Which Salesforce Marketing Cloud contacts count toward my bill?
Still have a question, spotted an error, or have a better explanation or a source we should cite?
A contact in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement is a distinct record in your account, counted by its Contact Key. The bill follows how many of them sit in your account, not how many you mail.
Think of a company that syncs its whole CRM into Marketing Cloud and emails a tenth of it. Every synced lead still sits in the count.
Salesforce adds up three sources and removes duplicates by Contact Key: All Contacts, contacts in populations, and contacts in managed lists for triggered sends. Here is how the usual groups land:
| Status | Paid or not paid | Note |
|---|---|---|
| In All Contacts, a population or a triggered-send list | Paid | Counted once per Contact Key |
| Unsubscribed from email | Paid | Can still get transactional sends. An email unsubscribe covers email only, so other apps can still reach them |
| No email, phone or device | Paid | Salesforce says to look at these first when reducing contact usage |
| Synced in from Salesforce CRM | Paid | Leads, contacts and users are added to All Contacts automatically, unless you turn that sync off |
| Same email under two Contact Keys (duplicates) | Paid twice | Engagement can't merge or deduplicate them for you |
| Deleted | Not paid | Final. Read the next paragraph before you delete |
Most duplicates start long before the data reaches Marketing Cloud, in sign-up forms and imports.
Deleting is the only way off the count that Salesforce's pages name. It is final, and the contact's tracking and preference information goes with it. Whether that is safe for people who unsubscribed is its own question. Before any delete, keep your own do-not-email record. Here is what a delete does in each tool.
Seeing the number. Run a Contacts Counts report from the top-level business unit. Its Total Distinct Contacts Count is your billable number. It is updated weekly, not live.
What the editions include. Pro+ at $2,000 per org per month with 15K contacts, Corporate+ at $5,500 with 45K and Enterprise+ at $30,000 with 500K, all billed annually and subject to change. For your own contract, talk to your Account Executive.
Not sure which of your contacts you are paying for and can't reach? Our free SOS hotline will look at it with you.
Ask an AI. Copy this into ChatGPT, Claude or a similar assistant, fill in the blanks, and keep going with your own case:
I use Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement on the [edition] edition with an allowance of [number] contacts. My Contacts Counts report shows [number] total distinct contacts. I sync [leads, contacts or users] from Salesforce CRM, and I think about [number] records have no email address. Where is my count coming from, and what can I reduce safely before I talk to my Account Executive?Sources. Salesforce's own pages, read 21 Oct 2026, re-checked 23 Oct 2026, every quote still word for word:
- Understanding Contact Counts and Breakdown in Marketing Cloud Engagement (published 5 Jun 2026): "The billable Contact Count is calculated by taking the sum of contacts from sources 1 through 3 below and deduplicating them based on the Contact Key." "When looking to reduce contact usage, investigate and delete these contacts first." "please contact your Account Executive directly."
- Contact Definition and Count Determination in Contact Builder: "Engagement includes unsubscribed contacts in contact counts because those contacts remain eligible to receive transactional sends." "Deleted contacts don't appear in contact counts." "two records with different Contact Key values and the email address jai@example.com count as two unique contacts." "Disable synchronization for applicable data sources to prevent this occurrence."
- Contact Builder Best Practices: a contact "can unsubscribe from a subscription in Email Studio and still receive messages from other apps, such as MobileConnect or MobilePush." "You can't merge or de-duplicate contact information in Engagement".
- Contact Deletion in Contact Builder: deletion removes the contact, and "This removal includes any tracking or preference information."
- Checking the Number and Breakdown of Contacts: "The Total Distinct Contacts Count value in the report result represents the number of billable contacts for that account."
- Marketing Cloud Engagement Pricing: edition prices and contact allowances, billed annually and "subject to change".
Pricing rules change, so we re-check them every quarter.
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