The cheapest newsletter platform at 20,000 subscribers

The bill at 20,000 subscribers, before anyone pays you

Start with a 20,000-subscriber list that charges nobody. Substack costs $0 at this size, because it charges no plan fee and only takes a share of paid revenue. Every other platform we can price here charges a plan: Buttondown's Advanced at $139/month billed monthly, Ghost's Publisher at $141/month billed annually and Kit's Creator at $157.50/month billed annually. The plan fees are $18.50/month apart for hosting the same list.

Kit is not free at this size. Its free plan stops at 10,000 subscribers, so a 20,000-subscriber list pays for Creator. beehiiv is left out of every figure on this page, for a reason explained at the end. Pricing is verified as of 2026-09-29. The free-list version of this question one size down is what it costs to send to 10,000 subscribers.

With paid subscribers, the top two are a few dollars apart

Now give the list 1,000 paid subscribers at $10/month, $10,000/month gross and a 5% conversion rate. Ranked by all-in monthly cost, that is Buttondown at $729 (7.29% of gross), Ghost at $731 (7.31% of gross), Kit at $807.50 (8.08% of gross) and Substack at $1,660 (16.6% of gross). The cheapest and dearest are $931/month apart, about $11,172 a year, on identical revenue.

Buttondown leads Ghost by $2/month, and that lead is smaller than it looks. Buttondown's Advanced plan is priced month to month because Buttondown has no confirmed annual rate, while Ghost's Publisher figure is its annual rate. If you pay both month to month, Ghost costs $169/month in plan fees and the gap widens to $30. If Buttondown offers an annual discount it has not published, the order could reverse. Buttondown's data is also marked partial: it has historically sold some features as paid add-ons, and its paid-subscription support is recorded as available on its paid plans rather than confirmed plan by plan. Either could cost more than the margin. Kit is $78.50/month behind the leader, and no number of paid subscribers moves it ahead of Buttondown and Ghost at this size. Its Creator plan costs more than Buttondown's and Ghost's, and its bundled 3.5% + $0.30 commerce fee costs $0.65 per $10 subscription against $0.59.

Substack is last because its cost is a percentage. It takes 10% of revenue, and you also pay Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 and a 0.7% recurring-billing fee, which comes to $1.66 of every $10 subscription. The flat-fee platforms charge $0.59 (Ghost and Buttondown) and $0.65 (Kit) per subscriber on top of their plan. On a 20,000-subscriber list Substack is cheaper only while the paid base is small. It is overtaken by Buttondown at 130 paid subscribers ($1,300/month gross), Ghost at 132 ($1,320/month gross) and Kit at 156 ($1,560/month gross). The general shape of that trade is in flat fee or revenue share, and the closest head-to-head is Buttondown vs Ghost.

What changes at subscriber 20,001

Buttondown drops out of the table one subscriber later. Buttondown's published ladder ends at 20,000 subscribers, and above that it quotes custom pricing that cannot be computed. Kit's Creator bracket ends here too, so its plan fee rises from $157.50 to $165.83/month, $8.33 more. Ghost's bracket runs on to 25,000, so its bill does not move, and the next 5,000 subscribers cost Ghost nothing in plan fees.

With the same 1,000 paid subscribers, the ranking at 20,001 is Ghost at $731, Kit at $815.83 and Substack at $1,660. Ghost is now cheapest, because the platform that led at 20,000 no longer has a price to compare. If your list is near 20,000 and growing, plan around the bigger size rather than this one. The subscriber counts where your newsletter bill jumps maps every bracket line, and the next size up is priced in the cost of a paid newsletter at 50,000 subscribers.

What the table leaves out, and why

beehiiv is missing from every figure above, and that says nothing about whether it would win. beehiiv scales its plan price with list size, and we have verified its pricing directly only up to 2,500 subscribers. A 20,000-subscriber beehiiv figure would be a number we have not confirmed, which this site does not publish. Its 0% take rate puts it in the same family as Buttondown and Ghost; see beehiiv pricing explained for what we do know.

None of this prices the reasons people actually choose a platform: Substack's discovery network, Kit's automations, Ghost's full website, Buttondown's simplicity. When the top two are a few dollars apart, those reasons should decide it. Treat the ranking as the fee floor and run your own list and price through the calculator. The profiles behind every number are Substack, Ghost, Kit and Buttondown, with sources on the methodology page. The smaller-list version of this ranking is the cheapest platform at 5,000 subscribers.

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