beehiiv vs Substack in 2026

beehiiv and Substack both let you write a newsletter, build a list and charge readers. The difference is how they make money from you. Substack is free and takes 10% of your paid revenue. beehiiv charges a monthly plan once you pass 2,500 subscribers or want to sell anything, and takes 0% of subscriptions. Everything else, from discovery to ads to how easily you can leave, follows from that choice.

This guide compares the two on documented facts from their own pricing pages and help centers, checked in October 2026. We also run three real cost scenarios with the arithmetic shown, so you can see where the line falls for your newsletter. Ghost, Kit, Buttondown and Medium are covered near the end for readers who want neither.

beehiiv vs Substack at a Glance

The short version: Substack is cheaper while your newsletter is free or small, and beehiiv is cheaper once paid revenue is real. Substack also has the stronger reader network. beehiiv has more tools for running a newsletter as a business: ads, automations, an API and a website you control.

Master comparison table

beehiiv vs Substack, feature by feature

Pricing and Fees

Substack: free, then 10%

Substack has one plan for creators, and it costs nothing. There are no subscriber limits and no monthly fees, whether you have 500 readers or 100,000. Substack makes money only when you turn on paid subscriptions. Then it takes 10% of each subscription payment.

Payment fees sit on top. Substack's help center lists:

• Stripe card fee: 2.9% + $0.30 per payment for US cards.
• Stripe Billing: 0.7% on recurring payments.
• Apple in-app purchases: subscriptions bought in the Substack iOS app go through Apple. Substack says Apple charges an extra 15% to 30%, deducted along with Substack's fee. You can choose to raise in-app prices to cover it.

Other details that affect price:

• Minimum prices on US-dollar accounts are $5/month and $30/year. You can't offer a yearly-only plan.
• A custom domain is a one-time $50 per publication. It must be a subdomain such as www, and your emails still send from an @substack.com address.
• From December 1, 2026, Substack will calculate, collect and remit sales tax and VAT on paid subscriptions at no extra cost, through Stripe Tax. It is not available for publishers in Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, India or Thailand.

Here is the math for one $8/month US card payment, using Substack's published rates: Substack takes $0.80, Stripe takes about $0.53 ($0.23 + $0.30), Billing takes about $0.06, and you keep about $6.61, or roughly 82.6%.

beehiiv: a plan price, then 0%

beehiiv has four plans. Prices are set by subscriber bucket, so you pay the price for the bucket your list falls into. beehiiv says not to interpolate between buckets. Sends are unlimited on every plan.

• Free: $0 up to 2,500 subscribers. One seat, one publication, one custom website page, 30 days of analytics. No paid subscriptions, no ad network, no automations. beehiiv's pages differ on whether Free includes a custom domain: the comparison table and the trial article say paid plans only, so plan on needing Lite.
• Lite: up to 100,000 subscribers. Adds paid subscriptions (one paid tier), the ad network, paid recommendations, 10 automations, custom domains, A/B testing and webhooks.
• Pro: up to 250,000 subscribers. Adds unlimited paid tiers, paid trials, group subscriptions, branding removal, the Send API, unlimited automations and a sponsorship storefront.
• Enterprise: custom pricing, with SSO, dedicated IPs and a customer success manager.

On paid revenue, beehiiv takes 0% of subscription and digital product sales. Stripe still charges its standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, as beehiiv states. beehiiv doesn't mention Stripe Billing's 0.7% fee, so we show it separately in the scenarios below.

There is a 14-day trial of Pro features with no card. During the trial you can't take paid subscriptions, join the ad network, use paid recommendations or connect a custom domain. Those need you to pay.

Other fees to know

• beehiiv paid recommendations: beehiiv keeps 20%, built into the price per subscriber. A $2.50 offer pays the recommending newsletter $2.00.
• beehiiv direct sponsorships: a $10 flat fee per sponsorship invoice sent through Stripe.
• beehiiv Stripe setup: you must create a new Stripe account through beehiiv's setup. You can't connect an existing Stripe account you use elsewhere.
• Substack: no other platform fees are documented beyond the 10%, Stripe, Apple and the $50 domain.

What You Really Pay: Three Scenarios

These scenarios use only the published rates above. All payments are monthly US card payments. beehiiv plan prices use yearly billing (month to month costs more). We don't count taxes, refunds, failed payments or Apple in-app purchases.

Scenario 1: free newsletter, 5,000 subscribers

You don't charge readers. You just want to send a weekly newsletter to 5,000 people.

