The real cost of an email list in 2026: a data study

How much does email marketing cost? Computed from our pricing data on 20 email service providers: a 5,000-subscriber list runs anywhere from $0 (Kit’s free plan, which stretches to 10,000 subscribers) to $100/mo (Klaviyo and Customer.io). The cheapest paid plan at that size is Brevo at $28.75/mo (billed by emails sent), a ~3.5x spread for the exact same subscribers. Even against the cheapest subscriber-billed plans (Moosend and Campaigner, $38/mo), the most expensive costs 2.6x as much. The gap is widest at scale: at 25,000 subscribers our data spans $41.42/mo to $400/mo, a ~9.7x spread worth $4,302.96 a year. And the list you build matters as much as the tool you pick: the median tool costs $16.34/mo at 1,000 subscribers and $167.50/mo at 25,000, 10x more.

This is the email-only sequel to our real cost of creator tools study. Every figure below is computed directly from TryToolFit’s pricing dataset (the subscriber-band prices behind our pricing calculator, re-verified against each vendor’s pricing page on 2026-10-08) at annual-billing prices where the vendor offers them (monthly otherwise), excluding paid add-ons. No estimates from memory, no vendor marketing claims.

What 20 ESPs charge at four list sizes

The core result, sorted by cost at 5,000 subscribers:

Tool	1,000 subs	5,000 subs	10,000 subs	25,000 subs
Substack*	$0	$0	$0	$0
Kit‡	$0	$0	$0	$166
Brevo†	$15.25	$28.75	$28.75	$41.42
Moosend	$13	$38	$70	$128
Campaigner	$14	$38	$72	$158
iContact	$11.92	$38.25	$62.08	$153
Sender	$0	$39	$69	$149
MailerLite	$17.10	$44.10	$80.10	$161.10
GetResponse	$15.58	$44.28	$64.78	$142.68
Flodesk	$19	$48	$66	$149
AWeber	$20.83	$50	$83.33	$175
Campaign Monitor	$42.30	$67.50	$105.30	$216.90
Constant Contact	$25.50	$68	$102	$238
Mailchimp	$26.50	$75	$110	$270
ActiveCampaign	$15	$79	$149	$391
Omnisend	$20	$81	$132	$282
Drip	$39	$89	$154	$369
beehiiv§	$0	$95	$119	$169
Customer.io	$100	$100	$145	$325
Klaviyo	$30	$100	$150	$400

* Substack charges no monthly fee at any list size. Instead, it takes 10% of paid subscription revenue (plus Stripe fees). Free list, taxed income.

† Brevo bills by emails sent rather than by subscriber bands. Its free plan shows no contact cap but limits sending to 300 emails a day, so the figures here are paid tiers, and Brevo’s paid tiers now tie contact storage to the email allowance. They are our dataset’s estimated cost at each list size; heavy senders will pay more, rare senders less.

‡ Kit’s free Newsletter plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with a single automation, the most generous free ceiling in the dataset if you can live within it. The $166 at 25,000 is its paid Creator plan, which unlocks full automations; if you need those below 10,000, Creator starts at $33/mo (annual) at 1,000 subscribers.

§ beehiiv’s free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers (without paid subscriptions); above that, its Lite plan is priced by list size. Earlier versions of this study showed a flat $42/mo above its free tier, before beehiiv repriced.

The spread: 3.5x at 5,000 subscribers, nearly 10x at 25,000

The single clearest finding is how little “email marketing” means as a price category. At every list size we priced, the most expensive tool costs several times the cheapest paid one. In dollars, the gap is biggest at scale:

• At 1,000 subscribers: $11.92 (iContact) to $100 (Customer.io), 8.4x. Four tools are still $0. The median across all 20 tools is $16.34/mo. (Customer.io’s $100 entry price drives that spread; without it, the top is Campaign Monitor at $42.30, 3.5x.)
• At 5,000: $28.75 (Brevo) to $100 (Klaviyo and Customer.io), 3.5x. Median: $49/mo. Kit and Substack are still $0.
• At 10,000: $28.75 to $154 (Drip), 5.4x. Median: $81.72/mo. Kit and Substack are still $0.
• At 25,000: $41.42 to $400 (Klaviyo), 9.7x. Median: $167.50/mo.

Quotable stat: at 25,000 subscribers, the cheapest paid option in our data costs $497.04 a year and the most expensive $4,800 a year: a $4,302.96 annual difference for sending email to the same people. Even between subscriber-billed tools, Moosend at $1,536 a year and Klaviyo are $3,264 a year apart.

None of this shows up when you compare entry prices. At 1,000 subscribers, ten of the twenty tools cluster between $11.92 and $20.83/mo. They look interchangeable. At 25,000, the nine subscriber-billed tools in that cluster run from $128 (Moosend) to $391 (ActiveCampaign). The spread is created almost entirely by what happens after you grow, which is exactly the part pricing pages de-emphasize.

Who’s still free at 1,000 subscribers

Four of the twenty tools cost $0 at a 1,000-subscriber list:

• Kit: free Newsletter plan up to 10,000 subscribers, limited to one automation. That makes it $0 at 5,000 and 10,000 too; past 10,000 its Creator plan is $166/mo at 25,000.
• beehiiv: free up to 2,500 subscribers, then a Lite plan priced by list size ($95/mo at 5,000, $169 at 25,000).
• Sender: free up to 2,500 contacts, then $39/mo at 5,000, a dollar above the cheapest subscriber-billed plans at that size.
• Substack: free at every size, monetized through its 10% cut of paid subscriptions.

