SendPulse vs Brevo: How Often You Send Decides the Bill

The short answer: if you mail the same 2,500 people every day, SendPulse is the cheaper home: its Standard plan costs $38 a month on monthly billing for unlimited emails to that list (SendPulse pricing), while Brevo charges for every email in the month. If you mail 10,000 contacts once a week, Brevo's Starter plan costs less (Brevo pricing). Pick SendPulse when chatbots on Instagram, WhatsApp or Telegram are part of the work. Pick Brevo when email, SMS and a sales CRM on one volume-priced bill is the work.

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The two put the meter in different places. SendPulse counts the people on your list; Brevo counts the emails you send. Neither is cheaper in general. Your sending rhythm decides which one is.

Work this out before you open either trial:

1. Multiply your list by your sends. For example, 5,000 contacts mailed four times a month is 5,000 x 4 = 20,000 emails. On Brevo that is the Starter base of $9 plus $23 for the 15,001 to 20,000 tier, so $32, or $44 with the $12 logo removal (Brevo pricing file). SendPulse's Standard plan for 5,000 subscribers is $52 whatever you send (SendPulse pricing).
2. Count the conversations you already have. If customers message your Instagram account or WhatsApp number today, pull last month's message count from those inboxes. SendPulse's free chatbot plan covers 10,000 messages a month across 3 bots (chatbot pricing), so the count tells you whether chat belongs in this decision at all.
3. Write down the number that will say it worked. For email, revenue or replies per send; for a chatbot, the share of conversations that end in an order without a person stepping in. Take this month's figure now, so the switch is judged against something.

Side by side

Each row comes from the SendPulse email pricing, chatbot pricing and MCP page, and from Brevo's pricing page, free plan limits and MCP documentation.

Where they part ways

The contact cap hides inside Brevo's email tier

You are not misreading Brevo's plan page: a cheap tier can be too small for your list even when the email count fits. On Starter and Standard, 10,000 emails a month allows 1,500 stored contacts and 15,000 emails allows 2,500; only from 20,000 emails does the cap jump to 500,000 (Brevo pricing file). A list of 2,500 mailed twice a month therefore needs the 15,000 tier, not the 5,000 one the send count suggests. SendPulse has no second number to watch: the plan follows the subscriber count only.

Chat is where SendPulse earns its place

SendPulse sells chatbots as a product of their own, with a free Basic plan of 3 bots and 10,000 messages a month and a Pro plan from $9.60 a month billed annually for 500 subscribers (chatbot pricing). The same page carries a warning worth reading before you build on WhatsApp: from 1 October 2026 Meta charges for replies sent inside the 24-hour customer service window, at the utility template rate of the destination country, with 1,000 messages per bot per calendar month free. Brevo lists WhatsApp among the channels its Professional plan adds, and that plan starts at $499 a month on its pricing file.

Brevo's free plan holds more, and sends less

Brevo's free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts but sends 300 emails a day. A campaign to more than 300 people goes to the first 300 on the scheduled day, and you requeue the rest by hand on the days after, per its free plan article. SendPulse's free email plan allows 15,000 emails a month (pricing). Brevo's free plan is storage; SendPulse's is sending.

Four sending patterns, priced

Monthly billing in USD, checked on 26 October 2026 on the SendPulse pricing page and Brevo's pricing page, whose figures come from the pricing API Brevo publishes as a Markdown file. Brevo prices include the email tier the list needs; the figure in brackets adds Starter's $12 logo removal.

Yearly billing lowers both: SendPulse lists 20% off for a year, so Standard for 10,000 subscribers falls to $62.40 a month, and Brevo lists 10% off for its paid plans (SendPulse, Brevo).

Handing the chatbot review to an agent

SendPulse documents an MCP server that connects Claude, OpenAI clients or Cursor to your account, with access to chatbots, email, the CRM and courses (SendPulse MCP). One of its own example prompts asks the agent to read the last 100 conversations of an Instagram chatbot, find the three biggest drop-off points and recommend a fix for each. Run that step, then have a person read the recommendations against the live flow before anything is edited. SendPulse says the agent asks for approval at key steps, and also that it may not always recognise its own limits, which is why the human check stays.

Brevo's server works the same way, connected with an MCP token you generate under API keys (Brevo MCP docs).

Before you pay for either

Both free plans are enough to settle this. Send one real campaign from Brevo's free plan; the requeue step shows within a week whether 300 a day fits your rhythm. Let SendPulse's free chatbot plan answer one question type for a month. Then compare the measure you wrote down.

Brevo's headline figure is a base fee. The email tier, the logo removal and any extra seat sit in the lines beneath it, and the vendor's interest lies in what those lines add up to, which is not the same as yours. Price the lines you will use, then compare that total with SendPulse's single figure.

Choose SendPulse if your job is

• Mailing the same list several times a week, where unlimited sends beat a per-email meter.
• Answering customers on Instagram, WhatsApp or Telegram with a bot, next to the email list.
• Giving three to ten colleagues access on the first paid plan.

Choose Brevo if your job is

• Mailing a large list once or twice a month, where volume pricing is the cheaper meter.
• Storing a big contact base for free while you decide what to send it.
• Running email, SMS and a sales pipeline from one account.

FAQ

Does SendPulse charge for each email sent?

Not on its paid email plans. Standard, Pro and Enterprise list unlimited emails and are priced by subscriber count; the free plan stops at 15,000 emails a month, per the SendPulse pricing page.

Why does Brevo's cheapest tier refuse my list?

Because the email tier also sets the contact cap. Starter's 5,000-email tier stores 500 contacts, and 2,500 contacts need the 15,000-email tier, according to Brevo's pricing file.

Can Brevo's free plan carry a 10,000-person newsletter?

It can store them, up to 100,000 contacts, but at 300 emails a day one issue takes more than a month of requeues (free plan article).