Substack takes a flat 10% of every paid subscription a writer sells through its platform, on top of standard credit-card processing fees, according to the company's own description of its business model. Ghost and beehiiv both publish the opposite structure: 0% of subscription revenue, with publishers instead paying a flat monthly platform fee no matter how much they collect from readers. All three fee structures are public and simple to compare directly — and doing the arithmetic on the platforms' own published numbers shows which one is cheaper depends entirely on how much subscription revenue a publication already has, not on which model sounds more generous.
What does Substack's 10% actually cover?
Substack's own about page describes the free product as "free to start and free to leave," with "no platform fees, no tiers, no contracts" for writers who never charge readers. Separately, the company states that on paid subscriptions, writers keep 90% of revenue minus credit card fees — Substack's cut is the entire cost of using the product, layered on top of whatever Stripe or another processor charges for the transaction itself. There is no separate monthly bill. A newsletter that earns nothing from subscriptions owes Substack nothing. One earning $10,000 a month in subscription revenue owes Substack $1,000 that month, before processing fees. Substack's own materials do not itemize what the 10% funds — hosting, email delivery, support, or discovery through the Substack app and its recommendation network are bundled into that single line rather than broken out.
How do Ghost and beehiiv make 0% work?
Ghost, operated by the nonprofit Ghost Foundation, charges a flat hosted-plan fee instead of a revenue cut: $18 a month (billed yearly) for a Starter plan capped at 1,000 members, or $29 a month for the Publisher plan that unlocks paid subscriptions, custom themes and advanced analytics, also billed yearly. Ghost's pricing page states the platform processes subscription payments without any additional transaction fees from Ghost, while noting that "payment processor fees still apply" — Stripe's cut is not eliminated, only Ghost's. beehiiv runs the same logic at different price points: a free Launch tier for up to 2,500 subscribers, then paid Scale ($43/month) and Max ($96/month) tiers that scale toward a 100,000-subscriber ceiling. beehiiv's own FAQ states the platform takes 0% of your paid subscription revenue, with publishers paying only "Stripe's standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction" on top of the flat monthly bill.
Where does the flat fee stop being the cheaper deal?
The two pricing models cross over at a point that's simple to calculate from the platforms' own published rates, even though neither company publishes the crossover itself. Substack's fee equals 10% of subscription revenue; Ghost's Publisher plan is a flat $29 a month. Those two costs are equal when subscription revenue hits $290 a month — Substack's 10% of $290 is $29. Below that line, Substack's percentage cut costs less than Ghost's flat fee; above it, Ghost gets progressively cheaper as revenue grows, because the flat fee never moves. beehiiv's $43-a-month Scale plan crosses the same line at roughly $430 a month in subscription revenue. In practical terms: a publication collecting $500 a month from paid subscribers already pays more to Substack ($50) than the flat fee on Ghost ($29) or beehiiv ($43). One collecting $5,000 a month pays Substack $500 versus a flat $29 or $43 on the other two — the gap only widens with scale.
| Platform | Revenue cut | Entry plan enabling paid subscriptions | Payment processing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Substack | 10% of subscription revenue | None — pay-as-you-earn, no monthly fee | Standard credit card fees, deducted separately |
| Ghost | 0% | Publisher plan, $29/month billed yearly | Stripe's standard processing fees apply |
| beehiiv | 0% | Scale plan, $43/month (or free Launch tier up to 2,500 subscribers) | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (Stripe) |
What generalizes and what doesn't
The crossover math above is arithmetic on the platforms' own published rates, not a claim either company makes about the other — none of the three publish a head-to-head comparison. It also only measures the subscription fee, not the total cost of running a publication. Ghost's Publisher tier caps at 1,000 members before a publisher needs the $199-a-month Business plan; beehiiv's paid tiers cap at 100,000 subscribers before enterprise pricing applies. Neither company discloses how design, deliverability, support responsiveness or discovery tools compare, and this analysis doesn't attempt to score those separately from price. Ghost's homepage separately states that "$100,000,000+" in annual revenue flows through Ghost-hosted publications with 0% payment fees — a company-reported, self-disclosed figure, not an audited one, and it describes aggregate platform activity rather than what any single publisher earns. The one number every publisher can check for themselves, using only the platforms' own published rates, is the crossover point above: below a few hundred dollars a month in subscription revenue, a percentage cut is usually cheaper; above it, a flat fee usually is.
For a related creators perspective, read What Patreon, Substack, Ghost, and YouTube actually take from creator revenue.