Newsletter Platform Fee Breakdown
Substack vs beehiiv vs Ghost: the fee model decides this, not the fee percentage
Substack charges a percentage of your subscription revenue and nothing for your list. beehiiv and Ghost charge nothing on your revenue and price you on the size of your list. That single difference — not "10% versus 0%" — is what decides which one is cheapest for you, because it means the answer depends on how much revenue each subscriber on your list produces. The rule that falls out of the arithmetic is simple: a flat-fee platform beats Substack's 10% once your monthly subscription revenue is more than ten times its monthly plan fee.
Comparison Outline
Quick verdict Three fee models that don't compare The 10x rule and the break-even table Restated as a conversion rate What free subscribers cost you The Stripe layer nobody subtracts Two plan traps in this comparison FAQQuick verdict
If you have not made your first paid-subscription dollar, start on Substack. It costs nothing until someone pays you, so the downside of being wrong is zero. beehiiv's Scale plan and Ghost's Publisher plan both bill you before you have earned anything. If your subscription revenue is comfortably past roughly $500 to $1,000 a month, move. At that point the 10% cut exceeds the flat fee and keeps growing while the flat fee does not. If you have a large free list and only a handful of payers, stay on Substack longer than the internet tells you to — beehiiv and Ghost charge you for every free subscriber, and a big unconverted list is exactly the shape of audience their pricing punishes.
Three fee models that don't compare directly
Almost every comparison of these platforms sets "Substack 10%" against "beehiiv 0%" and "Ghost 0%" and stops there. That framing hides the actual trade, because the three companies are not charging for the same thing.
| Substack | beehiiv | Ghost(Pro) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you are billed on | Subscription revenue | Total subscribers | Total members |
| Monthly plan fee | None | Scale from $43/mo billed yearly | Publisher $29/mo billed yearly |
| Cut of your revenue | 10% (see note below) | 0% take rate on paid subscriptions | Zero transaction fees on paid memberships |
| Cost of a free subscriber | $0 | Same as a paying one | Same as a paying one |
| Cost before your first paid subscriber | $0 | $0 on Launch (up to 2,500 subscribers) | $29/mo — Starter cannot take payments |
| Cheapest plan that accepts money | Default | Scale ($43/mo yearly) — see caveat | Publisher ($29/mo yearly) |
| Payment processing | Stripe on all three: 2.9% + 30¢ per card charge, plus 0.7% Stripe Billing on recurring volume | ||
Plan prices read September 2026 from beehiiv's pricing page and Ghost's pricing page; processing rates from Stripe Billing pricing. On Substack's 10%: Substack's help centre and pricing pages returned errors to every automated request we made, so we could not read the figure at source this cycle. The 10% rate is stated consistently across public reporting and by beehiiv's own published comparison of the two platforms. Treat it as well-established but unverified by us, and confirm on Substack's site before you plan around it.
The 10x rule, and the break-even table
Because Substack's fee is a straight percentage of revenue and the alternatives are a fixed monthly amount, the crossover point is easy to state. A flat-fee platform costs less than Substack when its monthly fee is less than 10% of your monthly subscription revenue — in other words, once your monthly subscription revenue passes ten times the monthly plan price.
beehiiv publishes a price ladder that steps up at fixed subscriber thresholds. Applying the 10x rule to it gives the revenue you need at each list size for beehiiv Scale to be the cheaper option:
| Your list size | beehiiv Scale (billed yearly) | Monthly subscription revenue where beehiiv overtakes Substack |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $43/mo | $430 |
| 2,500 | $61/mo | $610 |
| 5,000 | $78/mo | $780 |
| 10,000 | $96/mo | $960 |
| 25,000 | $149/mo | $1,490 |
| 50,000 | $219/mo | $2,190 |
| 100,000 | $290/mo | $2,900 |
Plan prices from beehiiv's published Launch/Scale/Max price ladder on annual billing. The right-hand column is our arithmetic (plan price × 10), assuming Substack's 10% applies to gross subscription revenue. Monthly billing on beehiiv costs more than the annual rates shown.
