The short version. beehiiv is free to 2,500 subscribers and takes nothing from paid subscriptions, which is the strongest starting position here. Kit is free at 1,000 and better than anything else at selling to a list rather than just mailing it. Ghost costs $18 a month and is the only one you can pick up and move. Substack costs nothing until you charge readers, then 10% of everything forever. MailerLite starts at $12 and is the right answer if you want to send email and nothing more.
Every price here came off the vendor’s own pricing page on 16 August 2026, checked at 1,000 subscribers where the plan is priced by list size.
Writing in public to build a business? Our directory keeps shortlists for founders who publish, reviewed on a schedule.
The first thousand subscribers are free almost everywhere, so ignore that
Every comparison of these tools opens with the free tiers, and the free tiers have quietly stopped being a useful way to tell them apart. beehiiv gives you 2,500 subscribers for nothing. Kit is $0 at 1,000. Substack has never charged for sending. You can run a real newsletter for a year on any of them without paying.
So the decision is not what it costs to send. It is what happens the first time a reader gives you money, because that is where these five stop resembling each other:
- Substack takes 10% of your subscription revenue, and Stripe takes its cut on top.
- beehiiv takes 0% and charges $43 a month on Scale at 1,000 subscribers.
- Ghost takes 0% and charges $29 a month on Publisher, the cheapest plan that allows paid subscriptions.
- Kit is $33 a month on Creator at 1,000 subscribers.
Run those numbers against each other and the crossover arrives sooner than most people expect. At $290 a month in reader revenue, Substack’s 10% equals Ghost’s monthly fee. At $430 a month it equals beehiiv’s. Below those numbers Substack is genuinely cheaper. Above them you are paying a percentage of a growing number for a service whose cost does not grow.
We ranked accordingly: what it costs when the newsletter starts earning, whether you can leave, and whether the tool helps you sell anything or only helps you send.
1. beehiiv takes nothing from what your readers pay
Launch is free up to 2,500 subscribers. Scale is $43 a month at 1,000 subscribers, or $517 a year. Max is $96 a month, or $1,151 a year. Enterprise is quoted. beehiiv takes 0% of paid subscription revenue on every plan. Verified 16 August 2026.
The 0% is the whole argument and it compounds. A newsletter making $2,000 a month from readers pays beehiiv $43 and pays Substack $200. Same work, same readers, and the gap widens every month you grow.
The free tier is also the most generous starting point on this page at 2,500 subscribers, though it is worth knowing what is missing from it: no automations, no A/B testing, no paid subscriptions, no referral program. It is a place to write, not a place to run a business, and you will move to Scale about the time the newsletter starts working.
What you get on Scale beyond the sending is the growth machinery, meaning the referral program, the recommendation network and the ad marketplace. Whether that machinery matters depends entirely on whether you want a newsletter that grows by cross-promotion. Some founders do. Some find the whole ecosystem a bit incestuous.
Who it is wrong for: anyone whose newsletter is one channel of a broader marketing operation. beehiiv is built for newsletters as the product, and if yours is a way to stay in front of prospects, Kit’s automation will serve you better.
2. Kit, for people whose list is meant to sell something
Newsletter is $0 at 1,000 subscribers. Creator is $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers, or $390 a year. Pro is $66 a month, or $790 a year. Prices rise with list size. Verified 16 August 2026.
Kit was built for creators selling things to an audience, and it still does that better than anything else on this list. Tagging, segmentation and visual automations are all first-class rather than bolted on, which matters the moment you want people who clicked one link to get a different sequence than everyone else.
The free plan is more capable than it looks. Unlimited landing pages, unlimited broadcasts, tagging, and the ability to sell digital products, all at $0. What you give up is automation depth, and you give it up at exactly one basic automation, which is enough to build a welcome sequence and nothing else.
Creator at $33 is priced above beehiiv’s free tier and below its Scale plan, and the question is whether you need the automation. If your newsletter is one email to everyone every week, you do not, and you are paying for a feature you will not open. If you have a lead magnet, a product and different messages for different people, you very much do.
Who it is wrong for: pure newsletters with no product. You will spend money on segmentation you never use, and the free tiers above and below are better value for simply mailing people.
3. Ghost is the one you can leave with
Starter is $18 a month billed yearly, 1,000 members, no paid subscriptions. Publisher is $29 a month billed yearly, 1,000 members, 0% transaction fees. Business is $199 a month, 10,000 members. Custom is quoted. Verified 16 August 2026.
Ghost is open source, which sounds like a technical detail and is actually the commercial point. Your site, your subscriber list, your domain and your content can be exported and self-hosted, and the company hosting it for you knows that. That is a very different relationship from the other four.
Publisher at $29 is the plan that matters, because Starter does not support paid subscriptions and a newsletter you cannot charge for is a hobby with a mailing list. At $29 with 0% fees, it undercuts Substack the moment reader revenue passes about $290 a month.
The trade is that Ghost is a publishing platform first and an email tool second. It is the best of these at being a website. It is the weakest at automation, segmentation and the growth tricks beehiiv builds its pitch on.
