When does a newsletter platform's free tier actually end?

The free tier is a temporary state, not a price

Substack, beehiiv, and Kit all let you start for $0. But "free" describes where you are right now, not a permanent price, and each of the three ends on different terms. Substack never ends — there's no subscriber ceiling and no plan fee at any size. beehiiv's free Launch plan holds up to 2,500 subscribers, the most generous ceiling of the group. Kit's free Newsletter plan covers up to 1,000 subscribers. Buttondown's free plan is the smallest, capped at 100. Ghost and Substack sit outside this comparison entirely, for opposite reasons covered below.

The subscriber ceiling is the number platforms advertise. It's not the number that actually catches people out — that's covered further down. Every figure here is computed from each platform's published pricing, verified as of 2026-07-28.

What your bill does the day you cross the line

Cross Buttondown's 100-subscriber ceiling by a single name and the free plan ends: subscriber number 101 puts you on the Basic plan at $9/month. Cross Kit's 1,000-subscriber ceiling and it jumps further, to the Creator (up to 3,000 subs) plan at $49.17/month. Cross beehiiv's 2,500-subscriber ceiling — the furthest you can get before paying anything — and the bill moves to the Scale plan at $43.08/month. In every case this is a step function, not a gradual ramp: one subscriber below the line costs $0, one above it costs a full month's plan fee.

Ghost never offered a way around this: it has no free tier, so an audience-only list costs $15/month from subscriber one on its Starter plan. Substack is the mirror image — its plan fee is $0 at every list size, forever, because it doesn't charge for hosting a newsletter at all. Its business model is entirely the 10% it takes if and when you sell paid subscriptions, covered in Substack fees explained.

The ceiling that actually matters is often much lower

The subscriber count is the ceiling platforms publish, but it only holds for an audience you're not charging. Two of these three free plans — beehiiv's Launch and Buttondown's Free — don't support paid subscriptions at all, so the moment you add your very first paid subscriber, the free tier ends regardless of how far below the subscriber ceiling you are. At 2,000 total subscribers — well under beehiiv's own 2,500-subscriber ceiling — adding just 1 paying subscriber at $10/month already knocks beehiiv off its free plan and onto $43.08/month. The same is true on Buttondown far under its 100-subscriber ceiling: at 90 total subscribers, that same 1 paying subscriber already puts the plan fee at $9/month.

Kit is the outlier, and it's the reason Kit's free tier gets singled out elsewhere on this site. Its free plan supports paid subscriptions all the way to its full 1,000-subscriber ceiling — at the same 90 subscribers and 1 paid subscriber, Kit's plan fee is still $0, and the only cost is its 3.5% + $0.30 Commerce fee on what you actually sell. If you plan to charge readers before you have much of an audience, that distinction — not the subscriber ceiling — is the one to check first. More on how that fee works in Kit pricing explained.

Picking a free tier for where you're actually headed

If you want to charge for a newsletter before you've built much of a list, Kit's free plan is the only one of the three built for that — it's free hosting with paid subscriptions attached, up to 1,000 subscribers. If you're purely building an audience and don't yet know when (or whether) you'll monetize, beehiiv's 2,500-subscriber ceiling gives the most room before any plan fee applies, as long as you stay audience-only — see beehiiv pricing explained. If neither fits, Buttondown's low flat fee after its small 100-subscriber ceiling stays cheap for a while, and Substack's total absence of a plan fee is hard to beat if you're comfortable giving up 10% only when money actually comes in.

Whichever you pick, the real planning question isn't "how big is the free tier" but "does the free tier still work once I turn on the thing I actually want to sell." Model your own numbers past any of these ceilings in the calculator, and see the general trade-off between a flat fee and a revenue share in flat fee or revenue share. Sources for every figure are on the methodology page.

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