The short version. beehiiv has the best free tier at 2,500 subscribers and gives you AI credits on it. Kit at $33 takes a different route to AI, connecting your list to ChatGPT or Claude rather than building its own writer. MailerLite from $12 is the cheapest with a real AI writing assistant. Mailchimp is the name everyone knows and its AI does not appear until the $20 plan. Ghost has almost no AI and is still the right answer if you want to own the whole thing.
Every price here came off the vendor’s own pricing page on 15 August 2026. Subscriber tiers change these numbers, so the figures below are the entry point rather than what you will pay at scale.
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Where the AI actually sits, because it is not where you would guess
Every email platform now advertises AI, and the interesting part is that they have taken three genuinely different approaches to it. That matters more than the feature list, because it decides what you can do and what it costs.
- Metered credits. beehiiv gives 10 AI credits a day on its free plan, 25 on Scale at $43, and 50 on Max at $96. The AI is included and rationed.
- Gated by tier. Mailchimp’s Essentials plan at $13 has no AI features. They start on Standard at $20. MailerLite puts its writing assistant on Comfort from $12.
- Bring your own model. Kit’s answer is Kit MCP, which connects Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini directly to your list, so the analysis is done by a model you already pay for against data it can actually see.
That third approach is the one worth understanding, because a generic subject line generator is not worth much and a model that can query your actual subscriber behaviour is a different proposition.
We ranked on where the AI sits, what the free tier really covers, and whether the platform suits someone whose newsletter is the business rather than a marketing channel.
1. beehiiv: the best free tier, and the AI is included
Launch free up to 2,500 subscribers with 10 AI credits a day. Scale $43/month, or $517 a year, up to 100,000 subscribers with 25 credits a day. Max $96/month, or $1,151 a year, with 50 credits a day and AI Bot Control. Enterprise is custom with 100 credits a day. Verified 15 August 2026.
Free to 2,500 subscribers is the most generous starting point here by a distance, and it is not a stripped version. You get the AI, the site, the growth tools and the ad network access, which for a newsletter finding its audience is the whole product.
beehiiv was built for newsletters as businesses rather than for companies sending marketing email, and the difference shows in what it puts in front of you: subscriber growth, referrals, sponsorship and paid subscriptions rather than campaign workflows.
The daily credit model is worth noticing. Credits reset daily rather than monthly, which suits a regular publishing rhythm and frustrates anyone who wants to do a month of work in one sitting. AI Bot Control on the Max tier is a newer concern, since a meaningful share of newsletter opens are now automated rather than human.
Who it is wrong for: companies sending transactional or lifecycle email. This is a publishing platform, and using it as a marketing automation tool means fighting it.
2. Kit: connect your own model instead of using theirs
Newsletter plan free at 1,000 subscribers. Creator $33/month, or $390 a year. Pro $66/month, or $790 a year. Kit MCP, which connects Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini directly to Kit, starts on Creator. Verified 15 August 2026.
Kit is built for creators who sell things, and the automation around that is still the strongest here. Tag someone based on what they clicked, sell them a product, move them to a different sequence, all without a diagram that looks like a circuit board.
The AI approach is genuinely different and we think it is the better bet. Rather than shipping a subject line generator, Kit exposes your list to a model you already subscribe to. So instead of asking a built-in tool for a generic suggestion, you can ask Claude or ChatGPT what happened to open rates after you changed the send day, using your data.
It is more expensive than beehiiv at the entry point and the free tier stops at 1,000 subscribers, so this is a step up rather than a starting place.
Who it is wrong for: anyone who wants the AI to just write the email. That is precisely what this approach does not do, and if you wanted a button, MailerLite is cheaper.
3. MailerLite: cheapest with a real writing assistant
Free up to 250 subscribers with 2,500 monthly emails. Comfort from $12/month, tiered by subscriber count, including the subject line generator and AI writing assistant, with a monthly send ceiling of ten times your subscriber tier. Power from $25/month with unlimited monthly emails. Annual billing saves 10%. Verified 15 August 2026.
MailerLite is the pragmatic pick. It does the ordinary jobs well, the editor is pleasant, the automations cover what most people need, and the AI writing assistant is on the cheapest paid plan rather than two tiers up.
The send limits are the thing to read. Comfort caps you at ten times your subscriber tier per month, which sounds generous until you are sending four times a week to a segmented list. Power removes that ceiling, and the jump from $12 to $25 is usually about send volume rather than features.
The free plan’s 250 subscribers is tight compared to beehiiv, so treat it as a trial rather than a starting tier.
Who it is wrong for: publishers planning to sell subscriptions. Paid newsletters are not what this is built around, and beehiiv or Ghost handle that properly.
