The cheapest Brevo tier that fits your monthly email count may still be too small for your contact list. For a small business, check four numbers before comparing prices: stored contacts, monthly sends, the number you need to send on a particular day, and unique contacts entering automations. Then decide whether Starter’s features suffice or Standard solves a specific limit. Brevo’s plan guide and quota guide, checked October 3, 2026, supply the limits below. The live pricing picker supplies the price for your actual configuration.
The number on the plan card is only a starting point
Brevo lists Starter from $9 a month and Standard from $18 a month on its public help page. Those are starting rates for small send and contact capacities, excluding tax. They are not the monthly prices for either worked example later in this guide. The tier you configure can change with the number of contacts you store, the emails you send and optional features. Keep the billing term and extras the same when comparing the two plans.
The published tier table pairs these monthly allowances with contact storage on both Starter and Standard:
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| Listed monthly-send tier | Stored-contact capacity | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 5,000 sends | 500 contacts | A small list can fit even if each person receives several campaigns. |
| 10,000 sends | 1,500 contacts | The first listed capacity here that holds a 1,000-contact list. |
| 15,000 sends | 2,500 contacts | The first listed capacity here that holds a 2,000-contact list. |
Brevo’s contact-limit FAQ says it automatically upgrades an account on one of these first three Starter or Standard tiers when stored contacts reach or exceed the tier cap. The subscription cost then rises. Watch the stored count as a list grows, even if monthly sending stays the same; crossing the contact boundary can change the bill before your campaign calendar does.
Do not read the send tier as a contact allowance. A business with 2,000 stored contacts and only 4,000 planned sends still exceeds the 500-contact cap at the 5,000-send tier. Conversely, a business with 400 contacts could use more than 5,000 sends if it emails those people often. The relevant tier is the first one satisfying both constraints, before any feature requirement is considered.
The table covers the three smaller tiers needed for the examples, not Brevo’s entire lineup. At a much larger workload, the 50,000-send Brevo guide works through send volume, contact storage and automations at that scale. Here the question is how a smaller business avoids paying attention to the wrong number on the plan card.
Calculate sends from the calendar, not the list size
Count one planned email to one recipient as one send. For each campaign, multiply its expected recipients by the number of times you will send it during the billing period. Use the actual segment size when campaigns go to different groups. Then add the messages scheduled from automations and any other email workload that uses your account’s allowance. If you have not built the calendar yet, the monthly email-send worksheet helps organize it.
Consider a shop with 1,000 stored contacts that sends four campaigns to the full list in one month. Its campaign estimate is 1,000 × 4 = 4,000 sends. A 5,000-send tier appears large enough until you check the paired storage cap: 500 contacts. The next listed tier, 10,000 sends and 1,500 contacts, accommodates both figures. That conclusion is about capacity, not the checkout price or whether every message will be delivered.
Now take a local service business with 2,000 stored contacts and two full-list campaigns. Its estimate is also 2,000 × 2 = 4,000 sends. This business needs the 15,000-send tier to fit its list under Brevo’s published pairings; the 10,000-send tier holds only 1,500 contacts. Two businesses with identical sending plans therefore reach different configured tiers. The list, rather than the emails sent, drives the second decision.
Scroll horizontally to read all columns.
| Business | Campaign calculation | Listed tiers that fail | First listed tier fitting both inputs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 contacts; four full-list campaigns | 4,000 sends | 5,000 sends / 500 contacts | 10,000 sends / 1,500 contacts |
| 2,000 contacts; two full-list campaigns | 4,000 sends | 5,000 sends / 500 contacts; 10,000 sends / 1,500 contacts | 15,000 sends / 2,500 contacts |
Before applying this calculation to your account, count the contacts that will actually be stored and review the current tier shown for your market. These examples assume one message to each contact in each campaign and no automation messages. A campaign to only half the list needs a different send calculation, but it does not automatically reduce how many contacts remain stored.
Add the automation messages when they occur
Suppose 200 new contacts each receive five messages during the same billing month. That adds 200 × 5 = 1,000 sends. Add those to the campaign estimate before selecting the monthly-send tier. If the five messages span two billing periods, count each message in the period when it is scheduled to send. The contact count in the automation is a separate check: the same person receiving five messages is still one unique entrant for the automation-contact limit described below.
