Substack vs beehiiv: Substack Is Cheaper Until You Earn $5,170 a Year

Substack keeps 10% of each transaction. beehiiv Scale costs $517 a year at the entry subscriber tier and keeps nothing from your subscriptions. Everything else people argue about between these two is preference. This part is arithmetic, and it has one answer for your numbers.

Substack's 10% equals beehiiv Scale at $517 a year5,170 $ of subscription revenue a year7

Substack's 10% equals beehiiv Max at $1,151 a year11,510 $ of subscription revenue a year7

012,500 $ of subscription revenue a year

Show the numbers

Row	Value	Source
Substack's 10% equals beehiiv Scale at $517 a year	5,170 $ of subscription revenue a year	7
Substack's 10% equals beehiiv Max at $1,151 a year	11,510 $ of subscription revenue a year	7

Substack, 10% of each transaction24010%1

beehiiv Scale, plan fee at the entry subscriber tier51722%7

Show the numbers

Row	Value	Source
Substack, 10% of each transaction	240	1
beehiiv Scale, plan fee at the entry subscriber tier	517	7

Substack, 10% of each transaction1,20010%1

beehiiv Scale, plan fee at the entry subscriber tier5174.3%7

beehiiv Max, plan fee at the entry subscriber tier1,1519.6%7

Show the numbers

Row	Value	Source
Substack, 10% of each transaction	1,200	1
beehiiv Scale, plan fee at the entry subscriber tier	517	7
beehiiv Max, plan fee at the entry subscriber tier	1,151	7

The break-even, worked out

Ten percent of $5,170 is $517. That is the crossover.

Below $5,170 of subscription revenue in a year, Substack's percentage costs you less than beehiiv's Scale plan. Above it, the flat fee is cheaper, and it keeps getting cheaper the higher you go, because a fixed number stops growing while a percentage never does.

Against beehiiv Max at $1,151 a year, the same division puts the crossover at $11,510 a year.

Turn that into people. At Substack's own price floor of $5 a month, $5,170 a year is about 87 subscribers paying every month for twelve months. On the $30 a year annual minimum it is about 173 subscribers. The Max crossover is about 192 monthly subscribers at $5.

Most newsletters never reach 87 paying subscribers. That is the unglamorous reason the percentage suits most people who ask this question: ten percent of a small number is a small number, while $517 is $517 whether anyone pays you or not. At $2,400 a year, which is 40 subscribers at $5 a month, Substack takes $240 and the Scale plan would have taken $517.

The trap runs the other way once you are past the line. A publication earning $12,000 a year, which is 200 subscribers at $5 a month, hands Substack $1,200 and beehiiv $517 for the same job.

The first dollar is not free on both

Substack is free to publish at any list size, with no plan fee and no tier limit, and paid subscriptions switch on without buying anything first.

beehiiv marks paid subscriptions as available on paid beehiiv plans. Its free Launch plan carries up to 2,500 active subscribers, and the pricing page lists a 0% take rate on paid subscriptions in the Scale column. Read together, those two pages say the first subscription dollar on beehiiv arrives after a plan purchase, not before it.

So at zero revenue the two platforms cost $0 and $517. The crossover above assumes you have already paid that $517. If you have not started charging yet, beehiiv's real bill for year one is the plan fee plus the months you spend deciding whether to charge at all.

The card fees are the same, the extras are not

Both platforms run card payments through Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. That line cancels out and is not the difference between them.

What does not cancel is the rest. Substack's fees page lists its 10%, then the 2.9% + $0.30 card fee, then a Billing fee of 0.7% for recurring payments as of July 2024. beehiiv's paid subscriptions page names the 2.9% + $0.30 and a zero revenue share, and names no recurring billing fee at all, so treat that as a question its pages do not answer rather than as a zero.

The flat $0.30 deserves one minute of your attention, because it is the one fee you control. On Substack, a $5 monthly subscription loses $0.50 to the platform, $0.145 to the card fee, $0.035 to the billing fee and $0.30 to the flat charge, so $4.02 of the $5 reaches you. Priced at $60 a year and billed monthly, that is $48.24 across the year. The same $60 billed once annually is $51.54, because the flat $0.30 lands once instead of twelve times. Same price, same platform, $3.30 a year per subscriber of difference, and the decision costs you nothing.

The crossover moves as your list grows

$517 is the entry tier. beehiiv's own plan page says paid tiers start at lower increments, such as 1,000 subscribers, and scale upward as the list grows.

That matters because the break-even is a ratio between two numbers that both move. Your list grows, the beehiiv tier price rises, and the revenue you need before the fixed fee wins rises with it. Substack's 10% never changes shape: the same fraction at 100 subscribers and at 100,000.

So rerun the division whenever your beehiiv tier moves, not once at signup. It takes ten seconds and it is the only number in this comparison that changes without telling you.

Getting the list out

Both platforms export, and neither export is the whole thing.

The Substack subscriber list exports from the subscribers page, with all columns or visible columns only, and subscriber names cannot be included in the file. beehiiv exports subscriber data and post content as .csv from publication settings, and the download link stays valid for 24 hours before you have to request it again.

Run yours today, while nothing is wrong. An export you have never run is a promise rather than a backup, and the 24 hour window is the kind of detail people meet at the worst possible moment.

Selling the publication

Here the two part company hardest, and the difference is worth more than the fee.

A Substack account cannot be assigned or transferred in any way without Substack's prior written consent. A beehiiv publication can be sold or acquired through a manual transfer that needs written confirmation from both workspace Owners, though workspace team members do not move with it.

One of these has a documented sale path with a form to fill in. The other has a clause that puts the decision in somebody else's hands. If any part of your plan ends with selling what you built, that sentence outweighs $517 a year.

What ends the account

Substack may terminate or suspend an account for any reason at its own discretion, and advance notice there is a courtesy rather than a duty. beehiiv may remove content or suspend accounts at its sole discretion over reputational, legal or deliverability risk. A separate Digital Products clause lets it remove product listings without notice in fraud cases.

Neither clause is unusual and neither is a promise. The practical response is the same on both: keep the export current and keep your own copy of what you publish, so the clause decides where you publish next rather than whether you can.

When the money actually moves

Substack pays per transaction rather than on a monthly cycle, usually reaching the bank within 48 hours of each payment.

On beehiiv, subscription money runs through the Stripe account you connect yourself, so that timing is Stripe's rather than beehiiv's. The schedule beehiiv publishes covers advertising instead: Ad Network payouts are processed on the 20th of each month for the prior month's ads, into a beehiiv Wallet you withdraw from by hand. Ad Network access needs the Scale plan or above and a publication that is actively sending, so that income also sits behind the plan fee.

Do the division before you pick

Take your subscription revenue for the last twelve months, or your honest guess at the next twelve. Multiply it by 0.1. If the answer is under $517, Substack is the cheaper home this year. If it is over, beehiiv Scale is, by exactly the difference.

Then check the two things no fee covers: whether you might sell this one day, and whether you have ever run the export. Those answers do not move with revenue, and they are the ones people wish they had read on the day they signed up instead of the day they left.