Moosend vs Brevo (2026): The Shelf Life of a Prepaid Email

If email were sold in a supermarket, the two shelf tags would look like this:

• Brevo, 5,000 emails, $32. $6.40 per 1,000.
• Moosend, 350,000 emails, $350. $1.00 per 1,000.

Both packs are prepaid, and both vendors say the credits never expire. Pack against pack, Moosend wins on unit price at every size: even Brevo's largest pack, a million emails for $1,600, costs $600 more than Moosend's million. On the size of the box, Brevo wins: Moosend's smallest pack holds 70 times as many emails as Brevo's.

The "Moosend vs Brevo" pages I read for this skip the shelf entirely. They compare the monthly plans and land on a version of Sequenzy's summary: "If you send frequently to your list, Moosend is cheaper." Brevo's own blog runs the same line from the other side: "If you email a big list occasionally, Brevo's per-send pricing is usually cheaper."

"Occasionally" is the word I'd push on. A shop that mails 3,000 people six times a year and a charity that mails 40,000 people three times a year are both occasional senders, and the cheapest option is different for each. What decides it is how long the emails you pay for will sit before you send them, and who's holding them while they wait. That's what this page prices.

Quick read: For a list under about 5,000 contacts that you mail a few times a year, Brevo's prepaid packs (or its free plan, at 300 emails a day) cost the least. From roughly 8,500 contacts up, at up to six campaigns a year, Brevo's cheapest email isn't prepaid at all: it's one month of the Starter plan per campaign, cancelled after the send. In between, it turns on your campaign count. Moosend's $350 pack only pays off once you'll send more than about 115,000 emails before you'd want to leave, and both vendors can close an account that sits untouched: Brevo after six months without a login, Moosend after a year.

I haven't opened a Brevo account for this page, so Brevo's prepaid pack prices come from four review sites that list the same numbers, not from Brevo's own screens.

Three ways to buy an email you'll send later

Between them, the two vendors sell an email you don't send today in three forms.

Brevo's prepaid packs. One credit is one email, and Brevo's pricing FAQ says "PAYG credits do not expire, so you can use them at your own pace." The pack prices sit behind a login, but emailvendorselection (dated September 14, 2026), emailtooltester, Omnisend (accurate "as of August 2026") and Email Software Insights list the same ladder: 5,000 emails for $32, 10,000 for $59, 20,000 for $95, 50,000 for $165, 100,000 for $275, 500,000 for $940 and 1,000,000 for $1,600.

Brevo's Starter plan, bought for one month. Brevo prices its plans by monthly email volume. Starter is $9 a month for 5,000 emails and $82 for 100,000. Emailtooltester's pricing review notes that monthly credits don't roll over: whatever you don't send that month is gone. A month of Starter is a pack with a 30-day shelf life.

Moosend's credit packs. The pricing page sells four, from 350,000 credits at $350 up to a million at $1,000: a flat dollar for every thousand emails, whatever the pack size. The $350 entry pack also appears on five archived copies of the page, from June 2024 to September 2026. Moosend's FAQ says "the email credits you purchase for your Moosend account never expire," and the pricing box labels them "Perfect For Seasonal Senders."

Put the unit prices side by side and the shelf life explains the gap:

Brevo charges a large premium for time: a 20,000-email pack costs about three times the 20,000-email month. Moosend charges for size instead: the price per email is flat from the first pack to the last, but the first one is $350.

Two more options set the floor. Brevo's free plan sends 300 emails a day; its FAQ says that starts "Once we approve your account for sending." A Brevo reply on X in September put the rest of the plan in one line: "you can send up to 300 emails per day, and store up to 100,000 contacts." Moosend skips the free plan and offers a 30-day trial instead, but its Pro plan can be bought one month at a time, priced by subscribers: 1,000 cost $16, 5,000 cost $48 and 10,000 cost $88.

