Is Mailchimp free? What it actually costs in 2026
Yes, there is a free tier — with limits.
Free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails/month (with Mailchimp branding). Paid plans scale with contact count: Essentials from about $13/month and Standard from about $20/month at 500 contacts, and Premium from about $350/month at 10,000 contacts, rising into four figures for large lists. SMS, transactional email, and some features are priced as add-ons.
What you are locked into
Subscriber lists, campaign content, templates, automations, and reporting history live inside Mailchimp's hosted platform. Contacts and campaigns can be exported as CSV/HTML, but automations, journey logic, analytics history, and template designs do not transfer cleanly to another tool, and sending is coupled to Mailchimp's own delivery infrastructure and pricing.
If you would rather not pay: listmonk
listmonk
Fast, self-hosted newsletter and mailing-list manager in a single binary.
Free / self-host (you pay only your server and SMTP-sending costs)
See all 4 Mailchimp alternatives comparedCompare the free options head-to-head
Pricing is verified against the vendor's published figures and dated above. Vendors change prices — confirm current numbers with Intuit before you commit. More email marketing & newsletters decisions on Macrostack.