Brevo review in brief: Brevo is a low-cost email marketing tool that gets a small list started quickly, with one catch: on the paid entry tiers, the number of contacts you may store is capped, not just the number of emails you send. Brevo pricing as of November 2026 in US dollars: Free costs nothing and sends up to 300 emails a day. Starter starts at $9 a month for 5,000 emails, Standard at $18 with automation and without the Brevo logo, Professional at $499, and Enterprise is quoted on request. Paying yearly saves 10 percent. The entry tier of Starter and Standard allows 500 contacts. Brevo hosts customer data in France, Germany and Belgium, and its data processing agreement is part of the terms of use. If the caps get tight or you want the data on your own server, look at an alternative.
I use both routes side by side. My newsletter runs on Listmonk, open-source software I host myself on my servers at Hetzner, and goes out through the mail servers of the German host ALL-INKL. Brevo I use in addition for individual webinar email series, waitlists and other lists. That is how my privacy policy (in German) describes it. How the newsletter fits into my funnel is in Marketing Funnel Examples: Stages in Practice.
Brevo pricing at a glance (as of November 2026)
Figures come from Brevo's pricing page and the catalog it links to, retrieved November 6, 2026. The catalog does not say whether sales tax is added; check the checkout step.
In euros: 7, 15 and 499 a month. The Free limit of 300 emails a day covers campaigns and transactional emails together, so double opt-in confirmation emails count against it. You can open an account without a credit card at Brevo*; sending starts once Brevo has approved the account.
* Affiliate link: if you sign up with Brevo or buy a plan through this link, I earn a commission. Your price stays the same.
How Brevo pricing scales with volume
Starter and Standard include 5,000 emails a month in the base price. For more, you buy a larger tier on top, and the tier also raises the number of contacts you may keep.
An example: you have 1,200 contacts and send one issue a week, a little over 5,200 emails a month. The contact count alone puts you in the 10,000 tier. Following the catalog, Starter comes to $9 plus $8, so $17 a month, or $29 with the logo removed. Standard is $18 plus $17, so $35, with automation and no logo. The pricing page calculator shows your exact amount.
On Free, the same issue would take four days to send at 300 emails a day. For a small, growing list, that can still do. Brevo also sells pay-as-you-go email credits; according to the pricing page they do not expire, and phone support is not included.
Brevo review: the limits that matter day to day
Five limits, all taken from Brevo's own documents:
- Contacts, not only emails. The entry tier of Starter and Standard allows 500 contacts. An existing list can push you up a tier even if you rarely send.
- Automation starts at Standard. Multi-step workflows, such as a welcome series over several days, are listed as a Standard feature. For Free, the terms explicitly mention restrictions on marketing automation.
- The logo. On Starter, “Sent with Brevo” stays in the footer unless you add the removal for $12 a month ($10.80 a month billed yearly). For Free, the catalog lists no such option.
- One user. Free and Starter allow one login; Standard allows up to three, with the second and third at $12 a month each.
- Free comes without a promise. For the free plan, Brevo's terms reserve the right to discontinue the services in whole or in part at any time without notice; exporting your data must remain possible.
On the plus side, the pricing page lists an editor with templates, signup forms, transactional email via API and SMTP on every plan, and from Starter an MCP connection that lets you manage campaigns and contacts from Claude or ChatGPT. What an MCP server is, I explain in Set Up a Claude MCP Server. A case from my German community shows how fast a Brevo connection can be up: on August 20, 2026, a member had a newsletter employee connected to Brevo in under 50 minutes; the path there is in Build Your Own AI Without Coding.
Brevo and GDPR: data location and processing agreement
This isn't legal advice, just what Brevo's terms of use say as of November 2026.
- Contracting party. Brevo SAS in Paris by default. Customers based in Germany, Austria or Switzerland contract with Brevo GmbH in Berlin, customers in the United States, Canada or Mexico with Brevo Inc.
- Data processing agreement. It is Annex 3 of the terms and, in Brevo's words, part of the general terms of use. Brevo acts as processor, you as controller, so there is nothing separate to request.
- Servers. The sub-processor list names OVH with servers in France and Germany and Google Cloud with servers in Belgium as hosting providers.
- US-linked providers. The content delivery network (Cloudflare), the support ticketing system (Zendesk) and dashboards (Omni Analytics) are listed as “EU/USA”, covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses. Some optional services add further sub-processors, including AI providers such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, only if you use that service.
If you send to people in the EU, your privacy policy should name Brevo as processor, state where data is stored, and explain that Brevo tracks opens and clicks through a small image and personalized links if you use those reports. What to ask yourself about client data and AI in general is in AI and Privacy: What the AI Gets to See.
Brevo alternatives: when another route fits better
It depends less on price than on who runs what:
Listmonk costs no license fee, but work: a server, a mail server to send through, and someone watching updates and backups. I run my own services, including this website, on a k3s cluster on Hetzner Cloud; how it is built is in Kubernetes on Hetzner: k3s in Production. A newsletter needs no cluster, a hardened server is enough; what that takes is in Securing Your Own Server: Linux and Windows.
A rule of thumb, meant as a simplification: you want to send the first issue next week and nobody handles tech for you? Brevo. You already maintain servers and want contacts and analytics fully in your hands? Look at Listmonk. More hosted tools are compared in my look at Mailchimp alternatives. Which tools start free is in my comparison of newsletter platforms.
Where an AI employee helps with the newsletter
The tool sends; someone still has to write. That is what AI employees like Conny are for; what she does and where she stops is on AI for Instagram Reels: How Conny Works.
From Starter up, a draft can land in your Brevo account as a campaign through the MCP connection; with Listmonk, through its API. Either way the same rule holds: the AI employee prepares, you press send.
Frequently asked questions
Is Brevo free?
Yes, on the Free plan, with no credit card. You can send up to 300 emails a day, campaigns and transactional emails combined, with one user and restricted automation. As of November 2026.
How much does Brevo cost per month?
Starter from $9, Standard from $18, Professional from $499, each per month for the smallest email tier. Paying yearly costs 10 percent less. More emails and more contacts cost an add-on per tier. As of November 2026.
How many contacts can I store on Brevo?
On the entry tier of Starter and Standard, 500; at 10,000 emails a month, 1,500; at 15,000, 2,500; from 20,000 emails, 500,000. For Free, the pricing catalog lists 100,000. As of November 2026.
Is Brevo GDPR compliant?
Brevo provides what you need: the data processing agreement is part of the terms, and customer data is hosted in France, Germany and Belgium. Whether your setup as a whole is compliant depends on your consent wording, your double opt-in and your privacy policy.
What are good Brevo alternatives?
It depends on what bothers you. For a hosted tool with different limits, compare the vendors' pricing pages. If you want to hold the data yourself and already run a server, Listmonk is an option: open source, self-hosted, with your own mail server for sending.
Where to go from here
Run your numbers first: contacts today and in a year, issues per month. That gives the tier, then the plan. To see what a newsletter built with AI employees looks like, read the sample issue (in German). If you want to build your own AI employees for writing and sending, Conny and the other ready-made AI employees are available to load in the Premium tier of my community AI Employee Framework. How to build the first issue is in How to Start a Newsletter: My Own Setup. How to confirm signups properly is in my guide to double opt-in.
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