The 30-day aisle: when a Brevo month beats a Brevo pack

Brevo's Starter plan has a catch that makes it look worse than it is for small lists and much better for large ones. The cheaper tiers cap contacts as well as emails: 5,000 emails come with 500 contacts, 10,000 with 1,500, 15,000 with 2,500. Starting at the 20,000-email tier ($32), the contact allowance jumps to 500,000. (I covered that cap from GetResponse's side in the GetResponse vs Brevo price comparison.)

For a single send, that means the right tier is set by your list size, not by your email count, until the list passes 2,500. Here's one campaign to the whole list, priced each way:

Two things in that table surprised me. For a single send, Brevo's packs never win at any of these sizes; a month of Starter matches or beats them. And above 3,000 contacts, the gap between Brevo's month and Moosend's month gets wide fast, because Moosend's plan bills every subscriber you store, and Brevo's 20,000-email tier and up bill the emails you send.

The pack's advantage is elsewhere. A month expires; a pack doesn't. If you send one campaign in March and the next in September, the month approach means paying twice, and the pack approach means buying once and drawing down. Once you count a year of sends, the pack wins for smaller lists and the month for larger ones. Comparing a year of packs with a Starter month for each send, the switch-over list size moves with how many campaigns you send:

The reason is the contact cap. Between 2,501 and 20,000 contacts, every Starter month is the $32 tier, so a month costs the same for 3,000 people as for 19,000. A pack charges for the emails actually sent, so it's the better buy for the smaller list in that band.

The one-month route has a condition: you have to cancel before the plan renews. Brevo's terms say subscriptions renew automatically "unless You close your account or notify Us of termination of Your account prior to the date of renewal," and that you "cannot downgrade your plan level before the end of your Subscription." Its pricing FAQ says that if you cancel, "Your data will be stored if you wish to use our services again." I couldn't confirm from public pages whether a cancelled account drops back to the free plan or sits without a plan until you buy again.

When Moosend's $350 box pays off

Brevo's packs get cheaper per email as they grow, but they never reach $1 per 1,000. Moosend's never cost less than $350. Combining Brevo packs to cover a given total, the cheapest mix stays under $350 up to 110,000 emails ($334 for a 100,000 pack plus a 10,000 pack) and passes it at 115,000 ($366). So the question for Moosend's box is simple: will you send more than about 115,000 emails before you'd want to stop using it?

Four hypothetical senders show what that means. None is a client; I picked the list sizes and schedules to cover the range.

The last column takes Brevo's cheaper option for that sender and adds it up year by year until it passes Moosend's one-time $350.

Reading the rows:

800 contacts, four sends a year. The $32 pack covers a year and a half. Moosend's box would outlast any reasonable plan for the list. Brevo's free plan also works here if you can live with its limit: 800 emails at 300 a day is three days per campaign, with Brevo's logo on each email.

3,000 contacts, six sends a year. Brevo's 20,000 pack each year costs $95. Moosend's box costs $350 once and lasts nineteen years at this pace. Moosend becomes the cheaper choice from year four, if you're still on it and it's still on the same terms.

12,000 contacts, four sends a year. Here the month beats the pack inside Brevo: $32 a campaign on Starter's 20,000 tier, $128 a year. Moosend's box lasts seven years, and Brevo's running total passes the box's $350 in year three.

40,000 contacts, three sends a year. Brevo's months cost $138 a year. Moosend's box runs out in just under three years, which works out to about $120 a year. Close, with one difference: Brevo's money goes out a month at a time, Moosend's goes out up front.

The pattern: Moosend's pack turns into the cheaper option somewhere between year three and year four for every list in this table above 1,000 contacts. That only helps if the account, the credits and the terms are still there in year four.

Shelf life, read from the terms

"Never expire" describes the credits. It doesn't describe the account they sit in, and both vendors' terms have something to say about accounts that go quiet.

