Klaviyo pricing starts at $20 a month and passes $1,900 a month once a list reaches 150,000 profiles, according to the tiers on Klaviyo's pricing page. That range is why "is Klaviyo worth it?" gets a different answer from a 2,000-profile Shopify store than from a brand mailing six figures of subscribers every week.
Most pricing write-ups stop at the tier table. The table is the easy part. The expensive surprises come from how Klaviyo counts profiles, where the price per profile jumps, and what SMS and add-ons stack on top.
This guide covers what you'll pay on each plan in 2026 and the price at every common list size, including the price jump just above 10,000 profiles that catches growing brands. We'll walk through the billing rules behind your invoice and the SMS and add-on costs on top, then show how to cut the bill without cutting revenue. Last, we answer the question that matters: what share of email revenue Klaviyo should cost.
TL;DR
- Klaviyo's Email plan starts at $20 a month for 500 active profiles and reaches $1,955 at 150,000.
- You're billed on every emailable profile, so dead subscribers cost money every single month.
- Moving from 10,000 to 12,500 profiles raises the Email plan from $150 to $275 a month.
- In our model, Klaviyo costs about 1.6% to 3% of email revenue for a typical DTC brand.
How much does Klaviyo cost per month?
Klaviyo is free up to 250 active profiles. The Email plan starts at $20 a month for 500 profiles, runs $150 at 10,000 and $720 at 50,000, and reaches $1,955 at 150,000. Above 150,000 profiles pricing is custom. SMS and add-ons are billed on top.
What counts as an active profile in Klaviyo?
Any profile that can be emailed through Klaviyo counts, regardless of consent status. Suppressed profiles stop counting once suppression is processed, and phone-only profiles don't count toward the email plan. Billing counts can take up to 72 hours to refresh after a cleanup.
Is Klaviyo worth it for a DTC brand?
For most Shopify brands earning steady email revenue, yes. In our model the Email plan costs roughly 1.6% to 3% of the revenue email drives. It stops being worth it when the list is full of unengaged profiles you pay for but never earn from.
How much does Klaviyo cost in 2026?
Klaviyo sells four self-serve and sales-led tiers, listed on its pricing page. Free covers up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month, plus $5 of mobile messaging credit. Email starts at $20 a month for 500 profiles and 5,000 emails.
The newer Marketing plan starts at $25 a month at the same 500 profiles. It bundles features that cost extra on Email: Customer Hub and social marketing at the entry tier, plus Reviews without the 50-orders-a-month cap. It also scales faster, at $40 for 1,000 profiles, $195 at 10,000 and $885 at 50,000. Custom pricing kicks in above 150,000 active profiles and goes through sales.
Paid plans include about 10 email sends per active profile each month, which is why 500 profiles comes with 5,000 emails. A brand sending three campaigns a week plus flows rarely gets near that ceiling. SMS is no longer a separate plan. It's an add-on billed by the message, which we'll price below.
Klaviyo has also renamed parts of the lineup. In September 2026 the Marketing Analytics package became Personalization, according to Klaviyo's product updates log, so older pricing guides that mention Marketing Analytics are describing the same add-on.
Klaviyo pricing by list size
The Email plan price rises with active profiles. Here are the tiers most DTC brands land on, as shown in Klaviyo's calculator in November 2026:
Small lists: 500 to 5,000 profiles
500 profiles costs $20 a month, 1,000 costs $30 and 2,500 costs $60. At 5,000 profiles you'll pay $100. A new Shopify brand can run welcome, abandoned cart and post-purchase flows for less than a single day of Meta spend.
Growing lists: 10,000 to 50,000 profiles
10,000 profiles costs $150 a month. From there the steps get steep: every extra 500 profiles adds $25 a month up to 13,500, so 12,500 is $275 and 13,000 is $300. 15,000 is $350 and 25,000 is $400. At 50,000 profiles the Email plan costs $720.
Large lists: 100,000 profiles and up
100,000 profiles costs about $1,380 and 150,000 about $1,955. Past that you're on a custom quote, and the sales team will want to talk about annual terms. Check the live calculator before you budget, because Klaviyo adjusts these numbers without much notice.
The price jump above 10,000 profiles
Price per 1,000 profiles is the number to watch, and it doesn't fall in a straight line. It drops from $40 at 500 profiles to $15 at 10,000, then climbs back to $22 at 12,500 and $23 at 15,000, because each 500-profile step between 10,000 and 13,500 adds $25. It only falls below the 10,000-profile rate again at 50,000.
