Beehiiv vs Substack

Beehiiv is the better choice for a newsletter with a paid tier, and the case gets stronger every month the list grows.

At $430 a month in reader revenue the two platforms cost the same; at $2,000 the gap is $157 a month in Beehiiv's favour, and Substack's fee has no ceiling.

Substack is the better choice for everyone else, and that is a large group. If your newsletter is free, or you have under $430 a month in paid subscriptions, Substack costs less and demands no setup time.

A free list of 40,000 readers costs nothing on Substack and $43/mo on Beehiiv.

Substack loses for serious monetisation. Beehiiv loses for free newsletters above its 2,500-subscriber ceiling. Neither loses on feature quality, which is why the fee model deserves more of your attention than the feature tour.

Work your own numbers through our creator pricing calculators before you move a list.

Substack publishes one price and it is zero. There is no monthly fee, no contact limit and no send cap, for any list size, as long as your newsletter is free. The platform earns only when you do, taking 10% of paid subscription revenue.

Stripe processes the payments and adds its own 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction on top of that.

Beehiiv charges by subscriber count instead. Launch is $0/mo and covers up to 2,500 subscribers across as many as three publications with unlimited sends. Scale is $43/mo, or $517 billed for the year. Max is $96/mo, or $1,151 for the year. Enterprise is quoted.

Beehiiv takes no percentage of paid subscriptions at any tier.

The split matters most for what the free tiers withhold. Substack's free tier withholds nothing: paid subscriptions, recommendations and the reader app are all available to a writer paying nothing, because the 10% only triggers on revenue.

Beehiiv's Launch tier withholds the monetisation features themselves, including paid subscriptions, the ad network and boosts, so a Beehiiv writer who wants to charge readers has to pay $43/mo first.

Both platforms host your archive, give you a web presence and let you export your subscriber list. Our Beehiiv review and Substack review carry the tier detail, and the newsletter platforms category covers the dozen tools that sit around these two.

Choose Substack when you have not charged a reader yet. The platform costs nothing to start, there is no card to enter, the recommendation network sends real traffic between publications, and you keep full access to paid tiers for the day you turn them on.

Writers who want to publish this week rather than configure a platform this week should start here.

Choose Beehiiv when paid subscriptions are the plan rather than the hope.

Scale at $43/mo is a known number that does not grow with your success, the ad network and boosts give a second revenue line that Substack has no equivalent for, and the 30-day trial on Scale means you can test the monetisation tooling before you pay.

Check your subscriber count against the 2,500-subscriber free ceiling first.

Work the arithmetic at three revenue levels and the decision stops being a matter of taste. At $200 a month in paid subscriptions, Substack takes $20 and Beehiiv Scale would cost $43, so Substack is $23 a month cheaper. At $430 the two are level.

At $2,000 a month Substack takes $200 against Beehiiv's $43, a gap of $157 every month, or $1,884 across a year.

Stripe's processing cut applies on both platforms, so it drops out of the comparison. What does not drop out is that Beehiiv's cost is capped by its tier while Substack's is not.

A writer whose paid list doubles pays Beehiiv the same $43 until they cross a subscriber threshold, and pays Substack twice as much the month it happens.

Run the comparison for a free newsletter and it inverts completely. Substack has no subscriber ceiling, so a free list of 40,000 readers costs nothing.

Beehiiv's free Launch tier stops at 2,500 subscribers, so the same list costs $43/mo on Scale with no revenue to offset it. If you have no paid tier and no plan for one, Substack is the cheaper home by a wide margin.

Neither platform is a general email marketing tool, and neither does the segmentation and automation that a product business needs.

If your list sells software rather than writing, the Kit and Substack comparison is a closer match, and our newsletter platform guide covers the rest of the field.

Substack's price list has one line. Writers pay $0/mo. The platform takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, and Stripe takes 2.9% plus 30 cents on each payment it processes.

A free newsletter of any size costs nothing, with no contact limit and no cap on monthly sends, as checked on 2026-06-11.

Beehiiv prices by subscriber count. Launch is $0/mo and covers up to 2,500 subscribers across up to three publications, with unlimited sends and the website builder included. Scale is $43/mo, billed annually at $517 for the year. Max is $96/mo, or $1,151 annually.

Enterprise is negotiated. Checked 2026-10-01.

The $43 figure is the one to anchor on, because it is the first paid tier and the first tier where Beehiiv lets you charge readers. Dividing it by Substack's 10% fee gives $430 a month in paid subscription revenue as the break-even.

Under that, Substack's cut is the smaller number. Over it, the flat fee is.

What the break-even hides is that the two platforms are not selling the same thing at that price. Beehiiv Scale buys the ad network, boosts and the monetisation tooling that Launch withholds.

Substack's $0 buys paid subscriptions with no feature gate at all, plus the recommendation network. So a writer earning $300 a month is paying Substack $30 for something Beehiiv does not sell on its free tier at any price.

Beehiiv runs a 30-day free trial on Scale and Max with no card required, which is enough to test the ad network against real sends. Substack needs no trial because there is nothing to pay until you earn.

Full tier tables sit on the Beehiiv pricing page and the Substack pricing page.

Setting up on Substack takes under an hour and leaves few decisions to regret later. You claim a publication name, write, and publish. The platform handles hosting, the archive, the subscribe flow and payments.

Custom domains are supported, which matters because a custom domain is what makes a later migration survivable.

Beehiiv asks for more configuration up front: publication settings, a website theme, signup forms and, if you want them, automations. The payoff is control over the signup experience and a second revenue line through the ad network.

Budget an afternoon rather than an hour, and expect to revisit the website builder once you have seen how it renders on mobile.

Migration runs in both directions and the mechanics are the same either way: export the subscriber list as a CSV, import it on the other side, and point your custom domain at the new host.

What does not migrate is the thing worth checking before you pick. Substack's recommendation traffic and reader-app distribution are platform features, so a writer who built a large share of their list through recommendations loses that channel on the way out.

Paid subscriber billing is the harder half of any move, because readers' payment methods live with Stripe under the platform's account.

Confirm how your platform handles an existing Stripe subscription before you announce anything to readers, and plan the switch for the start of a billing month. Our Substack alternatives guide covers the other destinations writers consider.