Switching from Ghost to Kit: what happens to your fees

What actually changes when you switch

Ghost and Kit both charge a plan fee that steps up with list size, so on the surface this looks like a wash. The difference is what happens to your subscription revenue. Ghost takes 0% of it — your only variable cost is Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Kit runs payments through Kit Commerce instead, which charges 3.5% + $0.30 per transaction with payment processing already included. On a $10/month subscription that works out to $0.65 per subscriber on Kit versus $0.59 on Ghost — a $0.06 difference per paid subscriber, every month.

That per-subscriber gap is small, and it's honest to say so: Kit's bundled rate is only 0.6 percentage points above raw Stripe processing, with an identical per-transaction charge. What moves the bill more is the plan ladder. Both platforms are verified here all the way to 100,000 subscribers (as of 2026-07-25), so unlike some comparisons on this site, the numbers below can follow your list wherever it is. The side-by-side at three fixed sizes is on Ghost vs Kit; the full ladders are in Ghost pricing explained and Kit pricing explained.

Under 1,000 subscribers, Kit is the rare fee cut

There's one range where this migration lowers your bill, and it's the small end. Kit's free plan covers up to 1,000 subscribers and — unusually for a free tier — it can sell paid subscriptions. Ghost has no free tier at all, and its cheapest plan that supports paid memberships is the Publisher (up to 1,000 members) plan at $29/month billed annually. Take a 900-subscriber list with 60 paying $8/month ($480/month gross): Ghost costs $60.92/month all-in (12.69% of gross), while Kit's free plan costs $34.80/month (7.25%) — all of it the commerce fee, none of it a plan fee. Kit is $26.12/month cheaper.

Kit's higher per-subscriber cost eventually eats that head start, but it takes a while: on a full 1,000-subscriber list at $10/month, Kit stays cheaper until about 484 paid subscribers ($4,840/month gross). Almost nobody converts at that rate, so inside the free tier's ceiling the practical answer is simple: Kit is the cheaper place to run a small paid newsletter. If that's your situation, the steeper comparison you should also read is the cheapest platform when starting out.

Above that, expect to pay more — here's how much

Once your list clears the free tier, Kit charges a plan fee too, and now both levers work against you: at most sizes Kit's bracket costs more than Ghost's, and Kit's 3.5% rides on every subscription dollar. At 10,000 subscribers with 400 paying $10/month ($4,000/month gross), Ghost's Publisher (up to 10,000 members) plan runs $324/month all-in (8.1%) against $375.83/month (9.4%) on Kit's Creator (up to 10,000 subs) plan — the switch costs you $51.83/month. At 50,000 subscribers with 1,500 paid, the gap widens to $197.83/month ($1,093 on Ghost versus $1,290.83 on Kit).

One wrinkle worth knowing: the two ladders step at different subscriber counts, so there are pockets where Kit's plan fee is briefly the cheaper one — at 3,000 subscribers, Kit's Creator (up to 3,000 subs) plan is $49.17/month billed annually while Ghost's Publisher (up to 5,000 members) plan is $63/month, because Ghost's brackets jump from 2,500 straight to 5,000. The commerce fee usually claws that back as revenue grows, but if you sit right at a bracket edge the totals get close. Run your exact list through the calculator rather than trusting a rule of thumb.

What the fee math doesn't price

If the fees mostly favor Ghost, why does anyone make this move? Because the platforms sell different things. Kit is built around creator marketing — automations, tagging, landing pages, and selling digital products alongside subscriptions, all under the same 3.5% + $0.30 commerce fee. Ghost is a publishing platform first: a full website, memberships, and — since it's open source — the option to self-host and take the plan fee to $0 entirely, a lever you give up when you leave. Neither of those shows up in a cost table, and a $51.83/month difference is a reasonable price for tooling you'll actually use — just make it a decision, not a surprise.

Before you move, verify the mechanics with both platforms directly: whether your paid members transfer through Stripe to Kit Commerce without re-entering card details (they're different payment rails, so ask specifically), how annual memberships are handled mid-term, and Kit's current import path for your posts and member list. We keep migration mechanics out of the data layer because they change often. The fee profiles behind every number here are on the Ghost and Kit profile pages, with sources on the methodology page — and if you're coming from a revenue-share platform instead, the move that actually cuts fees is switching from Substack to Kit.

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