So a brand that grows from 10,000 to 12,500 profiles pays 83% more for 25% more list. That's the moment we see founders start shopping for alternatives, usually right after a giveaway or a BFCM popup push filled the list with low-intent signups.
If you're sitting just under 10,000 profiles, treat the line as a budget threshold. Every profile you add above it should come from a source that buys, and our guide to Klaviyo segmentation strategies shows how to keep campaign audiences tight while the list grows.
"Going from 10,000 to 12,500 active profiles raises Klaviyo's Email plan from $150 to $275 a month: 83% more cost for 25% more list." — Top Growth Marketing analysis of Klaviyo pricing, 2026
How Klaviyo's active-profile billing works
Klaviyo bills on active profiles, and its billing help article (updated October 20, 2026) defines one as any profile that can be emailed, regardless of consent status. That last phrase matters. A shopper who checked out without subscribing still counts if Klaviyo can email them.
Four rules decide what lands on your invoice:
Going over your tier doesn't block sending. Klaviyo notifies you and moves you to the next tier at your next billing cycle. Plans don't drop automatically when your count falls. Auto-downgrade is a setting you turn on under Billing, then Preferences, and it's only available with flexible sending. Suppressed profiles stop counting once suppression is processed, though the billing count can take up to 72 hours to refresh after a big cleanup. A phone number alone doesn't make a profile count toward the email plan.
Brands that moved from Mailchimp or an older Klaviyo contract feel this most. Since Klaviyo shifted existing customers to active-profile billing in 2025, the bill follows the size of the database, whether you mail those people or not.
"Any profile, regardless of consent status, that can be emailed through Klaviyo is considered an active profile." — Klaviyo Help Center, How Klaviyo bills customers for emails, 2026
What Klaviyo SMS costs on top
SMS on Klaviyo is billed by message, and the rate depends on country and channel, and on whether you send from a toll-free number or a short code. When we checked Klaviyo's pricing calculator in November 2026, US toll-free SMS was listed at $0.011 per message at low volume, falling to $0.008 per message at 10,000 messages a month, plus carrier fees where they apply.
MMS costs more: the calculator listed US toll-free MMS at $0.04 per message, close to four times a text. International rates vary by country, and long messages split into extra segments after 160 characters, so a chatty promo can double its own cost.
For a brand texting 8,000 subscribers four times a month, that's about 32,000 messages, or roughly $260 a month at $0.008 per text before carrier fees. Our SMS marketing guide for ecommerce covers when that spend earns its place next to email.
Klaviyo add-ons that raise the bill
The base plan covers email. Most of the features DTC brands ask about later are separate line items with their own pricing tiers:
Reviews starts at $25 a month for 250 orders on the Email plan. Personalization, the renamed Marketing Analytics package, starts around $100 a month and adds predictive analytics and RFM models. Customer Hub starts at $20 a month on Email, and the Advanced Klaviyo Data Platform starts around $500 a month at 100,000 profiles.
Add-ons are where a $400 bill becomes $700. Before you switch one on, write down the decision it will change. If Personalization won't change who gets which campaign next month, you're paying for a dashboard. Our breakdown of whether Klaviyo is good for ecommerce goes deeper on which features earn their cost at each stage.
How to lower your Klaviyo bill without losing revenue
Suppressing unengaged profiles is the cleanest saving in Klaviyo, because those profiles cost money and earn almost nothing. Build a segment of profiles with no click, site visit or order in 180 days, send them a short sunset series, then suppress anyone who stays silent.
Here's the math on a 13,000-profile list. That count bills at $300 a month on the Email plan. Suppress 3,500 dead profiles and the list drops to 9,500, which fits the 10,000 tier at $150. That's $150 a month, or $1,800 a year, saved with no change to what your engaged buyers receive. Turn on auto-downgrade first, or the saving won't show up on your invoice.
In our experience the brands that clean their lists see it twice: a smaller bill and better inbox placement. On one premium fashion account we manage, spam complaints fell about 74% over the engagement, and a smaller, engaged list is the habit behind numbers like that.
Clean signups at the source too. Double opt-in on giveaways and bot protection on popups stop low-intent profiles from pushing you over a tier line. Our email deliverability best practices cover the sunset flow and engagement tiers in detail.
Is Klaviyo worth the price for a DTC brand?
Judge Klaviyo against the revenue it drives. In the accounts in our 2026 DTC benchmark, Klaviyo email drove roughly 9 to 15% of tracked revenue. Take the midpoint, 12%, and the Email plan looks cheap at most sizes.