Worth noting how much the classic free tiers have shrunk in our data: MailerLite is free only to 250 subscribers now ($17.10/mo at 1,000), AWeber and GetResponse to 500, and Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and Omnisend to 250. “Start free” mostly means “start free for your first few hundred signups” (Kit’s 10,000 is the big exception). If you’re choosing your first tool, our beginner’s guide to email marketing walks through the trade-offs in detail.

The cost cliff: which tools punish growth hardest

We measured each tool’s climb from 1,000 to 25,000 subscribers. The cliffs are not where you’d guess:

• Steepest multiplier: ActiveCampaign, $15 → $391/mo, a 26.1x increase. Omnisend is next at 14.1x ($20 → $282), then Klaviyo at 13.3x.
• Biggest absolute jump: ActiveCampaign again, +$376/mo. Klaviyo is a close second: $30 → $400/mo (+$370/mo, or $4,800 a year at 25k).
• The free-plan cliff: Kit costs nothing all the way to 10,000 subscribers, then $166/mo at 25,000 once you’re on its paid plan.
• Gentlest climbs: Brevo goes $15.25 → $41.42 (2.7x), because it prices sends rather than storage. Among subscriber-billed tools, Customer.io rises only 3.25x ($100 → $325), but from a $100 starting point; of the tools that start cheap, Flodesk ($19 → $149, 7.8x) and AWeber ($20.83 → $175, 8.4x) climb least. beehiiv used to sit in this group with a flat $42/mo above its free tier; since its October 2026 repricing it climbs from $95 at 5,000 to $169 at 25,000.

Quotable stat: ActiveCampaign is the fourth-cheapest paid tool at 1,000 subscribers ($15) and the second most expensive at 25,000 ($391), behind only Klaviyo. A cheap entry tier is only a loose guide to the scaled price in our data.

The practical lesson: a cheap entry tier tells you very little. The number to check before committing is the price at the list size you plan to reach, which is precisely what our pricing calculator shows for every tool at your subscriber count.

The exceptions: two tools that don’t bill by subscriber

Subscriber-band pricing is the norm, but two models in our dataset break it, and both can be dramatically cheaper in the right situation:

Brevo bills by emails sent. Its free plan shows no contact cap but limits you to 300 emails a day. Paid plans are sized by monthly email volume and now tie contact storage to it: Starter is $8.08/mo (annual) for 5,000 emails and 500 contacts, while $28.75/mo buys 20,000 emails with room for 500,000 contacts. If you hold a large list but mail it occasionally (seasonal promotions, transactional email), Brevo’s cost barely moves (the same $28.75 covers 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers in our data) while subscriber-billed tools charge you every month for contacts you didn’t email. If you send daily to everyone, the math flips against it.

Substack charges $0/mo forever and takes 10% of paid subscription revenue instead. A free newsletter on Substack genuinely costs nothing at any size. A paid one hands over $100/mo per $1,000 of subscription income: cheap while you’re small, the most expensive tool on this page once you’re earning real money.

Neither is better or worse in general; they just move the cost to a different axis (send volume, revenue) than everyone else (list size).

Methodology

All figures are computed from TryToolFit’s pricing dataset for the email-marketing category: 20 tools, with every price ladder re-verified against the vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-10-08. For each list size we take the monthly cost of the cheapest plan that covers it (free plans count within their caps), at the annual-billing price where the vendor offers one and the monthly price otherwise. Omnisend, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Drip, Campaigner and Customer.io have no annual option. List prices, not first-year promos; paid add-ons excluded. Where our data’s top band is open-ended (Customer.io above 20,000 profiles), the 25,000-subscriber figure uses that band, so very large lists should get a live quote. We don’t do hands-on testing. This is an analysis of published pricing, and prices change: verify current pricing on each vendor’s site before you commit. Full sourcing and update cadence are on our methodology page.

FAQ

How much does email marketing cost per month? From our pricing data: expect roughly $11.92-$100/mo at 1,000 subscribers (median $16.34 across all 20 tools), $28.75-$100/mo at 5,000 (median $49), and $28.75-$154/mo at 10,000 (median $81.72), with four tools still free at 1,000 and two (Kit and Substack) still free at 10,000. The tool you pick matters (the same 5,000 subscribers cost ~3.5x more on the most expensive paid tool than the cheapest), but so does growth: the median tool costs 10x more at 25,000 subscribers than at 1,000.

What’s the cheapest email marketing tool at 5,000 subscribers? In our data, Kit’s free plan ($0 up to 10,000 subscribers, one automation) and Substack ($0, with a 10% cut of paid subscriptions). Among paid plans, Brevo at $28.75/mo (billed by emails sent, so it suits infrequent senders), then Moosend and Campaigner at $38/mo as the cheapest subscriber-billed plans. MailerLite ($44.10) and GetResponse ($44.28) are the cheapest mainstream picks.

Why does the same list cost 3.5x more on one tool than another? Because ESPs price on different things: raw sending versus automation depth, e-commerce analytics, and CRM features. Tools like Klaviyo and Customer.io charge for behavioral data and segmentation that a newsletter writer will never use, and the premium compounds with every subscriber band you cross, to nearly 10x at 25,000 subscribers.

Run your own numbers

The spread in this study is the argument for doing thirty seconds of math before signing up: pick the list size you expect to reach in 18 months, and compare tools at that number, not at today’s. Our pricing calculator does the band lookup from this same dataset for every tool, and if you’d rather be told than shown, the advisor narrows the field from a few questions about how you’ll actually use email.