Compare Brevo vs MailerLite for your European business. Discover which email marketing pricing model fits your list size and check GDPR compliance facts.
TL;DR: Brevo vs MailerLite
Brevo suits businesses sitting on large contact lists who email occasionally, since its pricing is built around email volume rather than list size — a growing database doesn't automatically push you into a higher tier. This volume-based approach means you only pay for what you send.
MailerLite suits creators and smaller businesses who email their audience often, since its plans scale with subscriber count rather than send volume — frequent senders with modest lists get more value here than on a per-email model.
Neither fits everyone: high-frequency senders with big lists may find Brevo's volume pricing adds up, while fast-growing lists can push MailerLite users into pricier tiers regardless of send frequency. If you suspect neither model fits, our MailerLite alternatives roundup covers other options worth checking before you commit.
| Factor | Brevo | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Based on monthly email volume sent | Based on number of stored subscribers |
| Free plan | Up to 300 emails/day, no stated contact cap | Subscriber-capped with a monthly send allowance — check MailerLite's deal page for current numbers |
| Best for | Large, infrequently-emailed lists | Smaller lists emailed often |
| Automation | Included from the free plan; step/branch limits not published in verified sources | Included on entry plans; tier limits not published in verified sources |
| Beyond email | CRM features and transactional SMS routing | Website builder, landing pages, digital product sales |
| Legal entity for EU accounts | Varies by location: Sendinblue France SAS, Brevo Inc., or Brevo Germany GmbH, per Brevo's privacy policy | Not specified in sources verified for this comparison — check MailerLite's legal pages |
Email Marketing Pricing Models: Volume vs Subscribers
Before comparing exact numbers, it helps to understand that Brevo and MailerLite charge for completely different things. Picking the wrong model for your sending habits can mean paying double for the same list.
Brevo: pay per email sent
Brevo's plans are built around monthly send volume, not list size. According to Brevo's pricing page, checked October 2026, you choose a tier based on how many emails you expect to send each month, and your contact database can grow without triggering a plan upgrade on its own. This suits businesses that store a large list but email it rarely, since idle contacts cost nothing extra.
MailerLite: pay per subscriber
MailerLite instead prices by the number of contacts stored in your account, with sending allowances that are generally high or unlimited within a tier. Readers who want MailerLite's current subscriber brackets and send limits should check the live figures on SaaSEuro's MailerLite deal page, since MailerLite is not in the pricing dataset verified for this comparison and we don't want to guess at numbers that change.
A 15,000-contact scenario
Picture a business holding 15,000 contacts. The two models react very differently to sending frequency:
- One newsletter a month: on Brevo, the bill reflects roughly 15,000 sends for that month, likely landing on a mid-tier volume plan. On MailerLite, the bill is set by the 15,000 stored contacts, regardless of whether you send once or not at all that month.
- Four newsletters a month: on Brevo, monthly volume jumps toward 60,000 sends, which can push the account into a noticeably higher tier. On MailerLite, the subscriber count hasn't changed, so the price typically stays the same as the one-newsletter scenario — provided the plan's sending allowance covers 60,000 emails.
The practical rule: the more often you email the same list, the more a subscriber-based plan like MailerLite's tends to pay off. The larger your dormant list relative to how often you mail it, the more a volume-based plan like Brevo's tends to pay off.
For exact current rates on either side, use Brevo's own pricing page or SaaSEuro's Brevo deal page, and the MailerLite deal page linked above — tiers and allowances change and should always be checked against the vendor directly before you commit. If list size is your main driver, our Brevo vs Mailchimp comparison looks at another subscriber-priced alternative worth weighing alongside MailerLite.
Free Plans: Limits and Allowances
Brevo's free plan is built around a daily sending cap: according to Brevo's official pricing page (checked October 2026), the free tier allows up to 300 emails a day, with no stated limit on the number of contacts you can store. That distinction matters — Brevo doesn't cap your list size on the free plan, only how many emails leave your account each 24 hours.
MailerLite structures its free plan differently, around a subscriber count and a monthly sending allowance rather than a daily one. The exact current subscriber cap and monthly email allowance are set out on MailerLite's own pricing and help documentation, which is where you should check before signing up, since those figures can change and we don't want to quote a number that's gone stale.
What this means in practice
The mechanics differ in a way that affects how you actually use each free plan:
- Check your list size first. If it's under a few hundred contacts, both free plans are workable; above that, Brevo's daily cap or MailerLite's subscriber cap may already push you toward a paid tier.
