beehiiv vs Substack (2026): Fees, Free Plans & Paid Newsletter Math

Quick Verdict: A 10% Toll or a Monthly Subscription?

Choose Substack if you want zero software cost until readers pay, are comfortable giving up 10% of subscription revenue plus Stripe's fees, and value its reader network, Notes and app. Choose beehiiv if you want a free tier up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, or a flat monthly plan that keeps 0% of paid-subscription revenue and adds automations, ad monetization and a custom sending domain. Neither is free in every scenario; the cheaper platform depends on how many readers pay you and how much.

The arithmetic is simple enough to do before you pick an editor. Substack's fee is 10% of each subscription payment; beehiiv's Lite plan showed $49 per month on yearly billing at the pricing page's default 1,000-subscriber selector on October 22, 2026. Those two numbers meet at $490 of monthly subscription revenue: below it Substack's percentage costs less than beehiiv's flat fee, above it the flat fee wins—before Stripe differences, custom-domain charges and the value you place on each platform's growth tools.

Research method: official pricing pages, help-center articles and terms checked October 22, 2026. This is a documentary comparison, not a hands-on deliverability, growth or migration test. Dollar budgets use regular USD prices at stated subscriber tiers or explicitly labeled planning assumptions, excluding taxes, local payment-method fees and prices at other slider positions. The beehiiv review, Substack review and email marketing category provide context; the dated primary sources below govern this comparison's current claims.

Pricing Models: Percentage of Revenue vs Subscriber Tiers

Substack's cost article states that publishing is free no matter how many subscribers you have, and that when paid subscriptions are on, Substack keeps 10% of subscription revenue while Stripe charges its own processing fees. Its fee table lists Stripe card processing at 2.9% + $0.30 per payment for US cards, a Stripe Billing fee of 0.7% for recurring payments, local payment methods priced by Stripe, and an optional one-time $50 custom-domain charge.

beehiiv's pricing page now lists four plans—Free, Lite, Pro and Enterprise—rather than the older Launch, Scale and Max names some guides still use. With the page's default settings of 1,000 subscribers and yearly billing, Lite displayed $49 per month and Pro $95 per month; Enterprise is custom. The page's FAQ says yearly billing saves up to 20% compared with paying month to month, so monthly billing costs more, and the price changes as you move the subscriber slider. Confirm the figure at your own list size before budgeting.

The subscriber caps are explicit: Free includes up to 2,500 subscribers, Lite up to 100,000, Pro up to 250,000, with Enterprise custom. beehiiv counts unique email addresses subscribed to your publication, and every plan includes unlimited email sends. A 2,400-subscriber free newsletter therefore fits beehiiv Free, while the 2,501st subscriber requires Lite at that tier's price. Substack has no software tier to outgrow; the Mailchimp alternatives guide explains why list-size pricing is the norm elsewhere in email software.

beehiiv's FAQ also answers the question creators ask most: it takes 0% of paid-subscription and digital-product revenue, and you keep what you earn minus Stripe's standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. The pricing page lists paid subscriptions under Lite, so the 0% rate applies on a paid plan; the reviewed pages did not describe a paid-subscription feature on Free. That is the structural difference: Substack charges when you earn, beehiiv charges when you grow or want paid features. Traditional ESPs in the email marketing platforms guide follow beehiiv's model, not Substack's.

Worked Example: 1,000 Subscribers, 100 Paying $8 a Month

Assume 1,000 subscribers, 100 of whom pay $8 per month by US card on the web. Gross subscription revenue is $800 per month. On Substack, the platform fee is 10% × $800 = $80. Stripe card processing is 2.9% × $800 + 100 × $0.30 = $23.20 + $30 = $53.20, and the 0.7% Stripe Billing fee adds $5.60. Total deductions are $138.80, leaving $661.20 per month, or about $7,934 over twelve identical months before taxes and refunds.

On beehiiv Lite at the verified 1,000-subscriber yearly price, software is $49 per month (12 × $49 = $588 per year). beehiiv keeps 0%, and Stripe card processing on the same payments is $53.20. Net is $800 − $49 − $53.20 = $697.80 per month, about $8,374 over twelve months—roughly $440 more than the Substack scenario. beehiiv's FAQ quotes only the 2.9% + $0.30 card fee; it does not mention Stripe's recurring Billing fee, so verify in your own Stripe dashboard whether that 0.7% also applies to your beehiiv subscriptions.

