Substack takes 10% of every paid-subscription transaction on top of Stripe's processing fee, per its own published cost breakdown. beehiiv and Ghost charge neither of those things on subscription revenue — instead they charge a flat monthly plan fee, with beehiiv's paid tiers publishing a "0% Take Rate on Paid Subscriptions" and Ghost stating "0% transaction fees" on its Publisher tier and above. Same job, three different ways of pricing it.
What does Substack actually charge?
Publishing on Substack is free "no matter how many subscribers you have," according to Substack's own support documentation. The cost shows up only once a writer turns on paid subscriptions: Substack keeps 10% of each transaction, and Stripe, which processes the payment, keeps its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. On top of that, Substack applies a separate recurring billing fee — 0.7% for anyone who activated payments on or after July 10, 2024. Writers who turned on payments before that date kept the older 0.5% rate through June 30, 2025, after which the newer rate applies to them too.
Alternative payment methods carry their own Stripe pricing rather than the card rate: Substack's page lists iDEAL at 80 cents flat, Bancontact and Sofort at 1.4% plus 30 cents, and SEPA Direct Debit at 0.8% plus 30 cents, capped at $6. None of these figures are tiered by subscriber count — a newsletter with 200 paid subscribers and one with 20,000 pay the identical percentage.
How do beehiiv and Ghost make money instead?
Both platforms sell software subscriptions rather than taking a cut of what a newsletter earns. beehiiv's free Launch plan caps at 2,500 subscribers and doesn't include paid-subscription tools at all. Its Scale plan, $43 a month billed annually (or $517 a year), covers up to 100,000 subscribers, adds an ad network and paid-subscription features, and lists a 0% take rate throughout. Max, at $96 a month, adds white-label branding removal and audio newsletters at the same subscriber ceiling and the same 0% cut. Enterprise pricing is custom.
Ghost's tiers work similarly but are scoped by member count rather than features first: Starter is $18 a month for up to 1,000 members but has no paid-subscription capability; Publisher, at $29 a month for the same 1,000-member cap, unlocks paid tiers, custom themes and multiple staff accounts; Business jumps to $199 a month for up to 10,000 members with priority support. Ghost's pricing page states plainly that it charges "0% transaction fees" from Publisher tier up, with the caveat that "payment processor fees still apply" — Stripe's cut is separate and unaffected by which plan a publisher is on.
| Platform | Entry paid plan | Take rate on subscription revenue | Payment processing | Member/subscriber cap on entry plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Substack | Free to publish | 10% per transaction | Stripe (2.9% + $0.30, plus 0.7% billing fee) | Unlimited |
| beehiiv (Scale) | $43/month | 0% | Stripe (standard rate) | 100,000 |
| Ghost (Publisher) | $29/month | 0% | Stripe (standard rate) | 1,000 |
What does a "0% take rate" leave out?
A 0% cut doesn't mean free — it means the cost is fixed instead of proportional. A newsletter with a handful of paid subscribers still owes beehiiv's or Ghost's full monthly fee even in a month where subscription revenue barely covers it, while Substack's writer with the same handful of subscribers pays Substack nothing beyond the 10% of whatever actually came in. The crossover runs the other way once revenue scales: on $5,000 in monthly subscription revenue, Substack's 10% cut plus Stripe processing works out to roughly $650, while a beehiiv Scale plan at $43 plus the same Stripe processing runs closer to $190. The math only works once, for one plan tier, at one revenue level — publishers should run their own numbers against current published rates rather than treat this comparison as a quote.
None of the three platforms' pricing pages address distribution — Substack's built-in recommendation network, beehiiv's ad marketplace, or Ghost's lack of either. Those affect how a newsletter grows its list, which is a separate question from what it pays once someone subscribes.
Does the Apple App Store change the math?
It does, for one slice of Substack's readers. TechCrunch reported on August 18, 2025 that Substack began letting U.S. iOS readers subscribe through the web rather than Apple's in-app purchase system, following an Apple App Store policy change in May 2025 tied to the Epic Games antitrust litigation. Substack "no longer has to pay the App Store a commission on those web sales," per the report, and it still applies its own "10% fee based on the web subscription price, as before" — the web-purchase route removes Apple's cut, not Substack's. The change applies only to new subscriptions started after the rollout; existing iOS subscribers keep their prior pricing unless a writer changes it. TechCrunch noted early testing showed "a boost in paid sign-ups" without disclosing specific figures.
Which model fits which newsletter?
A percentage-of-revenue model shifts risk to the platform: a newsletter earning nothing pays nothing beyond Stripe's cut, which is why Substack's zero up-front cost suits writers who haven't proven paid demand yet. A flat monthly fee shifts risk to the publisher but caps the platform's share as revenue grows, which is why beehiiv's and Ghost's published terms tend to favor newsletters that already have predictable paid revenue and want to keep the marginal dollar as they scale past a few thousand subscribers. Neither structure is more "correct" — they're published trade-offs, and a publisher comparing them should run the arithmetic against actual monthly revenue rather than against list price alone.
For a related creators perspective, read What Patreon, Substack, Ghost, and YouTube actually take from creator revenue.
For more context, read How YouTube's revenue split actually works.