Brevo (terms, version of October 1, 2025): "We may terminate your account if You have not logged in the Software or not performed one action or command in the Software for a period of six (6) months or more." Brevo says it will email a warning and give "a reasonable period to log in." If you don't, the account is deleted, and "no restoration of the account or associated data will be possible." On money already paid, the terms are just as short: "We will not provide refunds for any prepaid or unused fees."

Moosend (terms dated June 2025, still the version linked from its terms page today): "If you do not log into your account for more than 365 days, Moosend may classify the account as inactive." You then have 30 days to reactivate it before it's terminated. Credits "never expire unless otherwise indicated," and "fees paid are non-refundable." The same clause lets Moosend change its pricing plan whenever it decides to.

So a prepaid Brevo pack has a practical shelf life of six months between logins, and a Moosend pack a year. Neither is a problem if you log in to send a campaign more often than that. Both are a problem if the plan was to buy credits and forget them.

The terms also explain why I'd treat the Moosend box as a bet on the vendor. Moosend has changed a "forever" promise before. In January 2022 it ended its Free Forever plan; a post announcing the change said existing accounts would "remain open for 30 days from that day." On Hacker News, one commenter called it a warning that "customers are being warned right now that Moosend doesn't honor its contracts," and another set a year of continued service against what Moosend gave: "only 30-days notice." Moosend is now part of Constant Contact, which bought it in 2025, and the $350 pack is on the pricing page as it was before the sale. I can't tell whether the new owner will keep it there. But a box that takes 19 years to empty is a 19-year bet on a promise its owner can amend.

A rule for any prepaid email: price the purchase against the time you'd bet on the seller's terms, not against the pack's "never." If that horizon is shorter than the year in which the pack pays off, the pack isn't the cheap option.

What a prepaid email comes with

The two credit types don't buy the same account.

Moosend credits come with the same box the pricing page draws around them: "Unlimited Subscribers" (Moosend's phrase), marketing automation, subscription forms, landing pages, and live chat and email support. A few rules from Moosend's billing FAQ: a credit is charged for every recipient "even if the email bounces back," automation emails draw credits too when credits are how you pay (a monthly plan doesn't charge them), and a campaign won't leave until the balance covers every recipient. The billing screen in a Moosend trial account, which I read on October 8 without sending anything, puts the unit in one sentence: "Each email recipient costs one Credit."

Brevo's packs come with Starter-level features, according to the review sites, plus removal of Brevo's logo. Emailvendorselection: "When you buy email credit, it comes with everything in the Starter plan, and you can remove Brevo branding." Emailtooltester adds that landing pages aren't included. Brevo's FAQ says pay-as-you-go accounts get its features "however they do not include phone support." Starter also limits automations to 2,000 contacts, according to Brevo's plan comparison.

The logo is worth a line of its own, because it's one of the costs of Brevo's free plan. One X user in September: "The most frustrating part was brevo logo in the free plan." On a monthly Starter plan, removing it is a $12 add-on, according to Brevo's pricing data. On a pack, the review sites say it's included. For the one-off sends priced above, add $12 to each Brevo month if the logo has to go.

If you send every week instead

Everything above is about emails that wait. For a list you mail every week, nothing waits, and the comparison is the monthly plans. Sending four campaigns a month, billed monthly:

Brevo Starter is cheaper from 5,000 contacts up, but Starter caps automations at 2,000 contacts; Standard removes that cap. Moosend's comparison table lists automation workflows on Pro with no cap noted, so Moosend Pro against Brevo Standard is the fairer pairing if your welcome series matters. On that pairing Moosend costs less up to 10,000 contacts ($88 against $89 is close to a tie) and Brevo from 25,000. The table counts campaigns only. On Brevo every automated email also uses up monthly volume, which the GetResponse vs Brevo price comparison works through. Moosend's table lists "Unlimited Email Campaigns / Sends" on Pro while you stay inside your subscriber tier; what happens one subscriber past it is in the Moosend pricing breakdown.