For Ghost, the same rule gives $290 a month — Publisher is $29 a month billed yearly at a 1,000-member list. Ghost's Publisher price also scales upward with member count rather than staying at $29, but Ghost's pricing page presents that through an interactive slider we could not read reliably, so we are quoting only the entry figure we could verify. Check the slider at your own member count before comparing.
Two things worth noticing in that table. First, the crossover is not a single number, which is why the "switch above $1,000 a month" advice repeated across this topic is only ever right by accident — it happens to be roughly true at a 10,000-subscriber list and is wrong at every other size. Second, the threshold rises as your list grows, because the flat fee you are trying to beat grows too. Growing your list without growing revenue moves the finish line away from you.
The same question, restated as a conversion rate
Revenue targets are abstract. The more useful version of the same arithmetic is: what share of your list has to be paying you for the switch to make sense? At an $8 a month subscription price — $96 a year per paying subscriber — the break-even conversion rates work out like this:
| List size | Paying subscribers needed | Break-even conversion rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | ~54 | 5.4% |
| 5,000 | ~98 | 2.0% |
| 10,000 | 120 | 1.2% |
| 25,000 | ~186 | 0.75% |
| 50,000 | ~274 | 0.55% |
Our arithmetic, using the beehiiv annual prices above and an $8/month subscription. Change the price and the rates change: at $12 a month the required conversion rates fall by a third, at $5 a month they rise by roughly 60%.
This is the most actionable form of the comparison, and it says something the flat "0% is better" verdict misses. A small list needs to convert unusually well to justify leaving Substack; a large list barely needs to convert at all. At 1,000 subscribers you need better than a 5% paid conversion before beehiiv is cheaper; at 50,000, roughly one paying subscriber in 200 does it. We are not going to tell you what conversion rate is normal for your niche — put your own number in. Note too that your subscription price is a lever here, not just an income decision: doubling it halves the conversion rate you need. Our guide to building a newsletter list from scratch covers the audience side of that equation.
What free subscribers actually cost you
This is the asymmetry that decides most real cases, and it is almost never stated plainly: on Substack a free subscriber is free forever; on beehiiv and Ghost a free subscriber costs exactly what a paying one costs.
Concretely, on beehiiv's ladder, taking a list from 2,500 to 10,000 subscribers raises the Scale plan from $61 to $96 a month on annual billing — $420 more a year — whether or not a single one of those 7,500 new people ever pays you. Ghost works the same way; its pricing is driven by member count, and a member is a member whether they are on a free tier or a paid one.
The practical consequences:
The Stripe layer nobody subtracts
All three platforms take payments through Stripe, so this cost is common to every option and cancels out of the comparison — but it does not cancel out of your income, and "0% platform fee" is routinely reported as though you keep everything.
Stripe's published rates are 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge, plus a separate Stripe Billing fee of 0.7% on recurring billing volume. On an $8 monthly subscription that is about 59¢, or roughly 7.4% — before any platform takes its share. Add Substack's 10% on top and a $8/month subscriber nets you about $6.61.
The important part is that 30 cents is fixed, not proportional, so it hurts in inverse proportion to your transaction size. That makes billing period a bigger lever than most people realise:
| 100 subscribers, $9,600/year in revenue | Card charges per year | Fixed 30¢ fees | Fixed fees as % of revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billed monthly at $8 | 1,200 | $360 | 3.75% |
| Billed annually at $96 | 100 | $30 | 0.31% |
Our arithmetic on Stripe's published per-transaction fee. The percentage components (2.9% and 0.7%) are unaffected by billing period; only the fixed 30¢ changes.
That is about $330 a year recovered without changing platform at all. At small scale, persuading subscribers onto annual plans is worth more than the entire Substack-versus-beehiiv decision — and it is available on all three. Do that first; it costs nothing and does not require a migration. This is the same pattern we found in digital storefront fee math, where fixed per-sale fees dominate the percentage everyone argues about.
