The short answer: MailerLite costs $0 to start (up to 250 subscribers), $12/month on Comfort and $25/month on Power at the smallest paid tier, with both paid plans rising as your list grows. A 5,000-subscriber list costs $49/month on Comfort or $69/month on Power. Annual billing saves 10%, nonprofits save 30%, and every paid plan includes a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Affiliate disclosure. We don’t have affiliate partnerships with any vendor yet, so every link below is a plain link to the vendor’s own site — nobody pays us for clicks or signups, and that won’t change what we recommend. If we add affiliate programs later, this article will say so.
The mechanism: two billing levers, not one
MailerLite’s bill is set by two levers, and understanding both keeps you from picking the wrong plan:
- Active subscriber count sets your tier. You pay for a band (up to 500, up to 1,000, up to 2,500…), and the price steps up as your list grows. Crucially, only active subscribers count — unsubscribed and bounced contacts don’t inflate your bill. If your list has 5,000 names but 1,000 are dead, you pay for 4,000, not 5,000.
- Monthly send volume is capped on Comfort and unlimited on Power. Comfort allows monthly sends equal to 10× your subscriber tier (so the 500-subscriber tier includes 5,000 sends/month). If you send daily campaigns to a big list, you’ll hit that ceiling — and that’s the actual reason to upgrade to Power, not features.
That’s the whole pricing model. No per-email add-ons, no seat licenses on top, no separate SMS credits. Pick your tier by list size, pick your plan by send frequency.
The four plans at a glance
| Plan | Price | Subscribers | Monthly emails | Seats | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Up to 250 | 2,500 | 2 | Community |
| Comfort | $12/mo ($10.80 annual) | From 500 tier | 10× your tier | 3 | 24/7 email |
| Power | $25/mo ($22.50 annual) | From 500 tier | Unlimited | Unlimited | 24/7 live chat + email |
| Enterprise | Custom | 200,000+ | Unlimited | Unlimited | Dedicated manager + IP |
- Free includes the essentials: campaigns, automation (3 workflows), 1 website and 1 landing page, 3 signup forms, and 100+ integrations. You can’t remove MailerLite branding or use the template library.
- Comfort unlocks the full toolkit: unlimited templates, 50 automations, 10 websites and landing pages, dynamic emails, the AI writing assistant, smart sending, preference center, and no MailerLite logo.
- Power is Comfort without the caps: unlimited monthly emails, unlimited seats, unlimited automations and landing pages, multiple automation triggers, live chat support, and partner discounts (including 15% off Google Workspace).
- Enterprise adds a dedicated success manager, custom sending volume, dedicated IP, deliverability support, onboarding training, and account audits.
Full pricing by list size (researched 2026-10-13)
Entry prices are marketing; the tier table is the real cost. Monthly billing, USD, from MailerLite’s official pricing page:
| Subscribers (up to) | Comfort (monthly) | Power (monthly) |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $12 | $25 |
| 1,000 | $19 | $39 |
| 2,500 | $33 | $49 |
| 5,000 | $49 | $69 |
| 8,000 | $69 | $99 |
| 10,000 | $89 | $129 |
| 15,000 | $129 | $179 |
| 20,000 | $159 | $219 |
| 25,000 | $179 | $239 |
| 30,000 | $229 | $279 |
| 50,000 | $319 | $389 |
Annual billing takes 10% off every number above. Taxes may apply depending on your country.
Two things worth noticing:
- The price ladder is steepest early. Jumping from 500 to 1,000 subscribers raises Comfort from $12 to $19 — a 58% increase for doubling the list. The ladder flattens as you grow (25,000 → 30,000 is only a 28% jump), which is the per-contact model working in your favor at scale.
- The Comfort-to-Power gap widens with size. At 500 subscribers the gap is $13/month; at 50,000 it’s $70/month. Don’t default to Power for features — at big list sizes it’s a real premium you’re paying specifically for unlimited sending.
Comfort or Power: a worked example
Scenario: a newsletter, 2,500 subscribers, 8 emails per month (20,000 sends).
