HighLevel usage fees
Updated 2026-09-19
HighLevel bills email, SMS, phone numbers, calls and AI by use, on top of the plan, on every tier. For a single service business those lines are usually small. For a business texting thousands of contacts a month, they can approach or exceed the subscription itself. The method below turns your own volumes into a monthly figure; the calculator does the arithmetic for you once you have those numbers.
Email: $0.675 per 1,000 sends
Email through HighLevel's own sending service costs $0.675 per 1,000 emails, as at September 2026, funded from a prepaid balance rather than billed after the fact. Contacts are unlimited on every plan, but sends are not free: a list of 5,000 contacts emailed twice a month is 10,000 sends, or about $6.75. Email validation, checking an address before you send to it, costs $2.50 per 1,000 checked, separate from the sending cost.
SMS: $0.00747 per segment
A text message is billed per segment rather than per message, at $0.00747 a segment for US and Canada numbers as at September 2026. A short text is one segment; a longer message, or one using certain characters, can split into more than one segment, and each segment is billed at the same rate. Estimate SMS by segments sent, not by messages sent, or the estimate will run low for any list that gets a longer message than a one-line reminder.
MMS: $0.0220 outbound
Picture or video messages cost more than plain text: $0.0220 per outbound MMS as at September 2026. Most businesses send MMS rarely, for a promotional image or a booking confirmation with an attachment, so this line is usually small unless MMS is a deliberate part of a campaign.
Phone numbers: $1.15 to $2.15 a month
A local US number costs $1.15 a month; a toll-free number costs $2.15 a month, both as at September 2026. Before a number can send SMS in the United States, it needs a one-time registration with the carriers, covered in full on the phone and SMS page along with the fees and the timeline that registration takes.
Calls: $0.0166 outbound, $0.01165 inbound, per minute
Outbound calls cost $0.0166 a minute and inbound calls cost $0.01165 a minute, both as at September 2026, and both are billed in full minutes, so a call that runs one minute and ten seconds is billed as two minutes. A business that routes its main line through HighLevel should estimate this against its typical monthly call volume, not against its typical call length alone.
AI: two different pricing models
AI is billed two ways. AI Employee subscription tiers bundle a monthly allotment of AI activity into a flat fee, covered on the add-ons page. Outside that allotment, or without the subscription, AI usage is billed per use. HighLevel has not published one combined per-minute AI rate as at September 2026, so budget the subscription tier first and treat pay-per-use as the overflow rather than the plan.
How the wallet works
Usage fees draw from a prepaid balance that HighLevel calls the wallet, funded from a card on file. Usage deducts from the balance as it happens, and the card recharges the wallet automatically when the balance runs low. This means usage fees do not wait for a monthly invoice; they draw down continuously, which is worth knowing before you turn on a campaign you have not estimated first.
A worked estimate
Take a local service business on Starter, texting 300 appointment reminders a month and emailing 2,000 contacts twice a month. SMS: 300 times $0.00747 is about $2.24. Email: 4,000 sends times $0.675 per 1,000 is about $2.70. A local number adds $1.15. The usage total lands under $7 a month. Now add a monthly text campaign to the same 2,000 contacts: that is 2,000 more segments, or about $14.94, bringing usage to roughly $22 a month, still well under the $97 subscription but nearly triple what reminders alone cost. Run your own contact count and sending frequency through the calculator to see where your business lands.
When usage stops being minor
Usage stays minor for a business emailing a few thousand contacts a month and texting only for reminders and confirmations. It starts to matter once SMS becomes a marketing channel in its own right, sent to a full list rather than to people who already booked. It decides the purchase outright for a business moving from a tool that charges one flat price for unlimited sending: compare that flat price against your estimated usage here before assuming the move saves money, and read hidden costs for the other lines that can affect that comparison.
Questions people ask
How are email and SMS charged?
Both are billed by volume: email at $0.675 per 1,000 sends, SMS at $0.00747 per segment, both as at September 2026, on top of whichever plan you are on.
Is email unlimited on HighLevel?
Contacts are unlimited, but sends are billed by volume. A larger list emailed more often costs more in usage, even though the subscription price does not change.
How much does a phone number cost per month?
$1.15 a month for a local number, $2.15 a month for a toll-free number, as at September 2026, before any per-message or per-minute usage.
What are the AI usage fees?
AI Employee subscription tiers bundle a monthly allotment into a flat fee. Usage beyond that allotment, or without a subscription, is billed per use at rates HighLevel has not published as one flat figure.
How do I estimate my monthly usage?
Multiply your contact count by how often you send, at the per-1,000 or per-segment rate for each channel, then add any phone numbers you run. The calculator does this arithmetic once you have your own volumes.