How much does it cost to send a newsletter to 10,000 subscribers?

The bill at 10,000 subscribers: $0 to $115.83/month

Say you run a newsletter as an audience channel — no paid subscriptions, just 10,000 people getting your emails. Your entire cost is the plan fee, and the spread is wide. Substack charges $0: it has no plan fee at any list size and only ever takes a cut when you sell subscriptions. Buttondown's Professional plan is $79/month. Ghost's Publisher (up to 10,000 members) plan works out to $88/month billed annually, and Kit's Creator (up to 10,000 subs) plan to $115.83/month billed annually. All figures come from each platform's published pricing, verified as of 2026-07-25.

Two notes on how those numbers are quoted. The Ghost and Kit figures use annual billing because it's cheaper and it's the rate a cost-conscious creator would pick — the monthly-billed rates run higher, and annual vs monthly billing has the exact gap on each platform. Buttondown's figure is its monthly rate, because monthly prices are the only ones we've verified there — and Buttondown's pricing assumes at most one email a day to your full list, which is worth knowing if you're a heavy sender.

Substack is genuinely free at this size — here's the actual catch

It's worth being plain about this, because "free platform" usually hides something: for a newsletter that doesn't charge readers, Substack really does cost $0 at 10,000 subscribers, at 20,000 subscribers, at any size. There's no plan fee to grow into and no subscriber bracket to climb — Substack doesn't price by list size at all. The catch only arrives if you monetize: Substack takes 10% of paid-subscription revenue plus payment processing, which at real revenue is the most expensive structure in this comparison — the math is in Substack fees explained.

So the honest framing is: Substack is the cheapest way to send a newsletter, and one of the most expensive ways to sell one. If your list is an audience asset for a business — the newsletter itself isn't the product — that 10% may never touch you and the free hosting is exactly what it looks like. If you plan to turn on paid subscriptions later, the platform fee you avoided becomes a revenue share you can't, and the decision flips — that trade-off is the subject of flat fee or revenue share.

The ladder from 1,000 to 20,000 subscribers

Below the 10,000 mark, free tiers change the picture. At 1,000 subscribers, three platforms cost nothing: Substack, beehiiv (free to 2,500 subscribers on its Launch plan), and Kit (free to 1,000). Buttondown's free plan stops at 100 subscribers, so 1,000 names cost $9/month on its Basic plan, and Ghost — which has no free tier — starts at $15/month billed annually on Starter. beehiiv's free ceiling is the highest of the group: a 2,500-subscriber list still rides free there while Kit and Buttondown have moved onto paid plans.

Above the anchor, the flat fees keep stepping up. At 20,000 subscribers, Buttondown's Advanced plan is $139/month, Ghost's Publisher (up to 25,000 members) plan is $141/month billed annually, and Kit's Creator (up to 20,000 subs) plan is $157.50/month billed annually — while Substack stays at $0. Note that Buttondown's published plans top out at 20,000 subscribers; past that you're in custom-quote territory with no public price to compute from. For any size in between, the calculator runs the same model on your exact number.

Why beehiiv isn't quoted above 2,500

One platform is conspicuously missing from the 10,000-subscriber figures: beehiiv. That's deliberate. beehiiv has historically scaled its paid-plan price with subscriber count, and we've verified its pricing directly only up to its 2,500-subscriber free ceiling — quoting a 10,000-subscriber beehiiv price would mean publishing a number we haven't confirmed, which this site doesn't do. Within its verified range, beehiiv is the standout for a free newsletter: $0/month all the way to 2,500 subscribers, the most generous free tier of the five platforms — details in beehiiv pricing explained.

Everything else here traces to the platform profile pages — Substack, Ghost, Kit, and Buttondown — with sources and verification dates on the methodology page. And if you're at 10,000 subscribers and thinking about finally charging for some of what you write, the companion question — what the platforms cost once revenue enters the picture — is covered at the small end in the cheapest platform when starting out and at scale in the cost of a paid newsletter at 50,000 subscribers.

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