Two plan traps in this comparison
Ghost's $18 Starter plan cannot take payments
Ghost's pricing page lists Starter at $18 a month billed yearly, and marks paid subscriptions and tips as excluded on that plan. Paid subscriptions begin on Publisher at $29 a month billed yearly. Both plans include 1,000 members.
This matters because roundups routinely quote Ghost's entry price against Substack's 10% cut, which compares a plan that cannot accept a single dollar from readers against one whose entire purpose is accepting dollars. If you are evaluating Ghost for a paid newsletter, $29 a month billed yearly is the floor, and $18 is not a number that belongs in the comparison.
beehiiv's own pages disagree about paid subscriptions on the free plan
beehiiv's plan comparison marks paid subscriptions as unavailable on the free Launch tier, while beehiiv's own pricing blog states that all three plans enable paid subscriptions with no fee to beehiiv. We could not resolve that contradiction from public pages this cycle.
We have used the more conservative reading throughout — that Scale is the cheapest beehiiv plan which accepts payments — because planning around the cheaper interpretation and being wrong is the expensive mistake. If you are choosing beehiiv specifically to monetise on the free tier, confirm it with beehiiv support before you migrate, and note that Launch caps at 2,500 subscribers regardless.
Tool Income Lab recommendation
Work out your own number before you migrate anything. Take your current monthly subscription revenue, divide by 10, and compare it to the plan price for your list size. If the plan costs more, Substack's 10% is cheaper and moving would cost you money. Then switch your subscribers to annual billing regardless of platform — that saving is available today and requires no migration.
FAQ
At what point is beehiiv cheaper than Substack?
Once your monthly subscription revenue exceeds ten times beehiiv's monthly plan fee for your list size. On the annual-billing ladder that is roughly $430 a month at 1,000 subscribers, $780 at 5,000, $960 at 10,000 and $2,190 at 50,000. Below those figures Substack's percentage costs you less.
Can you take paid subscriptions on Ghost's $18 Starter plan?
No. Ghost's pricing page marks paid subscriptions and tips as excluded on Starter. The cheapest Ghost(Pro) plan that accepts reader payments is Publisher at $29 a month billed yearly, which includes 1,000 members.
Do free subscribers cost money?
Not on Substack, which bills on revenue. On beehiiv and Ghost they cost the same as paying subscribers, because both price on total audience size. Going from 2,500 to 10,000 subscribers takes beehiiv Scale from $61 to $96 a month on annual billing whether or not anyone new pays.
Does a 0% platform fee mean you keep everything?
No. All three run payments through Stripe, which charges 2.9% + 30¢ per card charge plus 0.7% Stripe Billing on recurring volume — around 7.4% on an $8 monthly subscription. A 0% take rate means the platform adds nothing on top of Stripe, not that collecting money is free.
Should I bill subscribers monthly or annually?
Annually, on fee grounds. Stripe's 30¢ is charged per transaction regardless of size, so 100 subscribers paying $8 monthly generate about $360 a year in fixed fees against about $30 for the same revenue collected annually. At small scale that saving beats the platform choice.
Final recommendation
There is no cheapest platform here, only a cheapest platform for a given ratio of revenue to list size. Substack sells you optionality: it costs nothing while you are working out whether anyone will pay, and it charges hardest exactly when you are succeeding. beehiiv and Ghost sell the opposite — a known cost that stops mattering as revenue grows, paid in advance and charged on subscribers who may never convert. So start where the downside is smallest and move when the arithmetic says to, not when a comparison article says $1,000 a month.
Every price here is a September 2026 snapshot from the vendors' own pages, except Substack's 10%, which we flag above as widely reported but not verified by us this cycle. These platforms repriced repeatedly through 2025 and 2026, so re-check the ladder at your own list size before committing to an annual plan.
Related reads: comparison hub, email marketing tools for beginners, MailerLite vs ConvertKit, building a newsletter list from scratch, and Gumroad vs Payhip vs Lemon Squeezy fee math.