Klaviyo Pricing 2026: Plans, Free Tier, SMS and How to Pay Less

Klaviyo prices email on active profiles: every contact a brand can email, whether or not it opted in. The free plan covers 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month. Paid plans rise with list size, starting at $20 a month for up to 500 profiles, and text messages are a separate plan priced in dollars per message.

We compete with Klaviyo, so read this as an informed-but-interested guide. The pricing mechanics below are accurate and vendor-neutral; the recommendation at the end is ours. If you just want the short version: the fastest way to cut a Klaviyo bill is to stop paying for contacts who never open anything, and the structural way is to send fewer, better-decided messages to the people who opted in.

How Klaviyo pricing works

Klaviyo has three billing levers:

• Email plan (by active profiles). Your monthly price is set by how many contacts you can email, in tiers. As your list grows past each threshold, you move up a tier and the price steps up. Each tier also carries a monthly email send allowance.
• Mobile Messaging plan (in dollars). Text messaging is priced separately. On July 13, 2026 Klaviyo moved SMS, MMS, WhatsApp and RCS from credits to dollar rates per message, for new accounts and free plans that day and for existing paid plans at their next billing cycle after August 13, 2026. You buy a monthly dollar plan upfront, each SMS segment is charged at a rate that varies by channel, country and, in the US and Canada, toll-free or short code, and unused dollars do not roll over. We cover the details in Klaviyo SMS marketing.
• Free tier. Up to 250 active profiles, 500 email sends a month and $5 of mobile messages a month, with email support for the first 60 days, which is why Klaviyo is easy to start with and expensive to scale with.

The important detail is the unit of pricing: contacts you could email, not revenue those contacts produce. That single design choice explains almost every Klaviyo pricing complaint.

What actually drives your bill up

Three things, in order of how often they surprise brands:

1. Inactive profiles you are still paying for

List growth is treated as a cost, not just an asset. Every subscriber who has not opened an email in a year still counts toward your tier until it is suppressed, because Klaviyo counts any profile it can email, regardless of consent status. Brands routinely pay for tens of thousands of contacts that produce nothing.

2. Crossing a tier threshold

Because pricing steps up in bands, adding a few hundred contacts near a threshold can push you into the next tier and a noticeably higher bill, even if sending volume barely changed. Between 10,001 and 13,500 active profiles, Klaviyo's tiers are 500 profiles apart and each one costs $25 a month more.

3. SMS on top of email

SMS is a separate plan. A healthy text program is valuable, but it is a second bill running alongside the email plan, and it is easy to under-budget: Klaviyo bills SMS per segment, and a message over 160 characters (70 with an emoji) splits into more than one segment.

How to lower your Klaviyo cost

If you are staying on Klaviyo, these levers genuinely help:

• Prune and suppress inactive profiles. Regularly remove or suppress contacts with no engagement in 6–12 months so you stop paying for a tier you do not use. Klaviyo does not downgrade your plan automatically when the count drops: choose the lower tier once the count updates, and it applies from your next billing cycle.
• Send fewer, better-targeted campaigns. Large blasts to broad lists cost more, hurt deliverability, and rarely lift revenue. Tighter targeting lowers both send volume and spam complaints.
• Right-size your plan. Match your tier to the contacts you actually email, and review it every quarter rather than letting list growth drift you upward.
• Budget SMS separately. Track Mobile Messaging spend as its own line and check the segment count before each send, so it does not become a surprise.

These reduce the bill, but you are still paying for every profile Klaviyo can email, opted in or not. The structural fix is to send fewer, better-decided messages to the people who did opt in.

What is cheaper than Klaviyo

Two paths. You can move to another flow-based tool - Mailchimp, Omnisend, Brevo - and price it at your own list size; we cover that in Klaviyo vs Mailchimp and Klaviyo vs Omnisend. Or you can leave the flow model entirely.

