Klaviyo Pricing Explained (2026): Why Your Bill Keeps Going Up and What You Actually Pay at Every List Size
Short answer
Klaviyo charges by active profiles, not emails sent. It is free up to 250 profiles, then $20/mo at 500, $45 at 1,500, about $150 at 10,000, $720 at 50,000 and $2,300 at 250,000. Every paid tier has the same features, so you pay more only because your list grew. SMS adds about $15 a tier plus credits. Since February 2025 Klaviyo bills every active profile, which is why many Shopify brands saw bills jump without sending more.
How Klaviyo pricing works
Three plans:
- Free. Up to 250 active profiles, 500 email sends a month.
- Email. Priced by active profile tier. Sends are roughly 10× your profile count per month.
- Email + SMS (now "Email + Mobile"). Same tiers, about $15 more per month at each, includes a small bundle of SMS/MMS credits. Extra credits bought separately.
Above 250,000 profiles you move to manual billing and a sales conversation.
Features do not change as you move up. Flows, segmentation, predictive analytics, integrations, AI tools: the same at $20 and at $2,300. The price is a list-size tax, nothing else.
How much does Klaviyo cost at each list size?
| Active profiles | Email plan | Email + SMS (approx.) | Monthly email sends |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 250 | Free | Free (limited) | 500 |
| 251 to 500 | $20 | $35 | 5,000 |
| 1,001 to 1,500 | $45 | $60 | 15,000 |
| 2,501 to 3,000 | ~$70 | ~$85 | 30,000 |
| 5,001 to 5,500 | ~$100 | ~$115 | 55,000 |
| 10,001 to 10,500 | ~$150 | ~$165 | 105,000 |
| 25,001 to 26,000 | ~$400 | ~$415 | 260,000 |
| 45,001 to 50,000 | ~$720 | ~$735 | 500,000 |
| 200,001 to 250,000 | ~$2,300 | Custom | 2,500,000 |
Notice the jump between 10,000 and 25,000 profiles. Below it, Klaviyo costs like a normal email tool. Above it, the increments per tier get much steeper. That inflection is where most brands start looking at alternatives.
The 2025 change that raised everyone's bill
Before 18 February 2025 Klaviyo billed on emailed profiles: the contacts you actually sent to in a month. Since then it bills on active profiles: anyone in your account who is not unsubscribed, suppressed or deleted.
That means:
- A customer who bought once in 2022, never opened an email, and never unsubscribed counts against your tier.
- A profile you never email at all still costs money.
- Legacy accounts were moved to the new model too, which is why long-running stores saw bills rise without changing anything.
The practical effect: list hygiene stopped being good practice and became a billing lever. Suppressing 3,000 dead profiles can drop you a tier or two.
What you actually pay: three stores
Store A: 4,000 profiles, sends 3 campaigns a month. ~$85/mo on Email. Roughly $1,000 a year. Reasonable.
Store B: 22,000 profiles, of which 9,000 have not opened anything in 12 months. ~$375/mo. Suppress the 9,000 dead profiles and the bill drops to ~$200. Same revenue, $2,100 a year saved.
Store C: 60,000 profiles, Email + SMS. Around $900/mo before extra SMS credits. $10,800 a year, and the SMS credits on top can double that for a brand texting weekly.
Add-ons to budget for
- Marketing Analytics: from $100/mo, requires 1,001+ profiles.
- Customer Agent AI: $200/mo regular price plus per-conversation overages.
- Customer Hub, Helpdesk, Advanced Data Platform: each priced separately, the data platform at $500/mo.
- SMS credits: the bundle included with Email + SMS is small. Real texting volume means buying more.
None of these are needed to run email. All of them appear on invoices of brands that thought they were paying $150.
How to lower your Klaviyo bill
- Suppress, don't delete. Suppressed profiles do not count toward your tier and you keep the data. Build a segment: no open or click in 180 days, no order in 365 days. Suppress it.
- Stop syncing every Shopify customer. Only push profiles that consented to marketing.
- Clean at tier boundaries. If you are at 10,200 profiles, 200 suppressions drop you to the 10,000 tier.
- Question the add-ons annually. Most brands do not use Marketing Analytics enough to justify $1,200 a year.
- Check SMS credit usage. Unused credits do not roll over on all plans.
Is Klaviyo worth it?
If your team lives in predictive segments, custom data and a deep integration stack, Klaviyo's price buys things you actually use. Its Shopify integration, flow builder and data model are mature and well built.
If your programme is campaigns plus a handful of flows (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back), which covers most Shopify brands under $1-2M a year, you are paying for list size, not capability. The bill grows with a list you may not be monetising, and that is where the price stops making sense.
What would the same list cost on Gro Email?
Full disclosure: Gro Email is ours. It is priced on emails sent, not profiles stored: free up to 1,000 sends a month, then $39 a month for up to 150,000 sends, with no charge per profile and every feature on every plan. Here is the same store sending three campaigns a month to its whole list.
| Active profiles | Emails sent a month | Klaviyo Email plan | Gro Email |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | 1,500 | $20 | $39 |
| 1,500 | 4,500 | $45 | $39 |
| 5,500 | 16,500 | ~$100 | $39 |
| 10,500 | 31,500 | ~$150 | $39 |
| 26,000 | 78,000 | ~$400 | $39 |
| 50,000 | 150,000 | ~$720 | $39 |
Below about 1,000 profiles, Klaviyo's entry tiers can be cheaper. From a few thousand profiles up, the gap is the difference between paying for the size of your list and paying for what you actually send.
Alternatives, briefly
- Omnisend. Similar Shopify depth, generally 30 to 50% cheaper at scale, SMS included in pricing. The most common Klaviyo replacement.
- Sendlane. Email + SMS for DTC, pricing more generous on sends.
- Shopify Email. Free for 10,000 sends a month, then per-email pricing. Very basic, no real automation.
- Gro Email. Full disclosure, this is ours. Priced on emails sent, not profiles: free up to 1,000 sends a month, then $39 a month for up to 150,000 sends, with flows, segmentation and a drag-and-drop editor on every plan. Full details on our pricing page. It runs alongside a subscription app you already have (including Recharge and Skio) or with Gro Subscriptions. If you pay $400 a month to send four campaigns, have a look.
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
Free to 250 profiles, then $20 at 500, $45 at 1,500, about $150 at 10,000, $720 at 50,000 and $2,300 at 250,000 on the Email plan. Email + SMS adds about $15 per tier plus credits.
No. Unsubscribed and suppressed profiles do not count. Never-engaged profiles that have not unsubscribed do count.
Since February 2025 Klaviyo bills on all active profiles, not emailed profiles. Your tier is set by list size, not activity.
Yes: 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month.
Email + SMS plans cost roughly $15 more than Email at each tier and include a small credit bundle. Additional SMS/MMS credits are bought separately, so real texting volume can double the bill.
Usually not on a like-for-like contact count. At 10,000 contacts Klaviyo's Email plan is about $150 a month, against roughly $100 to $135 for Mailchimp Standard. Klaviyo's ecommerce features are the justification.
Gro Email, which is ours, prices on emails sent rather than profiles: free up to 1,000 sends a month and $39 a month for up to 150,000 sends, with no charge per profile. A store with 10,000 profiles sending three campaigns a month pays $39 on Gro against about $150 on Klaviyo's Email plan. Below about 1,000 profiles, Klaviyo's entry tiers can be cheaper.
Paying too much for email?
Gro never charges for contacts. We'd like to talk, and the migration's on us.
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