The cheapest newsletter platform at 5,000 subscribers

The bill at 5,000 subscribers, before anyone pays you

Start with the simplest version of the question: a 5,000-subscriber list that charges nobody. Substack costs $0 at this size, as at every size — it has no plan fee and only ever charges a share of paid revenue. So does Kit: Kit's free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers, so a 5,000-subscriber list sits on it with no plan fee at all. Among the platforms that do sell a plan here, Buttondown's Standard plan is $29/month and Ghost's Publisher plan is $63/month billed annually. That is a $34/month spread for hosting an identical list, and it comes entirely from where each ladder puts its brackets.

Two platforms are not where you might expect them. Ghost's Starter plan is capped at 1,000 members, so a 5,000-subscriber list is on Publisher whether or not it sells anything. Kit, by contrast, is the one platform here whose free plan reaches this far, which is why it appears in the paid ranking below but not in this one. Buttondown's Standard plan is the cheapest paid plan here, and it is quoted at its monthly price because Buttondown's annual discount, if one exists, has not been verified. Every figure uses pricing verified as of 2026-09-08; for the same question one size up, see what it costs to send to 10,000 subscribers.

Add paid subscribers and Substack drops to the bottom

Now give the same list 200 paid subscribers at $10/month — $2,000/month gross, a 4% conversion rate. Ranked by all-in monthly cost, that is Kit at $130 (6.5% of gross), Buttondown at $147 (7.35% of gross), Ghost at $181 (9.05% of gross) and Substack at $332 (16.6% of gross). The cheapest and dearest are $202/month apart — about $2,424 a year — on identical revenue.

Substack moves from free to last because its cost is a percentage: 10% of revenue plus Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 and a 0.7% recurring-billing fee, which is $1.66 of every $10 subscription. The flat-fee platforms charge $0.59 (Ghost and Buttondown, Stripe only) and $0.65 (Kit, whose bundled 3.5% + $0.30 commerce fee includes processing) per subscriber on top of the plan. So Substack is the cheapest home only while the paid base is small, and only against the platforms that charge a plan fee — Kit has no plan fee at this size and a lower per-subscriber cost, so it is cheaper than Substack from the first paid subscriber. On a 5,000-subscriber list at $10/month Substack is overtaken by Buttondown at 28 paid subscribers ($280/month gross) and Ghost at 59 paid subscribers ($590/month gross).

The flat-fee platforms do swap places as the paid count grows, because a cheaper plan fee can be undone by a higher per-subscriber cost. Up to 483 paid subscribers the order is Kit, then Buttondown, then Ghost; from 484 it is Buttondown, then Kit, then Ghost — Kit's $0.65 per subscriber eventually outweighs the plan fee it saves you. Check your own paid count rather than the ranking above. The general shape of that trade — a percentage is cheap until you earn, a flat fee is cheap after — is in flat fee or revenue share, and the head-to-heads are on Buttondown vs Substack, Ghost vs Substack and Kit vs Substack.

5,000 is a bracket line on two ladders at once

Ghost and Buttondown have a plan bracket that ends at exactly 5,000 subscribers — 5,000 is one of only three list sizes (with 1,000 and 10,000) where both ladders step together. A 5,000-subscriber list is therefore paying the best price its bracket offers on each of them, and subscriber number 5,001 moves all of them up a rung: Ghost from $63 to $79/month (Publisher, up to 7,500 subscribers — $16 more) and Buttondown from $29 to $79/month (Professional, up to 10,000 subscribers — $50 more). Kit does not move: Kit's free plan runs on to 10,000 subscribers, so its bill is the same $0 on both sides of the line.

That rewrites the ranking. Buttondown's $50 step is the larger of the two, and one subscriber past the line Ghost and Buttondown charge exactly the same plan fee — $79/month each — so the lead Buttondown holds at 5,000 subscribers is gone at 5,001, and the tie lasts until 7,500 subscribers, where the next bracket line falls. With 200 paid subscribers, Kit stays cheapest at $130/month — its bill does not move — while Ghost rises to $197 and Buttondown rises to $197. Substack's window widens too: the first plan-fee platform now overtakes it at 74 paid subscribers instead of 28. If you are at 5,000 and growing, the number to plan around is the next one, not this one — the bracket mechanics are in the subscriber counts where your newsletter bill jumps.

What the table leaves out, and why

beehiiv is missing from every figure above, and not because it would lose. beehiiv scales its plan price with list size, and we have verified its pricing directly only up to 2,500 subscribers — so a 5,000-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 flat-fee family as Buttondown and Ghost, and at smaller sizes it is competitive; see beehiiv pricing explained. When its higher brackets are captured they will flow into the calculator and this page automatically.

Two honesty notes on the platforms that are in the table. Buttondown's ladder ends at 20,000 subscribers — custom pricing above that — and while its tier prices are read from its own pricing page, paid-subscription support is recorded as available on its paid plans rather than confirmed tier by tier; if you expect to keep growing, Buttondown pricing explained covers what stops at 20,000. And none of this prices the reasons people actually pick a platform: Substack's discovery network, Kit's automations, Ghost's full website, Buttondown's simplicity. Treat the ranking as the fee floor. The profiles behind every number are Substack, Ghost, Kit and Buttondown, with sources on the methodology page; the smaller-list version of this question is the cheapest platform when starting out.

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