For most Australian businesses, Brevo is cheaper, and often dramatically so. It bills on emails sent with unlimited contacts, while Mailchimp bills on contacts held, including people who unsubscribed. Choose Mailchimp only if you want its template library and integrations badly enough to pay for a list you are not emailing.
Plans and pricing checked July 2026, and every figure below is read live from our pricing database.
The pricing models are opposites, and that is the whole story
Brevo's model is Per email volume. Mailchimp's is Per contact.
Put concretely, Brevo bills Unlimited contacts (billed by sends) and Mailchimp bills All contacts including unsubscribed.
So work out which axis your business actually sits on.
If you have a big list that you email occasionally, a property agency with twenty thousand past enquiries, a school with an alumni list, a not-for-profit with a donor database, a retailer with years of accumulated customers, Brevo is the cheap answer and Mailchimp is the expensive one. Mailchimp will bill you every month for storing people you email four times a year.
If you have a small list that you email constantly, a daily deals mailer to a few hundred people, the arithmetic can flip, because your cost on Brevo is driven by volume and Brevo's send count climbs while Mailchimp's contact count sits still. That is the one scenario where Mailchimp's model is the friendlier one, and it is a narrow one.
Everyone else, which is most Australian small businesses, is closer to the first case than the second.
Pricing and plans compared
On the headline number Brevo starts lower too: $12/mo (Starter) against Mailchimp's $18.85/mo (Essentials). Both are billed in Australian dollars, so there is no exchange rate to think about.
The contact-billing difference is the one that compounds quietly. Mailchimp counts unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward your billable total until you delete them, so a list that has been running for a few years is carrying paid-for dead weight. Brevo has no such concept, because it is not counting contacts at all.
The calculator above takes your real contact count and your real monthly send volume and prices both platforms against them. That is the only comparison that answers the question, because the answer genuinely depends on your numbers, not on which brand is "cheaper".
The free plans, and Brevo's one real catch
- Brevo free plan: Yes (300 emails /day, unlimited contacts)
- Mailchimp free plan: Yes (250 contacts, 500 sends /mo)
Brevo's is the more generous plan by a wide margin, and unlimited contacts on a free plan is a genuinely unusual offer. But read the cap carefully, because it is a daily limit, not a monthly budget. Three hundred emails a day cannot be spent in one go: a single campaign to a list of two thousand people simply cannot be sent on the free plan in one day. It would have to be split across a week.
That is a real constraint and we would rather you knew it now than discovered it the morning of a sale. If you send one campaign a month to a list of any size, Brevo's free plan will not do it and the paid plan is what you are buying. If you drip a small volume steadily, it is excellent. Mailchimp's free plan, capped at both a few hundred contacts and a few hundred monthly sends, is a trial tier and not a serious option for either pattern.
Who each one is built for
Brevo suits Australian businesses that accumulate contacts as a by-product of trading: retailers, agencies, clubs, charities, service businesses with years of customer records. It also suits anyone who wants email, SMS and transactional mail in one account rather than three.
Mailchimp suits businesses whose priority is the campaign itself rather than the cost of the database: 100+ templates against Brevo's 70+, and 300+ integrations against Brevo's 60+. If a designed, on-brand campaign matters more to you than the monthly fee, that gap is the argument for paying it.
Automation, segmentation and deliverability
Both platforms are honest performers here and neither has an inbox advantage worth choosing on: Brevo's deliverability reputation is High and Mailchimp's is High (89% in independent tests).
On automation, both hold their better workflows back for a higher plan: Brevo is Basic (Starter), Advanced (Business+) and Mailchimp is Basic (Essentials), Advanced (Standard+). Neither entry plan is the automation plan, which is worth remembering when you compare their entry prices.
Segmentation is where Brevo quietly leads: Advanced (behavioural, transactional) against Mailchimp's Moderate (tags, predicted demographics). Brevo can act on behaviour and transactional events, where Mailchimp leans on tags and inferred demographics.
Australian considerations
Both meet the Spam Act 2003 requirements you are responsible for: Brevo is Yes and Mailchimp is Yes (consent tools, unsubscribe). Both give you consent capture through signup forms and a functional unsubscribe in every campaign, which is what the Act requires you to honour within five working days. The obligation to hold real consent and to identify yourself as the sender stays with you.
SMS is the Australian dealbreaker, and it is completely one-sided. Brevo's Australian SMS is Yes (AU supported). Mailchimp's is No (US only). Mailchimp's SMS product simply does not serve Australian senders, so if a text message is part of your marketing plan, this comparison is already over. Note that the Spam Act covers SMS as well as email, so the same consent and unsubscribe rules apply to a text.
Pros and cons for this matchup
Brevo wins on unlimited contacts, send-based pricing, a lower entry price, native Australian SMS, behavioural segmentation and having transactional email in the same account. It loses on a smaller template library, fewer integrations, and a free plan whose daily cap makes it unsuitable for one big monthly campaign.
Mailchimp wins on the largest template library, the widest integration ecosystem, mature reporting and being the tool your next marketing hire already knows. It loses on charging for contacts who have unsubscribed, a higher entry price, weaker segmentation, and no SMS in Australia at all.
The verdict
Brevo is the better buy for most Australian small businesses, and we will say so plainly: on price, Mailchimp loses. Storing contacts is free on Brevo and metered on Mailchimp, and almost every business that has been trading for a few years holds more contacts than it emails. Add native Australian SMS, which Mailchimp cannot offer here at all, and the case is not finely balanced.
Mailchimp is worth paying for in two situations. The first is a small list emailed at high frequency, where send volume rather than list size drives your cost and Brevo's model works against you. The second is when design and integrations genuinely matter more than the subscription: if your campaigns must look polished and plug into a long tail of other tools, Mailchimp is better stocked, and that is a legitimate reason to pay more.
Everything turns on one question: does your cost come from how many people you store, or how many emails you send? Put your real contact count and monthly send volume into the calculator above, and check the wider field in our Australian email marketing comparison, our Mailchimp alternatives guide, or Mailchimp vs Klaviyo if you run an online store.