. Platform sends are unlimited; there is no send cap, no send credits and no overage. Only active, emailable subscribers count, so unsubscribed, bounced, complained and suppressed contacts stay in your account as protection and never appear on the invoice. You can run the flat rate email marketing pricing calculator with your own list size, and the plan and trial details live in the billing help article.

The honest footnote: delivery runs through your own Amazon SES account, so AWS bills the actual sending volume at its list rate, currently $0.10 to $0.16 per 1,000 emails depending on the SES plan you choose. A store sending 300,000 emails a month pays AWS roughly $30 to $48 on top of the plan, and in return owns its sender reputation and IP history outright. Add that to the table above and the 25,000 contact comparison becomes about €129 plus $30 against $400 or $310 with a hard cap. At 100,000 contacts the same arithmetic is €299 plus up to $192 in sending if you use Mailchimp's full 1,200,000 send allowance, against $800 on Mailchimp Standard and $1,380 on Klaviyo.

Which one should you pick

Klaviyo is the right choice if SMS is a core revenue channel for you or you rely on its predictive analytics and Customer Hub; nothing here replaces those, and you should pay for them if they earn their keep. Mailchimp is a fine choice for a newsletter-first business with a small, stable list. If you are still on Shopify's built-in tool, Shopify Messaging vs Klaviyo runs the same math against a per-send bill. MailingPlatform is built for the store in between: a Shopify or WooCommerce shop with a growing list, a full set of flows, a preference for EU-hosted data, and no appetite for a bill that climbs every month the list does. The Klaviyo migration guide and the Mailchimp migration guide say plainly what carries over by CSV (subscribers, tags, custom fields, unsubscribe status) and what you rebuild in an afternoon (flows and templates, from the ready-made workflows and the AI builder).

Whatever you choose, do the arithmetic on your real list: count active subscribers, not total contacts, multiply your planned sends per month by that number, and check it against the cap. That single exercise explains most of the difference between the price page and the invoice. The Shopify email marketing page shows what the store integration does with the data once it is flowing.

Klaviyo and Mailchimp pricing questions