• Substack: $0 per year. Add a one-time $50 if you want a custom domain.
• beehiiv: Free stops at 2,500 subscribers, so you need Lite at the 5,000 bucket: $95/month billed yearly = $1,140/year, or $109 × 12 = $1,308/year month to month.

Difference: Substack is $1,140 to $1,308 a year cheaper.

The case for paying beehiiv here is what Lite unlocks: the ad network, automations, a custom domain and paid recommendations. beehiiv's pricing page shows an average of $39/month from ad monetization. That is beehiiv's own average across creators, not a forecast for you. Even at that figure, ads would cover about 41% of the Lite plan ($39 ÷ $95). If you want to stay free and don't need ads, Substack wins. (Kit's free plan also covers 5,000 subscribers at $0, if you want a non-Substack option.)

Under 2,500 subscribers, both are free. beehiiv Free gives you unlimited sends and a basic website, but no automations, ads or paid subscriptions.

Scenario 2: 500 paid subscribers at $8/month

Your list is 5,000 subscribers, and 500 of them pay $8/month. Gross revenue is 500 × $8 = $4,000/month, or $48,000/year. There are 500 card payments a month.

Substack, per month:

• Substack fee: 10% × $4,000 = $400
• Stripe card: 2.9% × $4,000 = $116, plus $0.30 × 500 = $150, total $266
• Stripe Billing: 0.7% × $4,000 = $28
• Total fees: $694/month = $8,328/year. You keep $39,672.

beehiiv Lite (5,000 bucket, billed yearly):

• Plan: $95 × 12 = $1,140/year
• Stripe card: $266 × 12 = $3,192/year
• beehiiv fee: $0
• Total: $4,332/year. You keep $43,668.
• If Stripe Billing's 0.7% also applies to your beehiiv Stripe account: add $28 × 12 = $336, total $4,668/year.

Difference: beehiiv saves $3,660 to $3,996 a year. On Pro at the same size ($169 × 12 = $2,028/year), the total is $5,220 and the saving is still $3,108 before any Billing fee.

Scenario 3: 2,000 paid subscribers at $10/month

Your list is 20,000 subscribers, and 2,000 pay $10/month. Gross revenue is $20,000/month, or $240,000/year.

Substack, per month:

• Substack fee: 10% × $20,000 = $2,000
• Stripe card: 2.9% × $20,000 = $580, plus $0.30 × 2,000 = $600, total $1,180
• Stripe Billing: 0.7% × $20,000 = $140
• Total fees: $3,320/month = $39,840/year. You keep $200,160.

beehiiv (25,000 bucket, billed yearly):

• Lite: $169 × 12 = $2,028/year. Pro: $299 × 12 = $3,588/year.
• Stripe card: $1,180 × 12 = $14,160/year
• Total on Lite: $16,188/year. Total on Pro: $17,748/year. On Pro you keep $222,252.
• If Stripe Billing also applies: add $140 × 12 = $1,680.

Difference: beehiiv saves $20,412 to $23,652 a year, depending on plan and whether Billing applies. At this size, most publishers would pick Pro for multiple paid tiers and branding removal. The saving is still more than $20,000.

Where the line falls

Both platforms pay Stripe, so the real question is whether Substack's 10% is more than beehiiv's plan price.

• At a 5,000-subscriber list on Lite ($95/month billed yearly), Substack's 10% passes $95 when you earn more than $950/month in paid revenue. At $8/month, that is about 119 paid subscribers.
• At a 25,000-subscriber list on Pro ($299/month billed yearly), the line is $2,990/month, or about 299 paid subscribers at $10/month.

Below those numbers, Substack costs less. Above them, beehiiv costs less, and the gap widens with every new paid reader. Remember that beehiiv's plan price rises with your whole list, not just paying readers. A big free list with few paid readers pushes the line higher.

beehiiv also publishes its own calculator example: 2,000 paid subscribers at $5/month, where it says you net $109,320 a year on beehiiv against $97,668 on Substack. Our numbers above are calculated independently from both companies' rates.

Growth and Discovery

This is Substack's strongest area, and the main reason to accept its 10%.

