Brevo
EU-hosted email marketing priced by sends, not contacts
Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, is a French email marketing platform that charges by emails sent rather than contacts stored, with data hosted in the EU. The free plan allows unlimited contacts and 300 emails per day, and paid plans start at $9 per month. It suits businesses with large lists and low send volume.
Pricing verified on 10 August 2026 · Entry last reviewed 10 August 2026
Brevo at a glance
Features
- No: Paid subscriptions
- No: Referral program
- Yes: Landing pages
- Yes: Custom domain
- Yes: API
- Yes: A/B testing
Data and compliance
- Yes: EU hosting
- Yes: GDPR DPA
- Yes: List export
What Brevo is
Brevo, which spent its first decade as Sendinblue, is a French platform that grew from a transactional email service into a full marketing suite: campaigns, automation, SMS, a CRM and a shared inbox. The engineering heritage shows in the deliverability and the API, which are better than the price suggests.
Two things make it distinct in this comparison. It bills on emails sent rather than contacts stored, and it is unambiguously European, a French company holding data in France.
Pricing
The billing model is the entire story. Everyone else charges for the size of your list; Brevo charges for how much you mail it. That inverts the economics for anyone sitting on a large, infrequently-mailed database, a shop with years of customers, an association with a member list, a B2B company that sends a monthly update.
The free plan follows the same logic: unlimited contacts, 300 emails a day. Paid plans start at $9 a month for 5,000 emails. Note that removing Brevo’s branding from your emails is a paid add-on, which is the kind of detail that belongs in the comparison rather than in a surprise at checkout.
What it does well
- Send-based pricing that is dramatically cheaper for large, low-frequency lists
- EU hosting in France, the strongest GDPR position here
- Six interface languages, which matters for non-English teams
- SMS, CRM and transactional email in the same account, with a solid API
Where it falls short
- The interface is busier and less pleasant than MailerLite’s
- Daily send caps on the free plan interrupt campaigns at awkward moments
- Branding removal costs extra
- Nothing for newsletter creators: no paid subscriptions, referrals or discovery
Who Brevo is for
A good fit
Businesses with big contact lists and modest send volume that want EU hosting and a bill based on what they actually send.
- Businesses sitting on a large database they email monthly rather than weekly, where send-based pricing wins outright
- European companies that want data held in the EU by default, with no transfer paperwork
- Non-English teams, since the interface ships in six languages
- Anyone who also needs SMS, transactional email or a light CRM in the same account
Not a fit
You send often to a small list, or you want creator tooling like paid subscriptions and referrals.
- You send daily to a small list, where the free plan's daily caps bite and per-email pricing loses its edge , use MailerLite instead
- You are a creator monetising an audience rather than a business , use Beehiiv instead
- You need deep creator automation and product launches , use Kit instead
Alternatives to Brevo
MailerLite
Simple EU-hosted email marketing for small businesses
$12/mo · Free plan: 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/monthMailchimp
The default email marketing suite, with the pricing to match
$13/mo · Free plan: 250 contacts, 500 emails/monthKit
Automation-heavy email platform for creators who sell things
$33/mo · Free plan: 10,000 subscribersBrevo FAQ
Is Brevo free?
Yes, and its free plan is structured differently from everyone else's: unlimited contacts with a cap of 300 emails a day. If you have 20,000 contacts and email them monthly in batches, you may never need to pay.
How much does Brevo cost?
The Starter plan begins at $9 per month for 5,000 emails and rises to around $69 depending on monthly volume. Removing Brevo branding from your emails requires a paid add-on.
Why is Brevo cheaper than Mailchimp?
Because it charges for emails sent rather than contacts stored. A large list you rarely email costs almost nothing on Brevo and a great deal on Mailchimp. Reverse the pattern (small list, daily sends) and the advantage disappears.
Does Brevo host data in the EU?
Yes. Brevo is headquartered in Paris and stores data in the EU by default, with data residency primarily in France. For European businesses that is the cleanest GDPR position of any platform in this comparison.
Brevo or MailerLite?
Both are EU-hosted and inexpensive. Brevo wins on large lists with low send frequency and adds SMS and a CRM. MailerLite has the better interface and is simpler if your list is small and you email it often.
Whichever platform you pick
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