Scale the paying audience down and the result flips. With 30 paying readers at $8, gross is $240; Substack's cut is $24 plus $6.96 + $9 in card fees and $1.68 in Billing fees, leaving $198.36. beehiiv Lite still costs $49 plus $15.96 in card fees, leaving $175.04. The flat fee is the better deal only once paid revenue clears roughly $490 a month—the break-even where 10% equals $49. Use the SaaS spending worksheet to record your actual paying-reader count and price before deciding.

These are planning figures, not quotes. They exclude annual-plan discounts readers may choose, founding-member tiers, refunds, disputes, sales tax or VAT, local payment methods, in-app purchases through Apple, and beehiiv prices at other subscriber tiers. If your list is 10,000 or 50,000 subscribers, re-run the comparison with the slider price for that tier rather than assuming the 1,000-subscriber figure.

The iOS Wrinkle: Apple's Cut Is on Top

Substack's in-app purchase guide explains that Apple charges an extra 15–30% on subscriptions bought through the iOS app, so Substack can automatically adjust in-app prices to cover those fees, or you can choose to keep prices the same and absorb them. Its cost article adds that Substack's 10% on in-app purchases is based on your web price, and the in-app payment option cannot be disabled while payments are connected.

For the $8 example, a reader who subscribes through the iPhone app may pay more than $8 if you chose to adjust prices, and your net on that reader differs from the web calculation. Substack's payments article also notes that Apple does not transfer billing relationships between platforms and that App Store payouts can take up to 45 days after the end of the month, while web payments usually arrive in your bank account within 48 hours after the first 7–14-day payout.

beehiiv's reviewed pricing and help pages describe paid subscriptions and digital products processed through your own Stripe account; they do not describe an in-app purchase channel with separate app-store fees. If a meaningful share of your audience reads on iOS, model the two payment channels separately rather than treating 10% as the whole Substack cost. The creator tools guide covers the wider stack that sits around either platform.

Who Owns the Payment Relationship?

Both platforms route paid subscriptions through Stripe, but the account structure matters for portability. beehiiv's Stripe account guide describes a personal Stripe account that processes and receives revenue from paid subscriptions and digital products and is fully owned and managed by you. Substack's payments article says Stripe is its sole payment provider and that payout account details are managed directly in Stripe, not in Substack.

beehiiv's Substack migration page claims that premium subscriptions can be transferred so that payment method, billing cycle and other settings remain unchanged. Substack's own documentation reviewed here does not describe a supported outbound transfer of paying subscribers, and it states that Apple does not transfer billing relationships between platforms. Treat the vendor's migration promise as a process to verify with both support teams and a small test cohort, not as a guarantee that every paying reader moves without re-entering a card.

Substack also exempts creators in some countries from its application fee. Its fee-exemption article lists India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Malaysia and Thailand, where the Substack application fee does not apply while Stripe fees still do. Country eligibility for Stripe itself governs both platforms; Substack points writers to Stripe's supported-country list. Check that list before promising paid tiers from a country Stripe does not serve.

Custom Domains and Sending Identity

Substack's custom-domain article says Substack charges a one-time $50 USD fee to use a custom domain, requires the publication to be hosted on a subdomain such as www, and notes that emails are still sent from a substack.com address. Your web address can be yours; your sending identity remains Substack's. For a brand that wants readers to see its own domain in the From line, that is a permanent limitation rather than a setting.

beehiiv's custom-domain guide is marked as available on paid plans. It lets you use the domain as your web or redirect domain and set it as your email sending domain and branded link, and it requires every custom-domain user to configure DMARC. The Free plan therefore sends from beehiiv infrastructure without your domain, which is one reason a brand-led newsletter often starts on Lite even below 2,500 subscribers.

Treat DNS and authentication as part of the cost. SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, warm-up behavior and reply handling are your responsibility once you send from your own domain, and no platform promises inbox placement. If deliverability is the deciding factor, compare it with the EmailOctopus vs MailerLite guide, which looks at traditional ESPs rather than newsletter-first platforms.

Growth Tools: Recommendations, Ads and Referrals

Both platforms include free cross-newsletter recommendations. beehiiv's recommendation network is listed on Free, and its paid-recommendations update explains that Boosts are now called paid recommendations, available on paid plans, while free recommendations remain on all plans; Email Boosts and Direct Links were retired. Substack documents recommendations, Notes and its app as discovery surfaces, but does not sell a paid acquisition marketplace in the pages reviewed.

beehiiv's Ad Network FAQ states the network is available to anyone on a paid plan who is actively sending on beehiiv, that payouts require a Stripe Express account, and that payouts are processed on the 20th of each month for the previous month's ads into a beehiiv Wallet you can withdraw from without a fee. Its usage guide limits posts to three ads and claimed offers to a five-day window. The pricing page's "Avg. $39/mo" label is a marketing average, not a guarantee for your list.