Keep a small margin for resends or an unplanned campaign. A business that calculates exactly the selected allowance can exhaust it after one extra message. There is no universal percentage to add; use the likely events in your own calendar, such as a seasonal promotion or a reminder to people who did not open the first campaign. Recheck the configured tier if that revised schedule crosses its allowance.
Where Free stops being practical
Brevo Free allows 300 sends per day and stores up to 100,000 contacts, according to the plan guide. A generous storage number should not be mistaken for the ability to reach the whole list in one day. A 1,000-recipient announcement would require more than the daily allowance. Spreading a message across days may be acceptable for a low-urgency sequence, but it changes when different customers receive it.
Look at the busiest day as well as the monthly total. If the shop in the first example sends its 1,000-recipient campaign on a single day, Free’s daily cap is the immediate obstacle, even though its four-campaign total is 4,000 over the month. If your campaigns can be deliberately staggered, calculate how the schedule would work; do not assume the monthly arithmetic alone settles Free’s suitability. Also ask whether the plan’s feature limits meet the workflow you need.
Starter or Standard: identify the feature that earns the upgrade
For broadcasts within a qualifying contact-and-send tier, Starter is the initial plan to price. Standard is worth configuring when a documented feature or quota changes what you can run. The strongest numerical gate for some businesses is automation. Brevo’s quota documentation says the new automation editor caps unique contacts entering active automations at 2,000 on Free and Starter, while Standard has no such cap. That figure is neither the count of contacts stored nor a limit of 2,000 messages. Check the current editor and account-wide usage before treating it as headroom for a new flow.
For example, a business with 1,000 stored contacts and only a few hundred people entering a welcome sequence may have enough room within Starter’s documented automation cap. A business expecting more than 2,000 distinct people to enter active automations needs to assess Standard even when its campaign-send total is modest. Buying a larger send tier by itself does not remove the separate automation-entry cap. The number of automated messages still contributes to send usage.
Standard also includes a landing page, A/B testing, advanced analytics and removal of Brevo branding in the current plan guide. If one of these features would replace a tool you already pay for, compare that change using your own bills and workflow. Starter lists branding removal as a $9-per-month add-on; include it if you require unbranded emails. Do not add it to one side of a comparison while leaving the other side at its bare starting price.
Team access can also change the total. Brevo’s published materials vary on the price of an additional marketing seat, so use the live checkout for the number of users you actually need rather than relying on a single help-page amount. EmailTooltester’s Brevo review also describes migration work and the potential expense of multiple users from its own experience. That is a useful prompt to list who will build campaigns, approve them and view reports; it is not a price estimate for your account.
Compare the same configuration in the live checkout
Write down the intended contact count and monthly sends, plus your busiest campaign day and expected unique automation entrants. Then configure Brevo’s current plans for your market. Select the first offered tier that holds both contacts and sends. Price Starter and Standard at that same volume, billing term and seat count. Add branding removal to Starter only if you need it, and include any other selected extras in both totals where applicable.
Brevo says its displayed prices exclude tax. It also describes an annual subscription as 10% lower when paid upfront, while unused monthly sends expire at the end of the billing period in its plan FAQ. An annual percentage does not tell you the amount charged today: capture the checkout total, payment timing and tax for the selected configuration. If volume changes seasonally, compare the cost of the months you would actually use rather than multiplying a low starting rate by twelve.
Save the quote with its date and selected settings. Then make the decision in this order: does the tier hold the list, cover planned sends and allow the busiest day’s schedule; does the plan support the automation and reporting you need; and is its configured total acceptable? That order avoids a false economy in which a low advertised rate fails a basic capacity check. Revisit the figures before the next billing cycle if your list, campaign cadence or automation entrants change.
Select your contact capacity, send volume, billing term and extras in the live plan picker before relying on a price.
Sources and checking
Product terms can change. These are the sources checked for this article; follow the links to verify current details before you buy.
- Brevo Help Center: About Brevo's pricing plans (checked 2026-10-03)
- Brevo Help Center: What are the different quotas applied in Brevo? (checked 2026-10-03)
- Brevo: Marketing Platform pricing (checked 2026-10-03)
- EmailTooltester: Brevo review (checked 2026-10-03)