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 $8/mo (Brevo, billed by emails sent) to $117/mo (Campaign Monitor) — a ~15x spread for the exact same subscribers. Even excluding Brevo’s unusual billing model, the cheapest subscriber-billed paid plan (Sender at $15/mo) is still ~8x cheaper than the most expensive. The tool you pick matters far more than the list you build, and the gap only widens with scale: at 25,000 subscribers our data spans $18/mo to $505/mo, a 28x spread worth $5,844 a year.

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 — on annual billing, 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
Brevo†	$8	$8	$18	$18
Sender	$0	$15	$40	$75
AWeber	$13	$30	$50	$50
MailerLite	$13	$35	$66	$66
Flodesk	$25	$38	$54	$54
Moosend	$13	$38	$70	$128
beehiiv	$0	$42	$42	$42
iContact	$12	$50	$80	$297
GetResponse	$16	$54	$65	$65
Constant Contact	$12	$55	$90	$90
Omnisend	$25	$65	$132	$132
Mailchimp	$30	$75	$110	$185
ActiveCampaign	$15	$79	$145	$145
Campaigner	$14	$80	$150	$300
Kit‡	$0	$89	$119	$119
Drip	$39	$89	$154	$154
Klaviyo	$30	$100	$150	$400
Customer.io	$100	$100	$145	$505
Campaign Monitor	$39	$117	$182	$300

* 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, not contacts stored — its free plan holds unlimited contacts. The figures are our dataset’s estimated cost at each list size; heavy senders will pay more, rare senders less.

‡ Kit’s paid plan, which unlocks full automations. Its free Newsletter plan stretches to 10,000 subscribers with a single automation — the most generous free ceiling in the dataset if you can live within it.

The spread: 12x at 1,000 subscribers, 28x 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 an order of magnitude more than the cheapest paid one:

• At 1,000 subscribers: $8 (Brevo) to $100 (Customer.io) — 12.5x. Four tools are still $0.
• At 5,000: $8 to $117 (Campaign Monitor) — 14.6x. The median tool charges about $55/mo.
• At 10,000: $18 to $182 — 10.1x. Median: $85/mo.
• At 25,000: $18 to $505 (Customer.io) — 28.1x. Median: about $124/mo.

Quotable stat: at 25,000 subscribers, the cheapest paid option in our data costs $216 a year and the most expensive $6,060 a year — a $5,844 annual difference for sending email to the same people.

None of this shows up when you compare entry prices. At 1,000 subscribers, ten of the twenty tools cluster between $8 and $16/mo — they look interchangeable. 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.
• beehiiv — free up to 2,500 subscribers, then a flat ~$42/mo regardless of list size.
• Sender — free up to 2,500 contacts, and the cheapest subscriber-billed paid plan at 5,000 ($15/mo).
• 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 ($13/mo at 1,000), AWeber to 500, and Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and Omnisend to 250. “Start free” mostly means “start free for your first few hundred signups.” 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: iContact, $12 → $297/mo — a 24.8x increase. Campaigner is close behind at 21.4x ($14 → $300).
• Biggest absolute jump: Customer.io, $100 → $505/mo (+$405/mo). Klaviyo adds the second-most: $30 → $400/mo (+$370/mo, a 13.3x multiplier — $4,800 a year at 25k).
• Gentlest paid climbs: beehiiv holds flat at $42/mo above its free tier no matter the size, AWeber goes $13 → $50, Flodesk $25 → $54, and GetResponse $16 → $65.

Quotable stat: two of the cheapest tools at 1,000 subscribers — iContact at $12 and Campaigner at $14 — become two of the three most expensive subscriber-billed tools at 25,000 ($297 and $300). The entry price and the scaled price are close to uncorrelated in our data.

The practical lesson: a cheap entry tier tells you almost nothing. 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. Unlimited contacts on the free plan; the paid Starter tier is about $8/mo for 5,000 emails. If you hold a large list but mail it occasionally — seasonal promotions, transactional email — Brevo’s cost barely moves 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, priced by subscriber band on annual billing, excluding paid add-ons, as of July 2026. For each list size we take the vendor’s band covering that subscriber count; where our data’s top band is open-ended, the 10,000- and 25,000-subscriber figures use that top 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 $8–$39/mo at 1,000 subscribers (median ~$14), $15–$117/mo at 5,000 (median ~$55), and $40–$182/mo at 10,000 (median $85) — with four tools still free at 1,000 subscribers. The exact figure depends far more on which tool you pick than on your list size: the same 5,000 subscribers cost ~15x more on the most expensive tool than the cheapest.

What’s the cheapest email marketing tool at 5,000 subscribers? In our data, Brevo at ~$8/mo (billed by emails sent, so it suits infrequent senders) and Sender at $15/mo as the cheapest subscriber-billed plan. AWeber ($30) and MailerLite ($35) are the cheapest mainstream picks.

Why does the same list cost 15x 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.

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.