4. Mailchimp: the default, with the AI one tier up
Free up to 250 contacts. Essentials $13/month for up to 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly sends, with no AI features. Standard $20/month with AI writing and design tools included. Premium $350/month for up to 10,000 contacts and 150,000 sends, with generative AI at no extra cost. Verified 15 August 2026.
Mailchimp is on this list because it is what most people already use and because switching is real work. If you are on it and it is fine, that is a legitimate reason to stay.
Check which plan you are on before assuming you have the AI. Essentials at $13 does not include it. The AI writing and design tools begin on Standard at $20, which is the single most useful thing in this section for existing customers, because plenty of people are paying for Mailchimp and reading about its AI without having access to any of it.
The contact tiers climb steeply and Mailchimp counts contacts rather than subscribers, which includes people who never open anything. Prune the list before renewing.
Who it is wrong for: newsletter publishers. It is a marketing platform that also sends newsletters, and the tools it puts first are not the ones you need.
5. Ghost: barely any AI, and still the right answer for some
Starter $18/month, or $216 a year, for 1,000 members. Publisher $29/month, or $348 a year, for 1,000 members. Business $199/month, or $2,388 a year, for 10,000 members. Custom above that. Verified 15 August 2026.
Ghost is here as the deliberate outlier. It has no meaningful AI story, and that is not the point of it. What you get is a publication you own, on open source software, with your site, your newsletter and your paid memberships in one place and no platform between you and your audience.
For a publisher whose whole business is the list, that ownership question is bigger than whether a tool can draft a subject line. Platforms change terms, adjust deliverability, and occasionally get sold. Ghost is the option where that does not happen to you.
The member limits are the constraint. A thousand members on Starter and Publisher is not many for a growing newsletter, and the jump to Business at $199 is steep. Self-hosting removes the fee entirely if you are comfortable running it.
Who it is wrong for: anyone who wanted AI features, and anyone who does not want to think about hosting or software at all. Both of those are fine reasons to be elsewhere.
Publishers this list will not help
Ecommerce stores. Your email is triggered by browsing and buying behaviour, which is a different product category and worth paying more for.
Large marketing teams. You need approval workflows, deliverability engineering and CRM integration, none of which these are built for.
Anyone sending transactional email. Receipts and password resets go through a different kind of service entirely.
Anyone hoping AI grows the list. Every tool here helps you write and send faster. None of them makes anyone subscribe, and a bigger sending volume against a list that is not growing is the most common way newsletters die.
Considered, and left off
Brevo. A reasonable all-rounder with a generous free tier, particularly if you need SMS alongside email. Its pricing page did not render for us on 15 August 2026, so we have not ranked it.
Substack. No monthly fee, a percentage of paid subscriptions instead, and a built-in discovery network that genuinely drives growth. The trade is that the audience relationship is partly the platform’s. That is a strategic decision rather than a tooling one.
ActiveCampaign and the automation platforms. Much deeper automation than anything here, priced and complex accordingly. Right once email is your main revenue channel and you have someone to run it.
The dedicated AI newsletter writers. They produce a newsletter that reads like a newsletter and says nothing anyone will remember. Nobody subscribes to a summary.
Questions publishers ask us
Which has the best free tier?
beehiiv, and it is not close. Free up to 2,500 subscribers with AI credits included, against 1,000 on Kit and 250 on both MailerLite and Mailchimp. If you are starting from nothing, start there.
Does Mailchimp include AI on the cheap plan?
No. Essentials at $13 has no AI features. They start on Standard at $20. This catches a lot of people who are paying for Mailchimp, reading about its AI tools, and wondering where they are.
What is Kit MCP and does it matter?
It connects Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini directly to your Kit account, so you can ask a model questions about your own list and have it act. It matters if you already pay for one of those models and want analysis rather than generated copy. It does nothing for you if you wanted a button that writes the email.
Should I use AI to write my newsletter?
To draft sections, tidy structure and generate subject line options, yes. To write the thing, no. People subscribe to a newsletter for a specific voice with an opinion, and generated prose is the average of everyone’s voice with no opinion at all. It is the one product where sounding like everybody else is fatal.
Is it worth self-hosting Ghost?
If you are comfortable with a server, yes, and you save the whole fee. If the phrase means nothing to you, the hosted plans are worth every penny and you will spend the difference on your own time inside a month.
How many subscribers before I should pay?
When the free tier stops, which with beehiiv is 2,500 people. That is later than most platforms want you to think. Do not pay for a plan to get features you have not yet needed, especially in a category where the cheapest plan often omits the AI you came for.
See our maintained directory shortlists for content publishers, including tools for tracking whether AI engines cite your work.
Last reviewed: 15 August 2026. Every price was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on that date. Brevo is unranked because its pricing did not render for us. Subscriber tier pricing varies, so treat these as entry points. We review this page quarterly.
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