Substack's network

Substack is also a reading platform. Its documented discovery tools are:

• iOS and Android reader apps with a home feed, explore page, search, push notifications and in-app subscriptions.
• Notes, a social feed where readers and writers post, restack, like and reply.
• Explore page, category leaderboards and Bestseller badges (white for hundreds of paid subscribers, orange for thousands, purple for tens of thousands).
• Recommendations: you recommend other Substacks, and they appear in the subscribe flow, on your homepage and in recommendation digest emails. Stats show how many free subscribers each recommendation brought in.
• Subscriber referrals with reward tiers. For paid publications, the defaults are free comps at 2, 10 and 25 referrals.
• Growth source tracking so you can see which subscribers came from the network.

The value here is that readers already have Substack accounts. Subscribing to a new publication in the app takes one tap. beehiiv has nothing that matches this.

beehiiv's growth tools

beehiiv works more like a growth toolkit than a network:

• Free recommendations on all plans: opt-in cross-promotion shown after someone subscribes. beehiiv says its network has 60,000+ active creators and publishers.
• Paid recommendations (renamed from Boosts in 2026) on Lite and Pro. You set a price per verified subscriber, a budget and targeting. You only pay for subscribers who pass verification. The minimum deposit is $20, and your balance must stay at 10 times your price per subscriber or the offer may pause. You can also earn by recommending others.
• Referral program (3 milestones on Lite).
• Website and SEO control, including custom pages, redirects and robots.txt on Pro.

beehiiv's community feature has a mobile app as a progressive web app, and beehiiv lists "custom mobile apps" in its Substack comparison. We found no beehiiv reader app where people browse and discover newsletters the way they do in the Substack app.

Bottom line: If you are starting from zero and want free discovery, Substack is better. If you already have an audience or a growth budget, beehiiv's paid recommendations let you buy subscribers with clear cost control.

Monetization: Paid Subscriptions, Ads and Recommendations

Paid subscriptions

Substack also runs Substack Boost, which is different from beehiiv's old Boosts. It is on by default when payments are enabled. Substack automatically shows discount offers: an upsell email to about 0.1% of your list per day with a default 20% off for a year, a multi-subscription discount of up to 20% when a reader subscribes to another Boost-enabled publication, and a free-month offer before someone cancels. These can lift conversions but also lower your average price. You can turn it off.

Ads and sponsorships

beehiiv has a full ad business:

• Ad network on Lite and above. Advertisers set CPC (verified unique clicks) or CPM (unique opens) offers. You can see up to 15 personalized offers and reserve up to 5 at once. There's no exclusivity, and you never have to run ads. Payouts arrive on the 20th of each month for the month before, through a Stripe Express account, withdrawable with no fee.
• Programmatic and on-demand ads, plus dynamic ad insertion for podcasts.
• Sponsorship storefront on Pro, for brands to book you directly. Direct sponsorship invoices through Stripe cost a $10 flat fee each.

beehiiv doesn't publish its share of ad network revenue.

Substack is built around subscriptions, not ads. It has no ad network that places ads in your newsletter. You can sell and run your own sponsored content. Substack has a newer sponsorship program called Creator Kits (a shareable media kit) for Bestseller publications or those with at least 100 paid subscribers, and says a partnership platform is coming. Podcasters can send an ad-free paid episode and a sponsored free version.

Recommendations as income

On beehiiv, recommending other newsletters can earn money: paid recommendations pay you per verified subscriber you send, minus beehiiv's 20%. On Substack, recommendations are free cross-promotion with no payment either way.

Bottom line: If you want to earn from ads or sell subscribers to other newsletters, beehiiv is the only one of the two that does it natively. If your income will be almost all paid subscriptions, compare the 10% against the plan price using the scenarios above.

Writing, Design and Website

Substack

Substack gives you a website at no cost. The visual editor has a live preview, and you choose from homepage layouts (profile, newspaper, magazine or custom). You can set colors, fonts, header, footer, logo, navigation and sections with their own themes, and add custom pages. Custom terms of service, privacy policy and cookie settings are supported.

What you can't do is add custom code or themes. Substack documents no custom code beyond custom email CSS. Your site looks like a Substack, and the custom domain is a one-time $50 and must be a subdomain such as www. Emails still send from @substack.com.

beehiiv

beehiiv includes a website builder on every plan, with templates and an AI website builder. Free gets one custom page. Lite adds the advanced builder, a custom domain, 5 pages and 10 redirects. Pro gets unlimited pages and redirects, custom robots.txt and AI bot controls. Custom CSS and HTML are supported, and a link-in-bio page is included. You can only remove beehiiv branding on Pro.

beehiiv connects custom domains through Entri, so you don't have to edit DNS records by hand. No extra fee is stated.

