BrazeAI vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud Einstein vs Klaviyo AI: Real AI Marketing Cost per 100,000 Customers in 2026
The short answer: these three price different things. Klaviyo bills by active profile on a public grid. Braze bills by monthly active users on a quote-only contract. Salesforce bills by edition per organization plus separate meters for sends, messaging credits and data profiles. At 100,000 profiles, Klaviyo's email plan is about $13.80 per 1,000 profiles per month, Braze's reported entry range works out to roughly $25–$67 per 1,000 per month (before implementation), and Salesforce's Growth edition plus Data 360 profiles is about $35 per 1,000 profiles per month ($52.50 on Advanced). The spread between platforms, and between scales on the same platform, is wider than any feature difference between them.
What is public
| Vendor | Pricing model | Reported figures | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Klaviyo | Active profiles, tiered; email sends cap roughly 10x profiles | 10,000 profiles about $150 a month; 25,000 about $400; 50,000 about $720; 100,000 about $1,380; 250,000 about $2,300; above 250,000 manual billing | REPORTED (tiers reproduced from Klaviyo's price grid by third parties) |
| Klaviyo SMS | Credit packs; 1 US SMS = 1 credit (about $0.009), UK SMS = 5 credits, Germany = 12 | Unused credits do not roll over | REPORTED |
| Braze | Monthly active users, channels and modules; no public price | Vendr median $88,782 a year across 176 purchases (range $29,936–$376,000); Core $30,000–$80,000 for 50K–250K MAU; Pro $80,000–$250,000; implementation $50,000–$300,000 | REPORTED |
| Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next | Edition per organization | Growth $1,500 per org per month, Advanced $3,250 per org per month (billed annually); additional email sends $2 per 1,000 credits; SMS from $2 per 1,000 credits; Flex Credits $500 per 100,000 requests; extra business units $2,500 per month; Data 360 profiles at $240 per 1,000 profiles per year | OFFICIAL |
| Salesforce Einstein Personalisation (UK price page) | Organization per year | £76,800 per org per year | OFFICIAL |
Two structural facts are worth stating. Klaviyo's tiers include the same feature set from the lowest paid tier to the highest, including predictive analytics and AI-generated segments, so the price is entirely a function of profile count. Braze's AI (BrazeAI Decisioning Studio and related agents) was reported as consumed through a mix of monthly active users and action credits, with no forecasting tool to estimate decisioning spend before launch (REPORTED).
Scenario model
All assumptions are ILLUSTRATIVE: 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 profiles; one marketing email plus, where noted, one US SMS per profile per month; eight campaigns per month.
Klaviyo
| Profiles | Email plan per month | Per 1,000 profiles per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $150 | $15.00 | $1,800 |
| 100,000 | $1,380 | $13.80 | $16,560 |
| 250,000 | $2,300 | $9.20 | $27,600 |
| 1,000,000 | QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN | UNKNOWN | UNKNOWN |
At 100,000 profiles, adding one US SMS per profile per month at $0.009 adds $900 (Email + SMS base about $1,395 plus $900 = about $2,295). The same volume sent to UK numbers at five credits each costs about $4,500 a month in credits alone. Cost per 1,000 email sends at four sends per profile per month (400,000 sends) is $3.45; at the full send cap of roughly one million it is $1.38.
Braze
Braze has no public rate, so cost per 1,000 profiles is computed from reported contract ranges:
| Profiles | Reported range used | Per 1,000 profiles per month |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | Below the reported entry point of about $60,000 a year | About $500 if the floor applies |
| 100,000 | Core range $30,000–$80,000 a year | $25.00–$66.67 |
| 1,000,000 | QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN | UNKNOWN |
Formula: annual contract ÷ 12 ÷ (profiles ÷ 1,000). The MAU bands reported by two sources for the same product disagree by an order of magnitude (one places 50K–250K MAU at $30,000–$80,000; another places 1–5 million MAU at $40,000–$100,000), so the 100,000-profile row should be read as a wide range, not a point estimate. Implementation of $50,000–$300,000 over three to six months of engineering was reported on top.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next
The edition fee is a fixed platform floor:
| Edition | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Growth | $1,500 | $18,000 |
| Advanced | $3,250 | $39,000 |
Salesforce lists Data 360 profiles at $240 per 1,000 profiles per year, so the profile meter scales linearly with the database:
| Profiles | Data 360 profiles per year | Growth + profiles per year | Per 1,000 profiles per month | Advanced + profiles per year | Per 1,000 profiles per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $2,400 | $20,400 | $170.00 | $41,400 | $345.00 |
| 100,000 | $24,000 | $42,000 | $35.00 | $63,000 | $52.50 |
| 1,000,000 | $240,000 | $258,000 | $21.50 | $279,000 | $23.25 |
Formula: (edition per year + profiles ÷ 1,000 × $240) ÷ 12 ÷ (profiles ÷ 1,000). At 100,000 profiles, Growth plus profiles is $18,000 + $24,000 = $42,000 a year, or $3,500 a month. Salesforce's classic Marketing Cloud Engagement editions with Einstein features were not publicly priced at the time of review (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN).
Cost per campaign
Formula: monthly platform cost ÷ campaigns per month. At eight campaigns a month and 100,000 profiles:
| Platform | Monthly cost | Per campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Klaviyo Email | $1,380 | $172.50 |
| Klaviyo Email + SMS (one US SMS per profile) | about $2,295 | about $286.88 |
| Braze (reported $30,000–$80,000 a year) | $2,500–$6,667 | $312.50–$833.33 |
| Salesforce Growth + Data 360 profiles | $3,500 | $437.50 |
Sensitivity
1. Profile hygiene on Klaviyo. Since February 2025, Klaviyo bills every active profile, including cold ones; suppressing inactive profiles moves you down a tier. The jump between 10,000 and 25,000 profiles (about $150 to about $400) is the steepest per-profile change on the grid. 2. SMS geography. The same message costs one credit in the US and twelve in Germany. 3. Salesforce fixed floor. The edition fee is a large share of the bill at small scale: at 10,000 profiles, the $18,000 Growth fee is about 88% of the $20,400 annual total, while at 1,000,000 profiles it is under 7% of $258,000. 4. Braze implementation. At the reported $50,000–$300,000, implementation can equal or exceed the first-year license.
Budgeting traps
- Active-profile pricing scales with list growth. Bills were reported to double within twelve months for growing stores.
- Required platform tiers. On Salesforce, agentic features sit in Growth and Advanced editions; multi-region setups add $2,500 a month per business unit.
- Minimums on quote-only platforms. A reported Braze floor of roughly $60,000 a year is more than 30 times Klaviyo's annual bill at 10,000 profiles.
- AI is not separately visible. On Klaviyo it is included at every tier; on Braze and Salesforce it may be bundled, credit-metered, or an add-on, so ask for the AI line explicitly.
What to ask before you buy
Ask each vendor to price the same scenario: profiles, email volume, SMS by country, and the AI features you plan to use. Then compare the totals per 1,000 active customers, not the headline plan prices.