Kit vs. MailerLite for a Newsletter Under 5,000 Subscribers: What You Actually Pay

Kit and MailerLite are two common choices when a solo creator or small business decides to start a newsletter. Both have a free plan and both are aimed at small senders. But their prices behave very differently as your list grows. I lined up the official pricing pages for both, added four alternatives for context, and worked out what a list of 500, 1,000, 2,500 and 5,000 subscribers would cost each month.

The pain: a free plan that ends sooner than you think

Most people start with the free plan, and that is the right move. The trouble is that "free" means two different things here. On paper, Kit's free plan stretches to a much larger list than MailerLite's. MailerLite's free plan is capped at 250 subscribers, so a list of 500 is already a paying list. Kit's free plan, on the other hand, leaves out automations, which a lot of newsletter writers want on day one for a welcome email.

So the real question is not "which tool is cheaper?" It is "at my list size, what do I have to pay for to get the features I need, and how much does that bill grow as I add readers?" That is the part many comparison posts skip, because it takes a calculator.

How I compared

I did not use either Kit or MailerLite for this article, and I have not tried the alternatives either. Everything below comes from the vendors' own pricing pages, which I read and copied on 2026-10-16. What I can tell you is what the price list says, not how the editors, deliverability or support feel in daily use.

I compared them on five things:

1. Price at your list size, billed monthly and billed yearly.
2. What the free plan gives you and where it stops.
3. What you have to pay to unlock automations.
4. Sending limits. Whether the plan caps how many emails you can send.
5. Trial and billing terms.

Besides Kit and MailerLite, I included GetResponse, Moosend, Brevo and AWeber in the comparison table. I picked them because each has a public pricing page and a plan that a small newsletter could use. I did not go deeper on them than the table, because the question here is Kit versus MailerLite.

One more thing you should know: I may earn a commission if you sign up for either tool through the links at the end. That did not change the numbers below, and I would rather you pick the cheaper tool for your situation than the one that pays me.

Comparison table

Pricing checked on 2026-10-16. All prices are USD, per month, before tax unless noted. "Yearly" means the monthly equivalent when you pay for a year up front.

A few notes on that table:

• Brevo is priced differently. It charges by the number of emails you send, not by how many subscribers you have. To compare it fairly, I assumed four sends a month per subscriber, which is how I got the 4,000 and 20,000 figures. If you send more often, the number goes up.
• AWeber showed me two versions of its pricing page on the same day, one static and one with a subscriber slider. I could not tell which version most visitors see, and the slider version skipped the 1,000 and 5,000 steps. So I left AWeber's per-subscriber figures out rather than guess. On the slider version, the Lite plan showed $35 monthly at 2,500 subscribers, but treat that as unconfirmed.
• Moosend's yearly price is a one-time payment up front, and the page shows a 20% discount for that.
• GetResponse and Moosend have unlimited sending on every plan. That matters if you send often.

The original part: what each list size pays per month

This is the table I wanted when I started. It shows the monthly bill for Kit and MailerLite at four list sizes, in both billing modes. I included MailerLite's two paid plans and Kit's two, because the cheaper plan on each side leaves some features out (more on that below).

MailerLite (monthly prices from the official pricing data; see footnote 1 for the formula):

Kit (prices as displayed on the official pricing page; see footnote 1):

¹ How the numbers are calculated. MailerLite's pricing data lists a monthly price and a yearly-billing price for each subscriber tier. The yearly-billing price is 10% lower than the monthly price (the page says "Save 10%"), and the yearly total is that price × 12. For example, Comfort at 5,000 subscribers is $49 × 0.90 = $44.10 per month, or $44.10 × 12 = $529.20 for the year. Kit's page shows the yearly total directly (for example, $890 for Creator at 5,000). Its per-month yearly figures are rounded to whole dollars, so $890 ÷ 12 is really about $74.17, not $75. I used the displayed figures in the table and the yearly total for any comparison. Kit's Pro figures are the regular rate; the page also advertises a 25% discount on Pro for the first year only. Totals do not include tax. I could not read Kit's Creator or Pro prices at 500 or 2,500 subscribers from the page, so I left those cells empty rather than estimate. Kit's Free column assumes the 10,000-subscriber limit I read in the plan comparison; footnote 3 below explains the wrinkle.

What stands out when you put the two tables next to each other:

• At 1,000 subscribers, Kit's Creator plan is $39 monthly against MailerLite Comfort's $19, a gap of $20 a month. Billed yearly, it is $390 against $205.20, a difference of $184.80 a year.
• At 5,000 subscribers, Kit Creator is $89 monthly against Comfort's $49, a gap of $40 a month. Billed yearly it is $890 against $529.20, or $360.80 a year. At the paid-plan level, Kit costs roughly 1.7 to 1.8 times as much here.
• Yearly billing saves more on Kit. Kit's page says 17% off, MailerLite's says 10%. At 5,000 subscribers that is $178 a year saved on Kit Creator versus $58.80 on MailerLite Comfort. It narrows the gap but does not close it.
• The $0 row is the real story. If Kit's free plan covers what you need, the cheapest option at any size below 10,000 is $0, which no paid MailerLite plan can match. MailerLite's free plan cannot hold a list of 500 at all.

So the honest summary is: MailerLite is cheaper the moment you need a paid plan, and Kit is cheaper if you can stay on its free plan. Which side of that line you fall on depends on whether you need automations.