- Check your send frequency. Occasional senders with a bigger list lean toward Brevo's free tier; frequent senders with a smaller list lean toward MailerLite's.
- Run the numbers against each vendor's current page. A list of 900 contacts cannot all be emailed in one campaign on Brevo's free plan — at 300 emails a day, the send spreads over three days to reach everyone once.
- Confirm MailerLite's current figures. Because its limit is tied to subscriber count and a monthly total rather than a daily ceiling, a list under MailerLite's published free-plan subscriber cap can typically receive a single campaign send in one go, provided the monthly allowance isn't exceeded.
For anyone planning regular newsletters to a full list rather than a trickle of transactional mail, this is the practical question to answer against each vendor's current documentation before choosing a free plan.
Campaign Editor and Marketing Automation
Both Brevo and MailerLite ship a drag-and-drop email builder and a library of pre-made templates, the baseline expected from any brevo vs mailerlite shortlist in 2026. Neither vendor's pricing page, as supplied here, breaks out exact template counts or block types, so treat editor depth as a feature to confirm directly on each brand's own page rather than a number to compare side by side.
Brevo's workflow builder
Brevo markets itself around a visual automation workflow builder with trigger-based sequences — the kind of setup used for welcome series, cart-abandonment nudges and re-engagement campaigns. According to Brevo's pricing page, checked October 2026, the free plan already includes sending up to 300 emails a day, which is enough to test a basic automation flow before committing to a paid tier. Brevo does not publish, in the materials reviewed here, a granular breakdown of how many automation steps or conditional branches are unlocked at each paid level, so anyone building multi-step logic should verify current workflow limits on Brevo's own pricing page before buying.
MailerLite's automation gating
MailerLite is widely known for including automation on its lower tiers rather than reserving it entirely for Enterprise plans, but the specific caps — number of workflow steps, conditional splits, or which triggers (e.g. e-commerce events, API triggers) are gated to higher tiers — are not part of the verified figures available for this comparison. Readers who need exact numbers should check MailerLite's pricing page directly, since stating a limit here without a confirmed source would be guesswork.
Where this leaves the comparison
- Brevo: automation included from the free plan, with workflow depth best confirmed on Brevo's pricing page.
- MailerLite: automation also on entry plans, but tier-by-tier limits need checking on MailerLite's own page.
- For teams wanting advanced automation by design, our Brevo vs ActiveCampaign comparison looks at a documented contrast worth weighing against either tool, though you should check their pricing page for exact action limits per tier.
Beyond Email: Brevo CRM Features and SMS
When you compare brevo vs mailerlite on scope rather than price, the two platforms split cleanly by business model. Brevo markets itself as a full "customer platform," and its pricing page lists CRM features and transactional SMS routing alongside email, positioning it for teams that want to manage leads, deals and multi-channel messaging from one login. That's a materially different pitch to MailerLite, whose plans are built around a website builder, landing pages and tools for selling digital products — functions aimed squarely at creators and solo sellers, not sales teams.
Who each toolkit actually serves
If your workflow needs a pipeline view of contacts, SMS alerts for order confirmations or abandoned-cart nudges, and marketing automation feeding a sales team, Brevo's bundled CRM and SMS routing remove the need for a separate tool — check current limits and SMS pricing on the Brevo deals page. If instead you're a newsletter writer or course creator who needs a landing page, a simple site and a checkout for a digital product, MailerLite's monetization-first stack is closer to what you'll actually use; confirm specifics on its own page.
| Business need | Better-matched platform |
|---|---|
| Multi-channel sales teams needing a CRM pipeline and SMS | Brevo (see also our Brevo vs ActiveCampaign comparison) |
| Creator monetization — landing pages, digital products | MailerLite (see also our MailerLite vs Kit comparison) |
| Cold outreach rather than newsletters | Neither — see our lemlist alternatives guide |
In short, the brevo vs mailerlite decision here is less about features missing and more about which job — selling through a pipeline, or selling through a creator storefront — matches your business.
European Business Angle: GDPR, Data Location, and VAT
Where your contact data physically sits, and who is legally responsible for it, matters more once you're sending to EU subscribers. Brevo and MailerLite handle this disclosure very differently in their public legal documents.
