Substack's free plan and what it really costs
Substack has no free trial — it never charges a monthly fee, at any list size. The real price is 10% of paid subscriptions, and beehiiv wins past $430/mo.
People search for a Substack free trial and find nothing, then assume the free plan must be crippled and the trial hidden somewhere. Neither is true. Substack has no free trial because it has nothing to trial — there is no monthly fee to start paying when a trial ends, at any list size, ever.
That makes Substack’s free plan the most generous in the category by a distance. It also makes it the most expensive option on this page for a successful paid newsletter, and the crossover is a specific number: about $430 a month in subscription revenue.
All pricing below comes from each platform’s listed plans; verify current pricing on the vendor’s site before you commit.
What the free plan actually includes
Unlimited subscribers. Unlimited sends. No monthly fee. No card required, no expiry.
There is no subscriber tier that triggers a bill, which is the thing that separates Substack from everything else here:
| Platform | Free plan cap | What happens above it |
|---|---|---|
| Substack | Unlimited subscribers | Nothing — still $0/mo |
| Kit Newsletter | 10,000 subscribers, 1 automation | Creator from $33/mo annual |
| beehiiv Launch | 2,500 subscribers | Scale at $43/mo annual |
| MailerLite | 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/mo | Comfort from $10.80/mo annual at 500 subs |
If you are writing a free newsletter and have no near-term plan to charge for it, the analysis genuinely ends here. Substack costs nothing at 500 subscribers and nothing at 500,000, where MailerLite would be charging you $80.10/mo on annual billing by 10,000 and beehiiv would have moved you to a paid tier at 2,500.
Where the bill actually arrives
Substack’s price is 10% of paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe’s own processing fees on top. Not 10% of profit — 10% of every dollar a subscriber pays you, for as long as they stay subscribed.
That model is excellent when revenue is small and punishing when it is not, because it never stops scaling:
| Your paid revenue | Substack takes | beehiiv Scale | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100/mo | $10/mo | $43/mo | Substack, by $33/mo |
| $430/mo | $43/mo | $43/mo | Break-even |
| $1,000/mo | $100/mo | $43/mo | beehiiv, by $684/yr |
| $5,000/mo | $500/mo | $43/mo | beehiiv, by $5,484/yr |
| $10,000/mo | $1,000/mo | $43/mo | beehiiv, by $11,484/yr |
The break-even is beehiiv’s flat $43/mo annual divided by Substack’s 10% rate — $430/mo in subscription revenue, or $5,160 a year. Below that, Substack’s cut is smaller than a subscription would be. Above it, every additional dollar you earn hands ten cents to a platform whose costs have not changed.
beehiiv’s Scale plan is the direct comparison because it charges 0% take rate on paid subscriptions and stays flat regardless of list size. At $5,000/mo in revenue — a genuinely achievable target for a niche paid newsletter — the difference is $5,484 a year, which is the salary-sized number that makes people migrate.
So when is Substack the right answer?
Before you charge anything. No monthly fee at any list size beats every free tier here. Build the list on Substack, pay nothing for a year, and lose nothing by doing so.
Early paid, under a few hundred a month. At $100/mo in subscriptions Substack takes $10 where beehiiv would charge $43. You would be paying a subscription to save a fee you are barely incurring. The discovery network and the recommendation system are worth something at that stage too, and neither shows up on a pricing table.
When you value not thinking about it. Substack has one plan, no tier decisions and no list-size cliff. That is a real feature.
When to move, and where
Move when your paid revenue crosses roughly $430/mo and looks likely to stay there. The migration only gets more expensive to delay, because the 10% compounds against you every month you wait — and unlike a subscription, you cannot downgrade your way out of it.
- beehiiv is the obvious destination: $43/mo on annual billing, 0% take rate on paid subscriptions, premium analytics, and a flat price whether you have 3,000 subscribers or 300,000. It rates 4.7 on G2, the highest in this comparison. Max at $96/mo annual removes branding.
- Kit suits you better if the newsletter sells products rather than subscriptions. Its free Newsletter plan runs to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, and Creator at $33/mo annual adds unlimited automations. Email plans carry 0% fees; only Kit Commerce product sales take a cut.
- MailerLite is the cheapest way to leave if your list is modest and you want plain, well-priced email — $17.10/mo on annual billing at 1,000 subscribers, $44.10 at 5,000.
The one-line answer
There is no Substack free trial because Substack is free — properly free, with no subscriber cap — and it stays free until you charge readers. From that moment the price is 10% of everything, forever, and it passes beehiiv’s flat fee at $430/mo in revenue.
Start on Substack if you have not launched a paid tier. Plan your exit before you cross $5,000 a year in subscriptions.
Our advisor will weigh list size, monetisation model and migration effort together, beehiiv vs Substack does the head-to-head in detail, and how to start a paid newsletter covers the launch mechanics. The real cost of an email list has the wider category maths, and the Substack alternatives page ranks the field.