Bird vs Brevo
Bird vs Brevo for transactional email
Bird operates the email sending infrastructure, manages IP reputation and builds its own delivery tools. Choose Bird when you want the team running your sending network to handle delivery feedback, with email, SMS and voice in one API.
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By the numbers
Bird network
About 40% of commercial emailStored message bodies
Up to 30 days, with storage enabledWho controls the sending stack?
Brevo: campaigns and managed warm-up
Brevo combines campaigns and marketing automation with a sales platform for pipelines and shared inboxes. Keep Brevo when those workflows are part of your email operation.
Brevo’s automatic IP warm-up is available on Professional, gradually moving traffic from shared IPs to the dedicated IP. Enterprise customers arrange personalized warm-up with their Customer Success Manager.
Brevo lets senders assign dedicated IPs to senders and distribute traffic across a pool. Its Professional plan includes deliverability specialist support.
Bird: infrastructure and reputation
Bird operates its sending infrastructure and develops MTA software, including PowerMTA, which Bird also licenses for self-hosted sending. Bird’s SparkPost sending network carries about 40% of the world’s commercial email.
Bird manages its shared sending IPs, dedicated IPs and pools, with automatic warm-up and shared-pool overflow. Bird’s delivery technology adjusts traffic per mailbox provider, while its platform processes delivery feedback and acts on bounce and complaint signals. These are controls Bird operates within its sending stack.
Bird provides Inbox Insights for placement estimates and seed tests, Email analytics for your own sending results, and Competitive Insights for observed competitor campaigns. Bird’s email team can help assess your requirements.
How do Bird and Brevo compare?
Compare send retries, IP controls and stored content alongside the integration. Brevo’s campaign tools matter when the same team handles marketing and transactional email.
| Capability | Bird | Brevo | Who wins? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transactional send API | Bird’s TypeScript SDK throws typed errors by default; .safe() returns data and error. | Brevo’s Node SDK constructs a BrevoClient and sends with transactionalEmails.sendTransacEmail. The send endpoint accepts JSON, templates and messageVersions. | |
| SMTP relay | Bird SMTP accepts port 465 with TLS or 587 and 2525 with STARTTLS, using an API key. | Brevo SMTP uses an SMTP login and SMTP key, not an API key. Its relay ports are 587, 2525 and 465; Brevo recommends 587 with TLS. | |
| Email address validation | Bird email lookup checks one address per call, returning a verdict, confidence, address flags and suggested corrections. | Brevo’s NeverBounce integration supports list validation and real-time verification of new contacts through an external service. | |
| Idempotency on send | Bird retains completed responses for 3 hours; later retries are fresh requests. | Brevo’s batch idempotency guide documents headers.idempotencyKey in the JSON payload, with a 30-minute lifetime applying to the entire messageVersions batch. | |
| Stored message retention | Bird stores message bodies for up to 30 days when content storage is enabled. | Brevo’s retention settings keep enabled HTML previews for a chosen 1 to 24 months, or indefinitely without a deletion rule. For accounts with over 10 million email events, a separate policy deletes events older than 24 months. | |
| Published pricing | Bird email plans and rates are read live in the table below. | Compare the selected plan with Brevo’s published rates, including its billing period and features. | |
| Dedicated IPs and pools | Bird dedicated IPs and pools include automatic warm-up with overflow through the shared pool. | Brevo dedicated IPs can be assigned to senders and pooled. Automatic warm-up is on Professional; Enterprise customers arrange personalized warm-up. | |
| Deliverability heritage | Bird acquired SparkPost in 2021. Its sending network carries about 40% of the world’s commercial email. | Brevo’s warm-up continues sending through shared IPs while gradually moving traffic onto a dedicated IP. | |
| SPF, DKIM, DMARC and BIMI | Bird verifies DKIM, return-path and DMARC. BIMI is a separate DNS and logo configuration. | Brevo’s dedicated-IP setup covers SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. Its BIMI guide requires domain authentication and logo setup, with one static BIMI header per account. | |
| Event webhooks and signing | Bird signs webhook deliveries using Standard Webhooks. | Brevo webhook security supports IP allowlisting, username/password authentication, bearer tokens and custom authorization headers. | |
| Channels beyond email | Bird’s API covers email, SMS, WhatsApp, voice, Verify and Realtime. | Brevo’s platform includes email, SMS and WhatsApp messaging alongside campaign tools. | |
| Vendor and procurement | Review Bird’s published legal terms and policies against your existing agreement and procurement requirements. | Review Brevo’s published terms against your existing agreement and procurement requirements. | |
| Mailboxes | Bird’s agent mailboxes provide addressable inboxes, threads, replies and sender rules managed through code. | Brevo’s inbound parser provides HTML, text, attachments and extracted Markdown with the signature separated. | |
| Agent tooling | Bird’s hosted MCP server at mcp.bird.com exposes 354 tools. The bird CLI sends and inspects email, manages domains, templates and webhooks, and gives agents JSON output and semantic exit codes. | Brevo’s MCP server manages contacts, campaigns, templates, domains and account resources. Its CLI creates OAuth apps, scaffolds code and runs a local test server. |
How do you send one HTML email?