Team and authors

Bottom line: beehiiv gives you more control over the website and your brand. Substack gives you a clean, good-looking site with no work, but it will always look like Substack.

Ownership, Export and Leaving

This is where the platforms differ most in ways that are hard to see at signup.

Exporting from Substack

From Settings > Exports you can download a zip with your posts (CSV and HTML), your full subscriber list and optional stats, at any time. The subscriber export doesn't include subscriber names.

Paid subscriptions run in your own Stripe account through Stripe Connect. But leaving with paid subscribers needs care:

• If you click Disconnect Stripe, Substack refunds and notifies all paid subscribers, cancels all paid subscriptions and revokes its access to the Stripe account. Substack says to contact its human support team if you are moving to a new platform.
• Ghost's migration docs say Substack will keep taking its 10% on existing paid subscriptions after a move, and Ghost's concierge offers help getting those fees removed. Buttondown's docs say to ask Substack support to remove its 10% application fee rather than disconnecting Stripe.
• Apple in-app subscribers can't be transferred. Apple doesn't move billing relationships. You keep their emails, and they have to subscribe again.

Exporting from beehiiv

On all plans, Settings > Export Data gives you a subscriber CSV (quick or full, with custom fields and stats) and an export of all posts. Download links last 24 hours. A Subscription Export API endpoint exists, but you have to ask support for access.

Paid subscribers live in a Stripe account you can log into. beehiiv documents no tool to move paid subscribers out to another platform. If you turn off paid tiers in beehiiv, Stripe billing doesn't stop: you have to cancel it in Stripe.

Moving between them

• Substack to beehiiv: beehiiv has a CSV import, a content import tool and a paid subscription migration tool that copies Stripe subscriptions at the same prices. You must cancel billing on Substack yourself.
• beehiiv to Substack: Substack's help says paid subscribers come over as free, and premium posts must be copied by hand or made free first.

Bottom line: You can take your content and email list from either. Moving paid subscribers off Substack is possible but needs Substack's support team, and Apple subscribers are lost. beehiiv makes moving in easy, while moving out with paid subscribers is not documented. Whichever you pick, export your list regularly.

Podcasts, Video and Community

Substack includes all of this at no cost. beehiiv includes podcasting on every plan but caps downloads by plan, and saves webinars and audio newsletters for Pro.

Bottom line: For a creator mixing writing, podcast and live video, Substack offers the most for free. beehiiv's podcast tools are stronger for ad revenue.

Analytics, Automations and API

Analytics

Substack has a built-in dashboard with subscribers, traffic, ARR, retention, opens and clicks, posts, podcasts, Notes, referrals and earnings, plus per-subscriber revenue and CSV exports. You can A/B test headlines. You can connect GA4, Google Tag Manager, and Meta and X pixels.

beehiiv includes campaign and subscriber analytics on all plans, with verified clicks and report exports. History is limited by plan: 30 days on Free, 12 months on Lite, unlimited on Pro. Lite adds advanced website analytics.

Automations

Substack offers welcome emails for free, paid, imported and founding subscribers. Its features page lists drip campaigns triggered by new free or paid subscribers, founding upgrades and churn, with delays in hours. Dynamic segments by tags, country, activity, paid status and signup date let you target posts. There is no visual automation builder.

beehiiv has no automations on Free (only a welcome email). Lite allows 10 live automations with triggers such as signup, form, segment, tag, survey, paid subscription bought or cancelled, product bought and unengaged readers. Actions include sending email, delays, tags, custom fields and branches. Pro has unlimited automations plus click-triggered automations and A/B splits.

API and integrations

beehiiv: REST API on all plans with rate limits by plan, webhooks on Lite (3) and Pro (unlimited), and a Send API for programmatic email on Pro. It also has Zapier and Make, an app marketplace and an MCP server for AI assistants (read on Free, write on Lite and up).

Substack: no public API is documented. The only programmatic access is a read-only MCP server for stats, for Bestseller publications only, launched in July 2026. It can't publish or change anything. No Zapier integration is documented.

Bottom line: If you need to connect your newsletter to a store, a CRM or your own code, beehiiv is far ahead. Substack is a closed system.

When to Pick beehiiv

Pick beehiiv if:

• Your paid revenue is above the line. Roughly 119 paid subscribers at $8/month on a 5,000-subscriber list, or about $950/month in paid revenue. Above that, the 0% fee saves money every month.
• You want ad income. The ad network, sponsorship storefront and podcast ads are built in.
• You want to buy growth. Paid recommendations let you set a price per verified subscriber.
• You need automations or an API. Welcome sequences, re-engagement flows, click triggers and connections to other tools.
• You care about your own brand. Custom domain without the @substack.com sender, custom code and branding removal on Pro.
• You run several newsletters. Lite allows 3 publications, Pro 10.

