Is Brevo Free? Yes: 100,000 Contacts, 300 Emails a Day

Yes. Brevo has a free plan with no time limit, and it is unusual: it stores up to 100,000 contacts, far more than any other free plan we have measured, but sends only 300 emails a day. People ask is brevo free about 50 times a month in the United States. The useful answer is what that combination means in practice.

The short answer

Brevo Free costs nothing, needs no card and has no time limit ^[6]. It stores up to 100,000 contacts and sends 300 emails a day. It includes email campaigns, transactional email, the drag-and-drop editor, templates, automation for up to 2,000 contacts, basic sales features and the Aura AI assistant ^[5]. One user. Every email carries Brevo's branding.

The 300-a-day limit is what you plan around.

## What the free plan includes

From the vendor's plan description ^[5]:

• One marketing seat.
• Email campaigns, with SMS campaigns as a paid add-on.
• Transactional emails and SMS.
• Drag-and-drop editor, custom templates and reusable sections.
• Basic reporting.
• Multi-channel automation for up to 2,000 contacts.
• Free sales features, with up to 50 open deals.
• Aura, the AI assistant.
• Outbound webhooks.

That is enough to run a small newsletter, a welcome sequence and transactional email for a small app.

The 300-a-day limit

"The Free plan includes 300 email sends per day." ^[6] Unused sends do not roll over.

For a list above 300, every campaign becomes a multi-day job: "if you send a campaign to more than 300 recipients, only 300 contacts will receive it on the scheduled day" ^[6], and the rest must be resent manually on following days.

Two more rules follow from the limit. You cannot schedule tomorrow's campaign once today's limit is used; you wait for the reset. And transactional emails share the same allowance, with up to 1,000 extra held in a retry queue and anything beyond it not delivered.

A list of 900 takes three days per campaign. A list of 3,000 takes ten.

## The 100,000-contact allowance

"The Free plan allows you to store up to 100,000 contacts in your account." ^[6]

That is more generous than anything else we have measured: MailerLite Free covers 250 subscribers and Mailchimp Free 250 contacts. Brevo Free can hold a large list; it simply cannot email it quickly.

It also creates the most common surprise in Brevo pricing. The cheapest paid tiers store far fewer contacts: 500 at 5,000 emails, 1,500 at 10,000, 2,500 at 15,000 ^[5]. A free account with 3,000 contacts cannot move to the $9 Starter tier without deleting contacts; it needs the 20,000-email tier at $32.

Branding and limits on reports

"Emails sent from the Free plan always include the Sent with Brevo sticker." ^[6] Removing it requires Starter with a $12 monthly add-on, or Standard, where it is included ^[3].

Reporting is basic on Free: opens and clicks. Click heatmaps, geography and device reports start on Standard ^[6].

Automation limits

Free automation accepts up to 2,000 unique contacts. "Once this limit is reached, no additional contacts can enter." ^[6] Workflows already running continue, and contacts inside them keep moving, but new contacts are not added. Brevo emails you at 80% and at 100% of the limit.

Standard removes the limit, with automation for unlimited contacts ^[5].

Keep logging in

This is the rule most likely to cost a free user everything. The cancellation page tells free users they must "log into Brevo every four months to prevent the automatic deletion of your Free account" ^[10]. The terms describe six months of inactivity before an account may be terminated and deleted, with notice by email ^[14].

Either way, a free account used once a year for an annual event is at risk. Set a reminder to log in every three months.

Account review applies to free accounts too

Free accounts are subject to the same sending checks. Early campaigns to new contacts are tested on a random subset, and poor results suspend the account ^[13]. The published triggers include hard bounces above 2%, unsubscribes above 1% and complaints above 0.2%. A second suspension is final.

On a free plan, where a large imported list is easy to store, this is the risk to manage. Verify the list before the first campaign.

When free is enough

Brevo Free suits:

• A small newsletter under about 300 readers, sent weekly.
• A large list emailed only occasionally, if a multi-day send is acceptable.
• Transactional email for a small app with low daily volume.
• A team of one exploring the platform before buying.

It does not suit a list that must be reached on the same day, a team of more than one, or anyone who needs automation for more than 2,000 contacts.

What upgrading costs

The first paid step depends on contacts, not sending ^{[3] [5]}:

Contacts	Tier needed	Starter	Standard
up to 500	5,000 emails	$9	$18
up to 1,500	10,000 emails	$17	$35
up to 2,500	15,000 emails	$25	$49
more	20,000 emails	$32	$69

Upgrading lifts the daily limit at once, "but only applies to emails sent after the upgrade" ^[6].