That second path is what Relvino is. It prices one monthly plan by the size of your consented list, then runs autonomous 1:1 decisions - offer, timing, and channel per shopper in ~80ms - and wins by sending fewer, smarter messages, with 80% less spam. Brands that switch pay 90 to 95% of their old Klaviyo or Attentive bill. See Relvino pricing.

Cost drivers at a glance

• Priced on. Klaviyo: active profiles, meaning every profile it can email, with a monthly email send allowance per tier. Relvino: one monthly plan by the size of your consented list.
• Contacts who never opted in. Klaviyo: counted if they can be emailed. Relvino: outside the consented list the plan is sized on.
• Sending philosophy. Klaviyo: more sends, more segments. Relvino: fewer, smarter sends, with 80% less spam.
• SMS. Klaviyo: a separate Mobile Messaging plan, bought upfront in dollars and charged per message. Relvino: billed at usage on the same invoice, as part of one 1:1 decision per shopper.

The bottom line

Klaviyo pricing is not unfair, it is just built on a unit that rewards a bigger list: every profile you can email, opted in or not. If your bill keeps climbing while results plateau, prune your list and tighten your sends first. Then ask whether you should keep paying for people who never opted in. Orion Sleep saw 50% higher revenue than Klaviyo's flows. Compare the two models in Klaviyo vs Relvino, or side by side on the Klaviyo vs Relvino comparison page.

Frequently asked questions

How can we lower the cost of Klaviyo?

Start by pruning and suppressing inactive profiles, because you pay for contacts you could email whether or not they engage. Then send fewer, better-targeted campaigns to reduce send volume and protect deliverability, right-size your plan tier to the contacts you actually email, and budget mobile messaging spend as a separate line. Klaviyo does not downgrade your plan automatically, so choose the lower tier yourself once your profile count updates. These help, but the bill is still tied to every profile you can email.

Is Klaviyo or Mailchimp cheaper?

It depends on list size and plan, so price both at your own contact count on each vendor's own pricing page. For a Shopify brand, the right comparison is not just sticker price but revenue per dollar spent. We cover it in detail in Klaviyo vs Mailchimp for Shopify.

Is Klaviyo pricing worth the investment?

For an early-stage brand, yes - the Shopify integration and template library earn it. For a larger brand with a lean team and plateauing results, the value question flips, because you are paying more each year to maintain a system that treats a segment as one person. At that point brands weigh the cost against autonomous decisioning.

What is cheaper than Klaviyo?

Other flow-based tools like Mailchimp, Omnisend, and Brevo publish their own pricing, so compare them at your list size. Relvino prices one monthly plan by the size of your consented list and runs fewer, smarter 1:1 sends, with 80% less spam. Brands that switch pay 90 to 95% of their old Klaviyo or Attentive bill.

Does pruning my list hurt revenue?

No - it usually helps. Contacts who never engage do not produce revenue, but they do inflate your tier and drag down deliverability, which quietly hurts the sends that do matter. Suppressing them lowers cost and improves inbox placement at the same time.

How long does it take to switch off Klaviyo?

With Relvino, the technical migration takes about 30 minutes: connect DNS, install the Shopify app, and your data ingests automatically. Flows are turned off, not rebuilt. From there a 14-day pilot proves revenue side by side - pause Klaviyo rather than cancelling, and compare.

How much does Klaviyo SMS cost per message?

It depends on the channel, the recipient's country and, in the US and Canada, whether you send from a toll-free number or a short code. Klaviyo now prices mobile messages in dollars per message instead of credits (the change began on July 13, 2026), and each account's rates are listed in its billing settings. An SMS is billed per segment per recipient, so a send costs the rate times the recipients times the segments.

What does switching from Klaviyo cost?

Connect email and SMS, install the Shopify app, and share your brand assets and any CRM data. We read your brand voice from your website, and you set your guardrails. You pay what you were paying Klaviyo, or less (brands pay 90 to 95% of the old bill).

How does deliverability compare with Klaviyo?

99.5% deliverability with under 0.5% spam, because we send on our own infrastructure. That is higher than Klaviyo or Attentive at scale.