Watch out for: the plan price rising with your whole list, the 2,500-subscriber limit on Free, and no paid features during the trial.

When to Pick Substack

Pick Substack if:

• You're starting out or don't charge yet. It costs nothing at any size.
• You want discovery. The app, Notes, explore page and recommendations bring readers in for free.
• Your paid revenue is small. Below the line above, 10% costs less than a beehiiv plan.
• You want podcast, video and live video in one place at no cost.
• You want almost nothing to set up. No plans, no list buckets, no Stripe account hunting.

Watch out for: the 10% on every paid payment forever, Apple's 15% to 30% on in-app subscriptions, no API, and the support-assisted process for moving paid subscribers out.

Alternatives Worth Considering

Ghost

Ghost is open-source publishing software run by a non-profit foundation. You can self-host it for free (Ghost recommends an Ubuntu server with at least 1 GB of memory) or pay for Ghost(Pro) hosting. Ghost takes 0% of paid subscriptions on Publisher and up, and you connect your own Stripe account.

Ghost(Pro) Starter is $15/month billed yearly for up to 1,000 members, but it can't take payments. Publisher starts at $29/month billed yearly for 1,000 members and is priced by members: $63/month billed yearly at 5,000 and $88/month at 10,000. You get custom themes, a free custom domain, Zapier and webhooks. Ghost has a Substack migrator that brings posts, free subscribers and paid subscribers across on the same Stripe account. Discovery is smaller: a recommendations feature in beta and distribution to the social web (ActivityPub).

Choose Ghost if you want a proper publication website you own, with no revenue share.

Kit

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is an email marketing tool for creators. Its free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers and lets you sell paid newsletters and digital products, but it has no automations. Creator starts at $33/month billed yearly ($39 monthly) for 1,000 subscribers and adds visual automations and sequences. Every sale costs 3.5% + 30 cents, and Kit says it keeps 0.6% after card processing. It has free and paid recommendations (paid ones carry a 23.5% fee) and sponsorship matching.

Choose Kit if you sell courses or products and need automation more than a publication website.

Buttondown

Buttondown is a small, independent newsletter tool with a Markdown editor and a strong API. It's free up to 100 subscribers, then $9/month up to 1,000, $29 up to 5,000 and $79 up to 10,000. Paid subscriptions are a $9/month add-on, and Buttondown takes no cut. Automations are +$29/month, analytics +$9. Paid subscribers live in your own Stripe account and can be moved. Its docs explain how to bring paid subscribers over from Substack on the same Stripe account.

Choose Buttondown if you want a cheap, plain paid newsletter with no revenue share.

Medium

Medium is a reading platform, not a newsletter business tool. You can't set your own subscription price. Instead, Partner Program writers earn a share of Medium's membership revenue based on reading and engagement, and Medium doesn't publish the rates. Joining needs a $5/month or $50/year membership. Followers can get emails when you publish, but email subscribers who joined after April 2025 can't be exported. We include it because many writers weigh it against Substack, but treat it as a reach channel next to your own list, not a replacement for one.

Scenario 2 on the alternatives

The same 5,000-subscriber list with 500 paid readers at $8/month ($48,000/year):

Stripe Billing's 0.7% ($336/year here) may apply on the Stripe-based options too; only Substack lists it. Kit's free plan looks cheapest, but it has no automations, and Kit's 3.5% grows faster than a flat plan as revenue rises.

The Verdict

Pick beehiiv if you're running the newsletter as a business and your paid revenue is past roughly $950/month on a 5,000-subscriber list. From there, the 0% fee saves thousands a year: about $3,700 to $4,000 at 500 paid readers, and more than $20,000 at 2,000. You also get ads, paid growth, automations, an API and a site that carries your brand.

Pick Substack if you're starting out, publishing for free, or earning modest paid revenue, and you value the reader app and network. It costs nothing to begin and includes podcast and video at no cost. Just know that the 10% grows with you, and that leaving with paid subscribers takes a support request.

A common path: start on Substack to find readers, and move to beehiiv or Ghost once paid revenue clears the line. If you plan that route, avoid pushing Apple in-app subscriptions, export your list often, and read the migration docs before you disconnect anything.