What you lose on the free plan

Both free plans are real, but they trim different things. Here is what the official pages say.

³ A wrinkle on Kit's free limit. The plan comparison table on Kit's pricing page says the Free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers, and that is the number I used. On a second read of the same page, the Free plan card carried wording for 1,000 email subscribers. I could not tell which is current, so check the page you see before you build around it. It is also worth knowing that Kit counts only unique and active subscribers, so duplicates and inactive addresses do not count toward your limit.

MailerLite's free plan details come from the same pricing page, read on the same date. You may see articles elsewhere that say MailerLite's free plan covers 1,000 subscribers. That figure is out of date: the official page says 250.

If you are just starting and want to send a weekly letter to a few hundred people, Kit's free plan is the more generous starting point on paper. If you want a welcome email sequence from the first day, MailerLite's free plan gives you three automations, but only for up to 250 subscribers.

One more limit: how often you can send

MailerLite's Comfort plan caps monthly sends at ten times your subscriber count. At 500 subscribers, that is 5,000 emails a month. A weekly newsletter uses about four or five emails per subscriber, so you are well inside the limit. A daily newsletter is about thirty per subscriber, so you would need MailerLite's Power plan, which has no send limit, or a tool with no cap.

Kit's page does not list a send cap on the plans I read. GetResponse and Moosend list unlimited sending, and Brevo sets its price by how many emails you send. If you plan to send more than a few times a week, the sending rule matters as much as the sticker price.

Best pick for three kinds of readers

You are starting out and want to pay nothing. On paper, Kit's free plan fits a bare-bones weekly newsletter better, because it holds a bigger list and has no limit on broadcast emails. MailerLite's free plan only works until you reach 250 subscribers. Either way, read the free plan limits again before you build on it, since the Kit limit is the one I could not pin down.

You want automations and the lowest bill. MailerLite's Comfort plan is the cheaper paid plan at every list size I could compare. At 5,000 subscribers it costs $49 monthly against Kit Creator's $89. If a welcome sequence and a handful of automations are all you need, Comfort looks like the better value. If you only send weekly or a few times a month, the 10-times send cap is unlikely to bite.

You sell your own products or want a creator-focused toolset. Kit's free plan lists digital product sales and paid subscriptions, and Creator adds sequences, SMS and RSS campaigns. If you plan to sell to your audience, that might justify the higher price. I did not compare transaction fees on selling, because the pricing data I worked from does not cover them. Check that before you commit.

If you are looking at the other four, Moosend came out slightly cheaper than Comfort at 5,000 subscribers on monthly billing ($48 versus $49) and clearly cheaper billed yearly ($38 versus $44.10, though yearly billing there is a one-time upfront payment). GetResponse's Starter plan includes only one custom automation, so I would look at its next tier if you need more. I did not go deeper on any of them.

Drawbacks worth knowing

I would rather you hear these from me than find them after signing up.

• Kit costs more once you pay. At 1,000 and 5,000 subscribers, Kit Creator costs roughly 1.7 to 2 times as much as MailerLite Comfort, whether you pay monthly or yearly. Whatever Kit adds above Comfort, you pay for it up front.
• Kit's free plan has no automations. Visual Automations and email sequences start on Creator. If you want a welcome series, you pay.
• Kit's free limit is unclear. The same pricing page gave me two different numbers (10,000 and 1,000). Confirm the one you see.
• Kit's Pro discount is first-year only. The 25% off on Pro ends after year one, and the page says the price returns to the regular rate in year two.
• MailerLite's free plan is small. 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month is a trial, not a home.
• MailerLite Comfort has a send cap. Ten times your subscriber tier per month. A daily newsletter does not fit without Power.
• MailerLite's page contradicts itself in one place. It says every paid plan gets the full feature set, yet its limits table caps things like automations and sites on Comfort. I could not reconcile the two. Ask support or check your own account before you rely on either reading.
• Pricing pages change. I saw different versions of the AWeber page on the same day, and Kit's own page disagreed with itself on the free limit. The prices here are a snapshot, not a promise.
• I could not verify everything. I did not test either product, so I cannot speak to deliverability, editor quality, or how easy migration is in practice. Kit's Creator and Pro prices at 500 and 2,500 subscribers were not on the page, so those cells are blank.

Try one of them

If you want the lowest paid bill and your list will stay under 5,000, MailerLite is the one I would look at first. It has a free plan for up to 250 subscribers and a 14-day trial of the paid plans that does not need a credit card.

Try MailerLite free →

If you want a creator-focused tool and think the free plan will carry you for a while, Kit is worth a look. The paid plans have a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and the page mentions free migration help if you are moving from another tool.

Try Kit free →

Sources

All pages below were read on 2026-10-16. Prices change; check the page before you buy.

• Kit pricing: https://kit.com/pricing (checked 2026-10-16)
• MailerLite pricing: https://www.mailerlite.com/pricing (checked 2026-10-16)
• GetResponse pricing: https://www.getresponse.com/pricing (checked 2026-10-16)
• Moosend pricing: https://moosend.com/pricing/ (checked 2026-10-16)
• Brevo pricing: https://www.brevo.com/pricing/ (checked 2026-10-16)
• AWeber pricing: https://www.aweber.com/pricing.htm (checked 2026-10-16)