Substack
Newsletter publishing with a 10% revenue share, no flat fee.
Substack is a newsletter platform with a fundamentally different pricing model from every other tool in this category. There is no monthly fee. Writers keep 90% of revenue from paid subscriptions, with Substack taking 10% off the top, and Stripe taking standard processing fees on top of that. Free to publish indefinitely if you never charge. The catch is that you do not own the email list infrastructure: Substack handles delivery, billing, and discovery, and migrations away can be painful.
- Category
- Email marketing
- Free plan
- Yes
- Plans
- 1
- Verified
Plans & pricing
Headline prices for each Substack tier, captured from https://substack.com/going-paid on .
Standard
Free to publish; 10% of paid subscription revenue
- Contacts
- Unlimited
- Emails / month
- Unlimited
- Team seats
- 1 writer (per publication)
Included
- Unlimited free posts and subscribers
- Custom domain support
- Recommendations network
- Built-in podcast hosting
- Discussion threads and chat
- Mobile reader app distribution
- Stripe payment processing for paid subscriptions
Not on this plan
- Marketing-automation workflows
- A/B testing
- Tag-based subscriber segmentation
- API access (read-only export only)
- White-label / brand removal
Substack's economics example on the going-paid page: 1,000 subscribers at $5/month yields about $54,000/year to the writer after the 10% Substack cut, before Stripe fees.
Where Substack earns its price
- No flat monthly fee; you pay only when you make money
- Built-in discovery via the Substack network and recommendations is genuinely valuable for new writers
- Mobile reader app puts your posts in front of subscribers without inbox competition
- Onboarding takes minutes; competitors require setup time
Where it falls short
- 10% revenue share is permanent, never decreases with scale; at $100k/year you pay Substack $10k forever
- Paid plan migration off Substack to Kit, Ghost, or beehiiv is one-way emotionally for many writers (your discoverability resets)
- Editorial controversies have occasionally driven writers to leave for non-pricing reasons; platform risk is real
- Limited segmentation, no proper automations, no real A/B testing, thin analytics
Best for
- New writers with no list yet who want platform-driven discovery
- Writers who would rather give 10% of revenue than pay a flat $20-100/month with no readers
Not for
- Established creators with a paid list above ~5,000 subscribers; the 10% share exceeds what Kit, Ghost, or beehiiv would charge in flat fees at that scale
- Operators who want full control over deliverability, subscriber data, and migration optionality
- Brands needing automations, segmentation, or marketing tooling
Alternatives to Substack
Tools we cover in the same space.
Common questions
- Does Substack have a free plan?
- Yes. Substack offers a free tier. Free to publish; 10% of paid subscription revenue
- How much does Substack cost?
- Substack starts at Free. Plan prices captured April 30, 2026.
Source: https://substack.com/going-paid · last verified · capture method: manual
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