Klaviyo Pricing Explained (2026)
Klaviyo bills on active profiles, not on the contacts you email — a 2025 change that means you now pay for your whole database whether you market to it or not.
| Plan | Price | Billing | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | up to 250 active profiles | 500 email sends/month, $5 of mobile messages, 10,000 Composer credits, templates and drag-and-drop editor, reporting and dashboards, basic segmentation, Customer Hub and basic Helpdesk. Email support for the first 60 days only |
| Email (small list) | From ~$20/mo | scales by active profile count — roughly $20 at 500 profiles, $30 at 1,000 | Unlimited-tier email sending for the profile band, full segmentation, flows and automation, benchmarks and predictive analytics |
| Email (growth) | ~$100/mo at 5,000 profiles | scales continuously with active profile count | Same feature set with the send and profile allowance matched to list size |
| Email (scale) | ~$720/mo at 50,000 profiles | scales continuously; roughly $2,300/mo at 250,000 profiles | Full platform at enterprise list sizes, with support and deliverability resources scaling alongside |
| Email + SMS | From ~$35/mo | starts at 251–500 active profiles; SMS credits billed on top of the email plan | Everything in the email plan plus 1,250 SMS/MMS credits and mobile push notifications |
The billing change that reset everyone's costs
The most important fact about Klaviyo's pricing in 2026 is not a number, it is a definition. Since February 2025, Klaviyo bills on active profiles — everyone in your database — rather than on the contacts you actually email.
For a store with a large accumulated database, that was a significant increase. A merchant holding 100,000 profiles while marketing to 30,000 engaged subscribers previously paid on the smaller number and now pays on the larger one.
It also changes behaviour. Under the old model, keeping dormant profiles cost nothing, so nobody pruned. Under the new one, every unengaged profile is a line item, and list hygiene becomes a recurring financial exercise. The silver lining is that the incentive aligns with good practice — pruning dead profiles improves deliverability as well as cost.
What it costs by list size
Klaviyo scales continuously rather than in discrete plans, so there is no tier to settle on. Approximate email-only rates:
| Active profiles | Approximate monthly cost |
|---|---|
| 250 | Free |
| 500 | ~$20 |
| 1,000 | ~$30 |
| 5,000 | ~$100 |
| 50,000 | ~$720 |
| 250,000 | ~$2,300 |
The curve is worth reading carefully. From 1,000 to 5,000 profiles the cost roughly triples; from 5,000 to 50,000 it multiplies by about seven. Cost per profile falls as you grow — $0.03 at 1,000, $0.014 at 50,000, $0.009 at 250,000 — which is normal, but the absolute figures at scale are substantial.
A store at 250,000 profiles is spending around $27,600 a year on email alone, before SMS. At that size, the platform decision deserves a proper business case rather than a default.
SMS is a separate meter
The Email + SMS plan starts around $35/month at 251–500 profiles and includes 1,250 SMS/MMS credits plus mobile push notifications. Beyond the included credits, messaging is billed by usage, with per-message rates that vary by destination country.
For a store running SMS as a real channel, this is a usage line rather than a subscription line, and it behaves like one — spiky around campaigns, dependent on geography, and capable of exceeding the email subscription during a heavy promotional month.
Model it independently. The email cost is predictable from your profile count; the SMS cost is a function of your campaign calendar.
What the free plan is and is not
250 active profiles, 500 email sends a month, $5 of mobile messages, 10,000 Composer credits, and access to templates, reporting, basic segmentation, Customer Hub and basic Helpdesk.
That is a genuinely capable trial. You can build real flows, connect a store, and see how the segmentation works with actual purchase data.
It is not a permanent plan. Email support ends after 60 days, leaving free accounts with no support channel, and sending pauses entirely once you exceed either the profile or send limit until you upgrade or the cycle resets. Treat it as an evaluation period with a generous ceiling.
Where the premium is justified
Klaviyo costs more than general-purpose email tools, and for ecommerce the reason is straightforward: it knows what your customers bought.
Purchase history, browse behaviour, predicted lifetime value, churn risk and product affinity all feed segmentation automatically from the store integration. A segment like "bought category X twice, has not purchased in 90 days, predicted high LTV" is a few clicks in Klaviyo and a data engineering project almost anywhere else.
That capability is what the price buys. For a store with meaningful transactional volume, the revenue attributable to well-targeted flows generally settles the argument quickly. For a business without transaction data to feed the model — a B2B newsletter, a content site — you are paying ecommerce prices for functionality you cannot activate, and a cheaper tool is the right answer.
Controlling the bill
Three levers, in order of impact:
Prune inactive profiles. Under active-profile billing this is the main control you have. Profiles that have never engaged and never will are pure cost.
Be deliberate about profile creation. Pop-ups, giveaways and one-off promotions can inflate profile counts fast, and those profiles are billable whether or not they ever buy.
Separate SMS budgeting from email. Treating them as one number hides which channel is actually driving cost during a heavy campaign month.
Who should buy it
Ecommerce brands with real transactional data and enough volume to justify sophisticated segmentation — typically stores past the early stage, on Shopify, BigCommerce or similar. The store integration and predictive analytics are the product, and nothing at a lower price replicates them.
It fits poorly for businesses without purchase data, for very large databases with low engagement (where active-profile billing is punishing), and for anyone who wants simple broadcast email — that is available for a fraction of the price elsewhere. Check klaviyo.com/pricing for current rates against your exact profile count.
What the pricing page doesn't show
- Since February 2025 Klaviyo bills on active profiles rather than emailable contacts. A store with 100,000 profiles that only markets to 30,000 engaged subscribers now pays for all 100,000 — the single biggest cost driver on the platform.
- SMS is metered separately on top of the email plan. The Email + SMS bundle includes 1,250 credits; beyond that, message volume is billed by usage and varies by destination country.
- The free plan's email support expires after 60 days. After that, free accounts have no support channel at all, which makes the free tier a trial in practice rather than a permanent option.
- Costs scale continuously rather than in tiers, so there is no plan to sit on. Every profile added to the database moves the bill, including profiles created by one-off promotions or abandoned checkouts.
- List hygiene becomes a direct financial exercise under profile-based billing. Suppressed and inactive profiles that used to be free now carry cost, and periodic pruning is the main lever you have.