Brevo's free plan runs out by the day, not by the size of your list

73 out of 100 puts Brevo in our Strong band, and it makes Brevo the rare category leader that is not the top scorer in its own category. Sender sits at 77 from rank 2. We are leaving that alone rather than tuning it, because the two numbers answer different questions: rank weighs the whole package, including 100,000 free contacts, a CRM and transactional sending, while the score only asks how far zero dollars gets you, and on raw sending Sender hands out more.

The pillar dragging Brevo down is freedom, at 55, which is the lowest of the four by a distance. Nothing about the caps is dishonest, and the free tier is a real product rather than a trial. What costs Brevo points is what stays attached to the word free, and one of those things stays attached after you start paying. The reasoning under each pillar has the specifics.

Almost everyone reads the contact number and stops. The contact number will never be your problem. The send counter will, and here is the shape of it (as of July 2026):

• 300 emails a day, which is a ceiling that resets, not a budget you can save up. A campaign to 3,000 subscribers takes ten days to deliver once.
• The Brevo logo sits in the footer of every free email, and removing it is a separate paid add-on rather than something the first paid plan includes.
• A/B testing, send-time optimisation and real marketing automation are Business-tier features. Free gets basic automation workflows, which covers a welcome sequence and little beyond it.
• New accounts pass a manual approval review before they can send at all, so budget a delay on day one rather than assuming you can import a list and mail it that afternoon.
• Free sending runs on shared infrastructure, which means your deliverability partly depends on how the other people on that infrastructure behave.

The practical test is simple. Divide your list size by 300. If the answer is more than a day or two, the free plan is a drip-sending tool for you, not a newsletter tool.

Starter is the first rung and it is priced by monthly email volume rather than by contacts, which is the whole reason people move to Brevo in the first place. $9 covers 5,000 emails a month, $19 covers 20,000, $29 covers 40,000 and $69 covers 100,000 (as of July 2026). What you are buying at every one of those steps is the removal of the daily ceiling plus basic reporting, so the upgrade is proportionate in the plainest way possible: you pay for volume and you get volume.

The thing to budget for is the one that is not on the ladder. Removing Brevo branding is a paid add-on, and it stays a paid add-on on Starter. Most tools in this category fold that into the first paid plan, so if a clean footer is the reason you are upgrading, price the add-on before you compare Brevo's $9 against anyone else's entry tier.

Business sits above Starter and adds marketing automation, A/B testing, send-time optimisation and multi-user access on the same volume-based pricing. We are not quoting a figure for it. Brevo's pricing page returned an empty shell when we checked, so our Business-tier data came from Brevo's own help documentation, and we would rather flag that gap than publish a number we could not read first-party.

The single feature people upgrade for is not a feature. It is the ability to send one campaign to the whole list in one go.

Yes, within limits, and the limit is a rhythm rather than a size. Brevo is the only tool here that will hold a six-figure list for nothing, so the question is never whether you can afford to keep your subscribers, only whether you can reach them 300 at a time.

Who lives on it comfortably: a business running automated welcome and follow-up sequences, where sends trickle out across the month instead of landing at once. Someone migrating off a contact-priced tool who needs somewhere to park a large list while they clean it. A small team using the CRM and transactional API alongside the marketing side, since both are on the free plan.

Who cannot: anyone sending a weekly newsletter to more than a few hundred people, because the arithmetic runs out; anyone who needs an unbranded footer, since that costs extra even on paid; and anyone who needs A/B testing, which starts at Business.

If the daily cap is the blocker, Sender's free plan gives you 15,000 emails a month as a pool you can spend in one afternoon, and free Brevo alternatives ranks the rest. For the whole category side by side, see the best free email marketing tools.