Brevo's entity structure
Brevo's parent company is a French SAS headquartered in Paris, according to Brevo's press page, checked October 2026. Its privacy policy, checked October 2026, states that the data controller for your account varies by location: it may be Sendinblue France SAS, Brevo Inc., or Brevo Germany GmbH depending on where you are based. The same policy confirms that Brevo Inc. complies with the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which covers transatlantic transfers for accounts routed through the US entity. Beyond this entity breakdown, Brevo does not publish a specific data-residency guarantee in the sources checked for this comparison — readers who need that detail confirmed should check Brevo's deals page or contact Brevo directly.
MailerLite's documentation
MailerLite's own legal pages do not give SaaSEuro a verified figure for data storage location or DPA terms in the sources used for this article. Rather than guess, we point EU buyers who need this confirmed in writing to MailerLite's current legal and privacy pages, or to MailerLite's deals page, before signing a contract that involves personal data of EU residents.
VAT on both tools
Both Brevo and MailerLite list prices before VAT, as is standard for B2B SaaS billing. If your business is VAT-registered in the EU and buying from outside the vendor's home country, the reverse charge mechanism typically applies: the vendor issues an invoice without VAT, and your business self-accounts for VAT at your local rate on your own VAT return, usually with a right to reclaim it. This has no effect on the headline subscription price shown on either pricing page — it only changes how the tax is booked. UK buyers should check whether the vendor applies UK VAT directly or expects reverse charge treatment, since the mechanics differ slightly outside the EU VAT area. In every case, confirm the exact VAT treatment on your invoice rather than assuming it from the pricing page alone.
The Good vs The Bad
Brevo
- Pro: every paid plan keeps contact storage unlimited — pricing scales on email volume and features rather than list size, according to Brevo's pricing page, checked October 2026.
- Con: the free plan caps sending at 300 emails a day, a hard ceiling that resets daily rather than monthly, according to Brevo's pricing page, checked October 2026.
MailerLite
- Pro: the drag-and-drop editor for landing pages and sign-up forms is built into every plan, letting users build campaign pages without a separate tool. Check MailerLite’s own pricing page for current limits.
- Con: because plans are priced by subscriber count, costs rise as a list grows — even if those contacts open few campaigns — unlike Brevo's volume-based model. Check MailerLite’s own pricing page for exact subscriber tiers.
Where Kit, ActiveCampaign and lemlist fit
- Kit: free up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, per kit.com/pricing — but no built-in CRM depth.
- ActiveCampaign: no free plan, only a 14-day trial, per its pricing page — automation depth comes at a higher entry cost.
- lemlist: no free plan, EU-only data location per its privacy policy — built for outreach, not newsletters.
None of these trade-offs are rated here; they come straight from each vendor's published plan limits.
Alternative Platforms to Consider
If neither Brevo nor MailerLite fits the way you work, three other platforms turn up repeatedly in the brevo vs mailerlite conversation, each pulling in a different direction: creator-first simplicity, advanced automation, or B2B cold outreach. Our full MailerLite alternatives guide covers more of these in depth.
Kit, for solo creators
Kit's free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited forms and broadcasts, according to Kit's pricing page checked October 2026 — a far higher free ceiling than Brevo's 300-emails-a-day limit or MailerLite's subscriber-capped free tier. The trade-off is data location: Kit stores data in the United States on AWS, per Kit's security page. Kit does not publish its DPA terms in the sources verified for this comparison, so EU buyers should check Kit's legal pages directly. For a closer side-by-side, see our MailerLite vs Kit comparison.
ActiveCampaign, for advanced automation
Teams that outgrow both Brevo's and MailerLite's automation builders often look at ActiveCampaign, which offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, according to ActiveCampaign's pricing page. Its Starter plan starts at US$15/month billed yearly — above both Brevo and MailerLite's entry pricing. Data may be processed in the US, Australia, Ireland, Brazil or Costa Rica, per ActiveCampaign's privacy policy. See our Brevo vs ActiveCampaign comparison for a deeper look at automation depth.
lemlist, for B2B cold outreach
Neither Brevo nor MailerLite is built for cold outreach sequencing. lemlist, a French company, keeps data exclusively in the EU, according to lemlist's privacy policy checked October 2026. Its Multichannel plan, covering LinkedIn outreach and in-app cold calls, starts at €87/month billed yearly, per lemlist's pricing page. More outreach-focused options are listed in our lemlist alternatives guide.