A $50,000-a-month store with 10,000 profiles would earn about $6,000 a month from email and pay $150, around 2.5%. A $200,000-a-month brand with 50,000 profiles earns about $24,000 from email and pays $720, around 3%. At $1 million a month and 150,000 profiles, $1,955 is about 1.6% of a $120,000 email channel.
Those ratios break down in two situations. The first is a list bloated with profiles that never open, which raises the bill while email revenue stays flat. The second is a brand that runs a single weekly newsletter and no flows, where a cheaper tool like those in our Klaviyo alternatives roundup will do the job.
Run your own numbers with our email marketing ROI calculator. If Klaviyo costs more than 5% of what email earns, fix the list before you blame the platform.
"In the accounts we sampled, Klaviyo email drove roughly 9 to 15% of tracked revenue." — Top Growth Marketing, DTC Benchmarks 2026
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Suppress profiles with no click, visit or order in 180 days. | Pay every month to store subscribers who stopped reading last year. |
| Turn on auto-downgrade before a big list cleanup. | Assume your plan drops on its own when the profile count falls. |
| Check the price per 1,000 profiles before a giveaway push. | Run a low-intent sweepstakes that tips you past 10,000 profiles. |
| Tie each add-on to a decision it will change. | Switch on Personalization because the dashboard looks useful. |
| Keep SMS copy under 160 characters for US sends. | Send long MMS promos internationally without checking the per-message rate. |
The TGM Take
The usual advice on Klaviyo pricing is to switch to something cheaper once the bill passes a few hundred dollars. We think that's the wrong lever for almost every DTC brand doing real email revenue.
Migrating saves a few hundred dollars a month and costs you rebuilt flows and a sending reputation you have to warm up from scratch. The real cost driver is paying to store profiles that will never buy again, and that problem moves with you to the next platform.
Our position: don't pick or leave an ESP on price until the list is clean. Run the sunset flow, suppress the dead weight, turn on auto-downgrade, then look at the invoice. If Klaviyo still costs more than about 5% of what email earns, the problem is the program, and a cheaper tool won't fix it.
— Jack Paxton, Founder, Top Growth Marketing
✅ Klaviyo is worth the price if…
You sell on Shopify, email drives a meaningful share of revenue and you run flows beyond a welcome email. At 1.6% to 3% of email revenue in our model, the Email plan pays for itself once segmentation and flows are doing the work.
❌ Hold off on Klaviyo if…
You send one newsletter a week with no flows, or most of your list hasn't clicked in six months. Clean the list or start on a simpler tool, then move to Klaviyo when automation is driving orders.
What to do before your next Klaviyo invoice
Klaviyo pricing comes down to three numbers. Know your active-profile count and the tier line above it, especially the 10,000-profile mark. Price SMS and add-ons as separate decisions. Then compare the total to the revenue email drives, where 1.6% to 3% is a healthy range in our model.
If your bill has outgrown your email revenue, book a growth strategy call. Our Klaviyo email and SMS team will audit your list, sunset flow and add-ons, and our ecommerce email marketing playbook covers the rest of the program. Comparing partners? See our list of the best Klaviyo agencies for ecommerce.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Klaviyo free?
Yes, up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month, with $5 of mobile messaging credit. It's enough to test flows on a brand-new store. Most brands outgrow it within a few weeks of running popups.
Why is Klaviyo so expensive?
Klaviyo bills on every emailable profile, so a list full of unengaged subscribers raises the bill without raising revenue. The price per 1,000 profiles also jumps between 10,000 and 15,000 profiles. Suppressing dead profiles usually brings the cost back in line.
How much does Klaviyo cost for 10,000 contacts?
The Email plan costs about $150 a month at 10,000 active profiles. SMS and add-ons such as Reviews or Personalization are extra. At 12,500 profiles the price rises to about $275.
Does Klaviyo charge for unsubscribed profiles?
No. Profiles that can't be emailed, including unsubscribed and suppressed ones, don't count as active profiles. Profiles that never subscribed but can still be emailed, such as past purchasers, do count.
Is Klaviyo cheaper than Mailchimp?
At small list sizes the two are close, and Mailchimp's lower tiers can come in cheaper. Klaviyo usually wins on value for Shopify brands because its ecommerce flows and segmentation drive more revenue per subscriber. Compare the revenue each tool will earn alongside the invoice.
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