Substack's model is deliberately different: no native ad network, with revenue centered on paid subscriptions, founding-member pricing that must exceed your annual plan price, and gift and group subscriptions. A sponsorship-funded newsletter and a reader-funded newsletter can both be profitable; the content marketing stack guide helps decide which revenue line you are actually building before the platform choice locks it in.

Automation, Segmentation and Analytics

beehiiv places Automations, Audience Polls and A/B Testing on Lite, and Webhooks, Dynamic Content and advanced analytics on Pro. The Free plan's analytics lookback is 30 days, Lite's is 12 months and Pro's is unlimited, so a free publication cannot study a year of open and click trends inside the platform. API and integrations are listed on every plan, including Free. For how a creator-focused ESP handles the same jobs, the Flodesk vs Kit comparison is the closest reference point.

Substack's tools are simpler but not absent. Its segments article describes saved subscriber filters that update dynamically and can be used to send to a specific audience segment, and its Google Analytics guide lets you enter a GA4 measurement ID to track page views, sign-ups and paid subscriptions. The pages reviewed did not document an automation builder, so welcome sequences and behavior-triggered emails are not a documented Substack capability.

That gap is also a conflict to note: beehiiv's own comparison page describes Substack as having no integrations, while Substack documents the GA4 integration above. Use vendor comparison pages for feature discovery, then confirm each claim in the other vendor's help center. If automation depth is your real requirement, the ConvertKit alternatives guide compares platforms built around sequences and tags rather than newsletters.

Team Seats, Publications and Limits

beehiiv's compare table lists 1 team seat and 1 publication on Free, 2 seats and 3 publications on Lite, 10 seats and 10 publications on Pro, and unlimited seats with custom publications on Enterprise. Guest authors scale from 1 to 3 to unlimited. Removing beehiiv branding is a Pro feature; Free and Lite publications carry it. A two-person media brand that needs separate logins and no platform branding is therefore a Pro-tier requirement regardless of list size.

Substack's publication limits allow up to 10 publications per account, and the pages reviewed state no cap on subscribers or emails sent. Imports have no mailing-list size limit, although very large lists go through a verification review. Substack publications also carry Substack's identity in the sending address and network surfaces; there is no paid tier that removes it.

Count collaborators before comparing prices. A solo writer rarely hits either platform's seat limits, but an editor, a designer and a sponsorship manager working in one account changes the beehiiv tier you need. The software evaluation checklist has a place to record seats, publications and branding requirements alongside the fee math.

Exports and Migration: What Actually Moves

Substack's export article lets you download a subscriber CSV with all columns or only visible columns, and notes it is not currently possible to export subscriber names. Its publication export says anything you publish is yours to own and delivers a zip file of your publication's data. beehiiv's migration page says you can export your subscribers anytime, and its Substack guide describes uploading that CSV and dropping your current URL into a content import tool.

A CSV moves email addresses and statuses; it does not move the payment relationship. Paying subscribers have Stripe customer records tied to the platform that created them, and Substack documents that Apple in-app subscriptions cannot be transferred between platforms at all. Plan for three groups: free subscribers (CSV), web-billed paid subscribers (a verified transfer process or re-subscription) and iOS-billed subscribers (re-subscription on the new platform).

Run the migration in an order that avoids double-charging or silent churn: export, import free readers, test sends to a small segment, then handle paid readers with both vendors' support in writing before switching off the old paywall. Keep the original export and confirmation emails as your own records; beehiiv's terms note that after cancellation it is not required to maintain or make available your data, and that inactive free accounts may be reclaimed after notice. The free cloud storage guide covers where to keep that archive.

Which Platform Fits Your Newsletter?

Start on Substack when you are testing whether readers will pay, want no software bill, and value the network, Notes and app distribution more than a custom sending domain or automations. Its cost is proportional: 10% plus Stripe fees, and $50 once for a custom web domain. The trade is permanent Substack sending identity, Apple's cut on iOS subscriptions and limited automation.

Start on beehiiv Free when a free newsletter under 2,500 subscribers needs unlimited sends, recommendations and API access at $0. Move to Lite when paid subscriptions, automations, ad monetization or a custom sending domain matter and your paid revenue is heading past the $490-per-month break-even. Choose Pro when branding removal, 10 seats, webhooks or unlimited analytics are requirements. Whatever you pick, confirm the price at your subscriber tier, check your Stripe country, and run a small test migration before moving a paying audience.