Single list size

What Mailchimp costs at 10,000 contacts

Ten thousand contacts is a published stop on the Mailchimp slider, so these numbers are read off the pricing page rather than interpolated. It is also the tier where two things change at once: the flat Premium price finally ends, and the only discount Mailchimp publishes comes into range.

Snapshot 3, checked 14 September 2026. Vendor pricing page.

The three answers

Essentials: $110; 100,000 monthly sends, 3 audiences, single step automations
Standard: $135; 120,000 monthly sends, multi step journeys, 5 audiences
Premium: $350; the last stop where Premium still charges what it charges at 500 contacts

All three plans at exactly 10,000 contacts

Monthly billing. Mailchimp publishes no standing annual rate, so there is no yearly figure to set against it.

Prices are compiled from public vendor pages and can lag behind a change. Cells marked Der are calculated from published rules and cells marked Est are rough figures. Neither is an invoice or a quote, so confirm with the vendor before you spend.

Plan	Monthly	Confidence	Note
Essentials	$110	Verified	100,000 monthly sends included. Entry paid plan. Scheduling, basic testing, 3 audiences, 10 times contacts in monthly sends.
Standard	$135	Verified	120,000 monthly sends included. The plan most Mailchimp buyers land on. Multi step journeys, send time optimisation, 5 audiences, 12 times contacts in monthly sends.
Premium	$350	Verified	150,000 monthly sends included. Flat and expensive at the bottom, tiered above 10,000 contacts. Unlimited audiences and users, 15 times contacts in monthly sends.

Mailchimp at 10,000 contacts, month to month billing, checked 14 September 2026. Send allowances are calculated from the multiple each plan publishes.

What the gap between the plans buys

Price divided by included sends, which is the only unit the three plans can be lined up in at a fixed list size.

Essentials: $1.10; $110 a month across 100,000 sends
Standard: $1.12; $135 a month across 120,000 sends
Premium: $2.33; $350 a month across 150,000 sends

Essentials and Standard land within a few cents of each other per thousand sends, so at this list size the $25 a month between them is buying journeys, send time optimisation and two more audiences rather than a better rate on volume. Premium costs roughly double per thousand sends, and the reason to pay it at 10,000 contacts is unlimited seats and audiences, not sending.

These figures are arithmetic on two published numbers, the tier price and the send multiple. Mailchimp does not sell sends separately at this size, so nothing here is a rate anyone can buy on its own.

Why this tier is the one that changes shape

Premium is flat at $350 from 500 contacts all the way to 10,000, and 10,000 is the last stop where that holds. The next recorded stop, 25,000 contacts, is $620. So a list at exactly this size is the best value Premium ever offers per contact, and the first contact above it starts a climb.

Essentials moves the other way. It runs from $75 at 5,000 contacts to $110 here, then to $385 at its ceiling of 50,000, which is where the plan stops being sold at all.

The discount that only exists near this number

Mailchimp publishes no standing annual price. The one discount recorded in this dataset is a promotion of 15 percent off for 12 months, and it is recorded as applying to lists above 10,000 contacts. At $110 a month, Essentials here is $1,320 a year at the sticker price.

What the number does and does not include

The contact count that picks the tier is not the number of people who can receive a campaign. Unsubscribed and non subscribed contacts count until they are archived. A dashboard reading 10,000 contacts can hold well under 10,000 mailable addresses. What each vendor counts is recorded here.

Going over the tier does not stop the account. Mailchimp adds an overage charge to that month, so an invoice can sit above the table price while the pricing page still reads the same. Tax sits on top, and transactional email is a separate product.

What everyone else charges at 10,000

Cheapest paid plan each tracked vendor sells at the same list size. Plan names differ, so features differ.

Vendor	Plan	Monthly	Confidence	Note
Mailchimp	Essentials	$110	Verified	Essentials. Published stop. Lists above 10,000 contacts qualify for the 15 percent promotional discount.
MailerLite	Comfort	$89	Verified	Comfort. Published stop on the MailerLite pricing slider, read on 4 October 2026. The yearly price per month is printed on the slider.
Kit	Creator	$139	Verified	Creator. Read off the Kit pricing slider at 10,000 subscribers. Yearly is 1,390 dollars.
Brevo	Standard	$89	Derived	Standard. Derived from the 40,000 send band. A weekly send to 10,000 contacts is 40,000 emails. The calculator prints 89 dollars for the band, or 80.08 a month paid yearly.
beehiiv	Scale	$109	Verified	Scale. Published stop on the beehiiv pricing calculator.
ActiveCampaign	Starter	$189	Verified	Starter. Read off ActiveCampaign's pricing calculator on 25 September 2026: the annual figure from the pricing page, the monthly figure from the pricing data that page loads for buyers.

Cheapest paid plan per vendor at 10,000 contacts, month to month billing, snapshot 3. Brevo is priced on 4 sends per contact per month rather than list size.

The lowest published paid price at this size is MailerLite and Brevo at $89. 1 of the 6 rows here carries a rating other than verified. The badge on each row says which, so a figure worked out from a published rule is never passed off as one read off a vendor page at 10,000 contacts.

The cheapest way to hold 10,000 contacts in this dataset is not in the table at all. Kit carries a free plan that reaches this list size, so the paid comparison above starts from an option that costs nothing. What that free plan gives up is recorded here.

Mailchimp Essentials at $110 sits in the middle of the table and carries the smallest send allowance of the three Mailchimp plans. The reason to pay it is the rest of the product, not the price of the tier.