- Comfort at the 2,500 tier: $33/month, send cap 25,000 — your 20,000 sends fit. $33/month.
- Power at the 2,500 tier: $49/month, unlimited sends. $49/month.
- Verdict: Comfort, saving $192/year for identical sending.
Same list, 16 emails per month (40,000 sends).
- Comfort: you exceed the 25,000 cap — you’re now shopping Power. $49/month.
- Verdict: Power is the fix for send frequency, not list size.
The rule of thumb: divide your monthly sends by your subscriber count. Under 10×, Comfort is enough. Over 10×, you’re paying for Power. Most small businesses sending weekly newsletters sit well under the cap — Comfort is the right plan for them.
Ways to pay less
- Annual billing saves 10%. Comfort at 500 subscribers drops from $12 to $10.80/month ($129.60/year). Only commit annually after you’ve used the platform for a month or two — migrating email lists and automations is painful if you picked wrong.
- Nonprofits get 30% off on eligible organizations — the best email-marketing nonprofit discount we’ve found. (For context on how MailerLite stacks up for the sector, nonprofits were priced in our email marketing cost guide.)
- 14-day free trial of paid features with no credit card. The trial applies premium features to your account — a good way to test whether the template library and AI assistant are worth paying for.
- Keep your list clean. Because only active subscribers count, deleting or re-engaging dead contacts directly lowers your bill. A 6,000-name list with 20% dead weight bills at the 5,000 tier after cleanup — a $20/month ($240/year) difference on Comfort.
What changed in 2026 (read this before trusting old reviews)
In mid-2026, MailerLite overhauled its pricing:
- Plan names changed. “Growing Business” became Comfort, “Advanced” became Power. Reviews quoting the old names are pre-overhaul.
- The free plan shrank. It went from 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails/month down to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails/month. (Free seats went from 1 to 2.) Older content calling MailerLite’s free plan “up to 1,000 subscribers” describes the pre-2025 plan — it’s three generations out of date.
- Starting prices held at $12 and $25 despite the rename, though the tier ladder above them was adjusted.
The practical upshot: if a review says “MailerLite is $10/month” or “free for 1,000 subscribers,” it’s stale. The numbers in this article were checked against MailerLite’s live pricing page on 2026-10-13.
When free stops being enough
The free plan is a genuine starting tier, not a trial — but it has hard edges:
- 251 subscribers. The day you import or grow past 250, you’re on Comfort at $12/month minimum.
- 2,501 emails in a month. A 250-subscriber list sending more than 10 emails/month (counting automations, not just campaigns) hits the send cap first — automation sequences quietly consume this budget.
- Template library. Free gives you the editor but not the 100+ newsletter templates; if you don’t design your own, this pushes you to Comfort.
- Branding. MailerLite’s logo stays in your email footers on free. Most businesses tolerate this until they look established — it’s the cheapest upgrade trigger, not a functional one.
Once you outgrow free, the natural question is what other vendors charge at your size — which is exactly what our email marketing software cost guide compares across ten platforms, including how MailerLite’s pricing model behaves next to Brevo’s per-email model and Mailchimp’s per-contact tiers. If you’re comparing vendors directly, see our MailerLite vs Mailchimp and MailerLite vs Brevo breakdowns.
The bottom line
MailerLite’s pricing is simple on purpose: one axis (list size), one decision (Comfort vs Power), and billing that ignores your dead contacts. For most small businesses the math is easy — start free, move to Comfort at $12/month when you pass 250 subscribers, and only consider Power when your monthly sends exceed 10× your list size. The free-plan shrink in 2026 means the upgrade comes sooner than old reviews suggest, but $12/month remains one of the cheapest paid entry points in email marketing.
Prices checked 2026-10-13 from MailerLite’s official pricing page (mailerlite.com/pricing), with tier pricing cross-checked against independent pricing breakdowns updated September–October 2026. MailerLite changes plans periodically — verify your exact tier on the vendor’s pricing page before committing.