Brevo’s BrevoClient sends sender, to and htmlContent through transactionalEmails.sendTransacEmail. Bird throws typed errors by default; this example opts into .safe() so the application can branch on data and error.
Brevo
import { BrevoClient } from "@getbrevo/brevo";
const brevo = new BrevoClient({ apiKey: process.env.BREVO_API_KEY! });
await brevo.transactionalEmails.sendTransacEmail({
sender: { email: "onboarding@yourdomain.com", name: "Acme" },
to: [{ email: "customer@example.com" }],
subject: "Your March invoice",
htmlContent: "<p>Attached.</p>",
});
Bird
import { BirdClient } from "@messagebird/sdk";
const bird = new BirdClient({ apiKey: process.env.BIRD_API_KEY! });
const { data, error } = await bird.email
.send({
from: { email: "onboarding@yourdomain.com", name: "Acme" },
to: ["customer@example.com"],
subject: "Your March invoice",
html: "<p>Attached.</p>",
})
.safe();
if (error) console.error(error.message);
else console.log(data.id);
What changes around the send call?
How do saved email previews compare?
How should I prevent duplicate sends during migration?
Published email plans
Bird’s full monthly ladder is shown below. Nearest-volume plans are labelled and are not quotes for Bird’s volume. Check billing terms, features and overages.
Pricing verdict: Bird. The verdict compares the lowest published monthly amount at each exact volume and currency; daily-only allowances, annual commitments, usage rates, starting prices and custom quotes are not compared.
| Bird tier | Emails per month | Bird | Brevo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 1,000 | 2 nearest published optionsExpand to compare every option and its billing terms. Nearest published volume Nearest published volume | |
| Startup | 50,000 | 2 plans at this volumeExpand to compare every option and its billing terms. Matching volume Matching volume | |
| Startup | 100,000 | 2 plans at this volumeExpand to compare every option and its billing terms. Matching volume Matching volume | |
| Growth | 100,000 | 2 plans at this volumeExpand to compare every option and its billing terms. Matching volume Matching volume | |
| Growth | 250,000 | 2 plans at this volumeExpand to compare every option and its billing terms. Matching volume Matching volume | |
| Growth | 500,000 | 2 plans at this volumeExpand to compare every option and its billing terms. Matching volume Matching volume | |
| Growth | 1,000,000 | Matching volume | |
| Growth | 2,500,000 | Nearest published volume Professional: €1,713.00/month 3,000,000 emails Monthly billing; optional add-ons excluded. as published |
Brevo: Published plans
3,000,000 emails
Monthly billing; optional add-ons excluded.
as published
How should you compare email costs?
What do the Bird and Brevo price rows include?
Switching cost
What does a Brevo migration involve?
Map Brevo’s sender, templateId, params and messageVersions to Bird’s send payload and templates. Export both transactional blocked contacts and marketing contacts marked emailBlacklisted. The migration guide maps both suppression sources into Bird’s workspace suppressions.
Replace Brevo webhook authentication with Bird’s Standard Webhooks verification, and map delivery events using the migration guide. Replace the Brevo SMTP key with a Bird API key if you use SMTP. Test sends and handlers in Bird’s mail sandbox, and plan warm-up for new dedicated IPs.
Put it into practice.
Continue with the documentation, guides and examples for this topic. Resources are in English.
Where to go next
Start with the migration guide to map the integration and test the cutover.
Talk to our email team
See how Bird fits your Brevo workflow.
Test your sender, templates and delivery events before moving traffic from Brevo. For a larger move, plan the cutover with an email specialist.
Create your account and test your integration. Your migration enquiry will include the provider you are comparing.