Unknowns on both shelves

• Brevo's pack prices on Brevo's own page. The packs are sold inside the account. The figures above come from four review sites that agree with each other; Brevo's help pages returned a block to a plain request, so I didn't use them.
• Whether Brevo packs combine. The crossover math assumes you can hold two packs at once (100,000 plus 10,000). I believe you can, but no public Brevo page I could read says so.
• What a cancelled Brevo month leaves behind. Brevo says your data is stored. Emailvendorselection says a cancelled monthly plan doesn't drop to the free plan. I couldn't settle whether the account keeps its free 300 a day between paid months.
• Whether packs lift Brevo's 300-a-day limit on a free account. Moosend's blog post on Brevo pricing says the pay-as-you-go option has "no daily sending limit"; Brevo's public pages don't say.
• Transactional email on Moosend Pro. Moosend's FAQ says it supports transactional emails "through SMTP and API," while its comparison table marks transactional emails as not included on Pro and an add-on on Moosend+. I'd ask Moosend before building receipts on it.

Match the purchase to the wait

The buyer this page is about is easy to recognise. A Reddit user in r/Emailmarketing with a list of about 18,000 described the pattern in early 2025: "I only do mass email one or twice per year." They had just signed up with Brevo. On my numbers, that list lands on the third line below, one Starter month per campaign.

• Under about 5,000 contacts, two or more sends a year: Brevo's packs. Start on the free plan; buy the smallest pack that covers a year when the logo or the 300-a-day pace gets in the way.
• 5,000 to 8,500 contacts: count your campaigns. Two a year favors a Starter month per send from 5,100 contacts; six a year keeps the pack ahead until 8,400.
• Above about 8,500 contacts, sends months apart: Brevo's Starter, one month per campaign, cancelled after. At four or six campaigns a year it beat every pack combination I priced at those sizes.
• Over about 115,000 emails within the time you'd trust a vendor: Moosend's $350 credit box. Log in at least once a year, keep your list exported, and don't buy a bigger box than you'll empty in that time.
• Weekly sending: compare the monthly plans in the table above, with Brevo Standard as the like-for-like for automation.

Brevo's plan prices are on its pricing page; the packs appear after you sign in.

FAQ

Is Moosend cheaper than Brevo? Per prepaid email, yes: $1 per 1,000 against $1.60 to $6.40 on Brevo's packs. Per purchase, no: Moosend's smallest pack is $350, Brevo's is $32. For a single campaign, a month of Brevo Starter matched or beat both at every list size I priced from 400 to 90,000 contacts, except 2,000, where Moosend's month is $1 cheaper.

Do Brevo credits expire? Prepaid pack credits don't, according to Brevo's FAQ. Emails included in a monthly plan do, at the end of each billing month. Separately, Brevo's terms let it delete an account after six months without a login or action.

How long do Moosend credits last? They don't expire, according to its pricing FAQ and terms ("unless otherwise indicated"). The account can be marked inactive after 365 days without a login, with 30 days to reactivate.

Can I use Moosend for free, the way Brevo allows? No. Moosend offers a 30-day trial. Moosend's trial is limited to 1,000 subscribers and one published workflow. Brevo's free plan has no end date and sends 300 emails a day; the free email plan roundup sets it against the other free tiers.

Which is better for a big list I rarely email? A Hacker News commenter with a list of over 500,000 contacts described staying on Brevo because their company seldom emails that list. On the plan side that holds: Brevo's free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts and its Starter tiers from 20,000 emails allow 500,000, so stored contacts don't drive the bill the way they do on Moosend's Pro plan. On the prepaid side it depends on totals: past about 115,000 emails within your horizon, Moosend's box costs less.

Which is cheaper if I email my list every week? On monthly plans, Brevo Starter from 5,000 contacts up. If your welcome series matters, compare Moosend Pro with Brevo Standard, since Starter caps automations at 2,000 contacts: on that pairing Moosend costs less up to 10,000 contacts and Brevo from 25,000.