ActiveCampaign vs Kit pricing

The number most often quoted for ActiveCampaign is $15 a month. That is the annual rate divided by twelve, and its pricing page shows annual billing by default. A month to month buyer pays $19. Kit shows monthly by default and prints a yearly price of 10 times the monthly one, sold as two months free. Comparing the two headlines therefore compares an annual rate against a monthly one, which is why both figures are recorded in separate fields on every cell here.

ActiveCampaign Starter is cheaper at every breakpoint below 5,000 contacts, where Kit Creator takes over at $89 against $99. From there the gap widens, and Kit is the cheaper plan at every larger list size where both publish a price.

The two ladders also end in different places. ActiveCampaign Starter caps at 25,000 contacts, where it costs $489 month to month or $391 a month paid yearly. Above 50,000 contacts ActiveCampaign asks for a call on every plan. Kit Creator has a price all the way to 100,000 subscribers, $679 at its 105,000 stop, so the largest column on this page has a price on one side only.

A fairer pairing higher up is ActiveCampaign Plus against Kit Creator Pro, since Starter caps out and Creator keeps going. At 25,000 contacts Plus is $489 and Creator Pro is $279.

ActiveCampaign. One question, two answers, split by a date. Accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 are billed for every contact whatever its list status. Accounts created on or before 2 November 2025 are billed for active contacts only. ActiveCampaign publishes both answers in the same help article.

Kit. Kit bills confirmed subscribers only, and its help pages list every other status as outside the billing total: unsubscribed, complained, bounced, blocked and unconfirmed. Hard bounces are unsubscribed automatically.

Put a real list through both rules and the gap stops being theoretical. A list of 9,000 people carrying 2,500 unsubscribes and bounces is billed by a new ActiveCampaign account as 11,500 contacts, which is past the 10,000 tier and into the next one up. Kit counts the 9,000 confirmed subscribers and nothing else, which is inside the free Newsletter ceiling. Same list, and the bills are not close.

Nothing on the pricing page shows which rule an account is on, and the change was never announced. Two accounts holding the same list can sit two tiers apart on the strength of their signup dates. The cross vendor version of the question is on who bills unsubscribed contacts, and the dated record of the ActiveCampaign change is on ActiveCampaign pricing changes.

Kit includes unlimited sends on every plan, including the free one, so send volume never touches a Kit bill. ActiveCampaign attaches an allowance of ten to fifteen times the contact limit depending on tier, charges half a cent for each email past it, and switches sending off entirely at three times the allowance until the next month.

For a weekly newsletter that allowance is never in danger. For a daily sender, or anyone running a long welcome sequence on top of campaigns, the ActiveCampaign price in this table is a floor rather than the bill. The Kit price is the bill either way. What Kit takes instead is a transaction fee on anything sold through the platform, on every plan including free, so a list being monetised costs more than the subscription line says.