Who it is wrong for: anyone who wants subscribers to arrive without effort. Ghost has no recommendation network and no referral engine. It gives you a very good place to put people and no help finding them.
4. Substack is free, until it is expensive
No monthly fee. Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, and Stripe’s processing fees apply on top, which in practice puts the total cost of a paid subscriber in the low to mid teens as a percentage. Verified 16 August 2026.
Two real advantages, and they are not small. The first is that you can start in ten minutes with no decisions and no cost. The second is the network: recommendations, the app and the Notes feed genuinely send new readers to writers who have earned them, which is more than any other platform here can honestly claim.
The cost of both is a percentage with no ceiling, applied to a number you are trying to grow. Five hundred paid subscribers at $8 a month is $4,000, and Substack’s share is $400 a month, every month, for hosting that costs about the same as everybody else’s $43 plan.
The subtler cost is that the audience is partly Substack’s. Readers subscribe to you inside an app that recommends your competitors, and the export gets you email addresses but not the discovery that brought them.
Start here if you have no audience and no idea whether the newsletter will work, which describes most people honestly. Move once reader revenue is consistent, and expect the move to be less painful than you fear.
Who it is wrong for: anyone already earning meaningfully from readers, and anyone whose newsletter exists to sell a service rather than a subscription. In the second case you are paying nothing, which sounds fine until you notice how little of the platform is built for you.
5. MailerLite, when you want an email tool and not an identity
Free up to 250 subscribers with 2,500 monthly emails. Comfort starts at $12 a month. Power starts at $25 a month with unlimited monthly emails. Enterprise is a custom solution above 200,000 subscribers. Prices rise with list size. Verified 16 August 2026.
MailerLite is the cheapest serious option here and it is not trying to make you a creator. Campaigns, automations, landing pages, forms, a decent editor, and a bill that starts at $12. If what you need is to send good email to people who asked for it, this is the answer and the other four are overbuilt.
It ranks fifth on this particular list because it is not built for the founder case we are describing, where the newsletter is meant to produce customers. There is no recommendation network, no creator monetisation layer, and no strong story about turning readers into revenue.
The free tier is also the meanest here at 250 subscribers, which you will pass in a couple of good months.
Who it is wrong for: anyone planning paid subscriptions. That is not what this is, and the four above all handle it better.
Newsletters this ranking does not fit
Company newsletters sent from a marketing team. You need it in the same system as the rest of your marketing, and that decision belongs to whoever owns the CRM.
Transactional email. Receipts, password resets and product notifications are a different job with different deliverability requirements, and none of these are the right tool.
Large existing lists. Above about 50,000 subscribers the pricing on all five changes character, and the comparison has to be run at your actual volume.
Anyone who has not written four issues yet. The platform is not why the newsletter is not working. Write on the free tier of any of these, and switch when you have a reason to.
Also considered
Buttondown. Small, well built, plain, and pleasant if you want a text newsletter with no growth apparatus at all. Worth a look if this whole page felt like too much.
Mailchimp. Still fine, still expensive at scale, and increasingly aimed at ecommerce rather than writers. Most founders comparing these five have already left it.
Beehiiv’s ad network as a revenue plan. Real money for large newsletters and close to nothing below about 10,000 engaged subscribers. Do not choose a platform for it.
Self-hosted Ghost. Free software, real server, and you still pay a sending provider. Cheaper at scale, and a maintenance job you have to want.
Questions founders ask us
What does 1,000 subscribers cost?
Nothing on beehiiv Launch or Kit’s Newsletter plan, $18 a month on Ghost Starter, $33 on Kit Creator and $43 on beehiiv Scale. Below a thousand subscribers the free options are genuinely sufficient.
When does Substack stop being the cheap option?
At roughly $290 a month in reader revenue, where its 10% matches Ghost Publisher’s $29. Against beehiiv Scale at $43 the crossover is around $430 a month. Under those numbers Substack costs you less than any subscription here.
Can I move my list later?
Yes, everywhere. All five export subscribers. What does not export is the discovery, so leaving Substack costs you its recommendation traffic, and leaving beehiiv costs you the referral network. Plan for a drop in new signups rather than a drop in list size.
Which is best if the newsletter exists to sell my services?
Kit, because the point is not the newsletter, it is the sequence that runs after somebody downloads something. That is the one job Kit is unambiguously best at.
Is 0% transaction fees worth paying a monthly fee for?
Only above the crossover, and the crossover is a specific number you can calculate. Divide the monthly fee by 0.10. Under that much monthly reader revenue, the percentage is cheaper. Over it, the subscription is, and the gap grows.
Does the platform affect deliverability?
Less than your list does. All five have competent infrastructure. What actually lands your email in inboxes is authenticating your domain and removing people who never open anything, and no platform will do the second one for you.
See our maintained directory picks for founders building an audience, including tools for turning followers into a list you own.
Last reviewed: 16 August 2026. Every price was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on that date, checked at 1,000 subscribers where the plan is priced by list size. Substack’s fee is its published 10% of subscription revenue, before payment processing. We review this page quarterly.
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