If you also want the logo removed, compare Starter plus $12 with Standard, which includes it.

Going back to free

Cancelling a paid plan moves the account to Free at the end of the billing period ^[10]. Prepaid credits are lost if you downgrade with credits remaining ^[9]. Once back on Free, the four-month login rule applies again.

Compared with other free plans

	Brevo	MailerLite	Mailchimp
Contacts	100,000	250 subscribers	250 contacts
Sending	300 a day	2,500 a month	500 a month
Users	1	2	1

Brevo stores the most and allows the most sending over a month, about 9,000 emails if you send every day, but spreads it at 300 a day. MailerLite sends 2,500 a month with no daily cap. Mailchimp is the smallest.

A worked example: a community group's year on Free

A community group keeps 1,200 members in Brevo and sends a monthly newsletter, an event invitation four times a year and occasional reminders.

A normal month. The newsletter to 1,200 people takes four days at 300 a day ^[6]. The first 300 receive it on Monday, the last 300 on Thursday. For a monthly newsletter, that is acceptable.

An event month. The invitation and two reminders add 3,600 emails to the newsletter's 1,200: 4,800 sends at 300 a day is sixteen days of sending. Reminders arrive late for part of the list.

The upgrade question. By contacts, 1,200 members need the 10,000-email tier: $17 a month on Starter ^[3]. That removes the daily limit and sends each campaign to everyone on the same day. With logo removal, $29. Standard, with automation for all members and no logo, is $35.

The decision. The group stays on Free for normal months and considers Starter only if same-day delivery of event reminders matters. It sets a reminder to log in every three months, because the account is otherwise used only around events.

What changes on the first paid tier

The day you upgrade, four things change ^{[5] [6]}:

• The daily limit disappears; you have a monthly allowance instead, and unused emails expire at the end of the month ^[7].
• Your contact storage falls to the cap of the tier you chose, unless you chose 20,000 emails or more.
• The Brevo branding stays on Starter unless you pay $12 a month to remove it; it goes on Standard.
• Automation stays limited on Starter and opens fully on Standard.

The second point is the one that catches people. Choose the tier whose contact cap holds your list before you click upgrade, or you will not be able to complete the purchase without deleting contacts first ^[7].

Free plan, sales features and the CRM

Brevo Free includes basic sales features: a CRM with deals and a limit of 50 open deals ^[6]. At the limit you keep existing deals but cannot create new ones until you close some or upgrade.

For a freelancer or a very small business, that is a usable lightweight pipeline alongside the newsletter, at no cost. It is a feature no other free email plan we have measured offers.

The paid Sales packages, Essentials and Advanced, are priced per seat in the catalogue, at $31 and $65 a month ^[3], and are separate from the marketing plans.

Transactional email on the free plan

Brevo grew up as a transactional email service, and the free plan still includes it. Password resets, receipts and notifications can be sent through the API or SMTP from day one.

They share the daily allowance. Once the 300 sends are used, "up to 1,000 additional emails are held in a retry queue. Emails beyond this queue are not delivered." ^[6] For a small app with modest traffic that is enough; for anything with daily spikes, it is not.

The safe pattern is to keep marketing campaigns off the free account if it also carries transactional email, so that a newsletter does not use up the allowance that password resets need. Or move to Starter, which removes the daily limit for both.

Free plan for developers and side projects

For a developer, Brevo Free is a useful testing ground: an API, SMTP relay, outbound webhooks and transactional templates at no cost ^[5]. A side project with a few hundred users can run indefinitely on it.

Three cautions apply. Log in to the dashboard regularly, because API traffic alone may not count as activity under the inactivity rules; the terms speak of logging in or performing an action in the software ^[14]. Keep bounce rates low on test sends, because suspensions apply to free accounts too ^[13]. And use a sending domain you control, so that moving to another provider later does not mean changing every template.

Free plan checklist

Before relying on Brevo Free, check five things:

1. Your list divided by 300 is a delivery time you can accept for every campaign ^[6].
2. Fewer than 2,000 contacts need to enter automations ^[6].
3. One login is enough for everyone who works on the account.
4. The Sent with Brevo branding is acceptable on every email.
5. Someone will log in at least every three months, to stay inside the four-month rule ^[10].

If any of these fails, price the first paid tier by your contact count before deciding the free plan is the cheaper option. For a list of 1,500, that is $17 a month on Starter ^[3].

## The verdict

Brevo is free, permanently, for up to 100,000 contacts and 300 emails a day. It is the best free plan we have measured for holding a large list and the most awkward for emailing one quickly. Use it to start, keep your list clean, log in every few months, and when you upgrade, choose the tier by your contact count, not by your sending.