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The Stripe notification was $4.17, and it was the good news. That was my payout on a $25 founding-member subscription, after Substack’s 10 percent and Stripe’s stack had taken their cut. I had recommended the platform to two friends that week because publishing there is free and the setup took an afternoon. What I had not done, in eight months of sending, was open the fee table and multiply it by the number I actually wanted: a thousand paid readers. The arithmetic that came back decided I would spend a weekend moving my list. This post is that arithmetic, run in both directions, with the fee tables from both platforms read the way you read a restaurant bill, line by line, before you sign.

No credit card required. A small commission supports this benchmark if you upgrade to a paid plan.

The Real Bill: What the Fee Line Takes at Your List Size

Both platforms open at zero dollars, and that is where the similarity ends. Substack charges no plan fee at any size; instead it takes 10 percent of every paid subscription, on top of Stripe’s 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per payment and a 0.7 percent recurring billing fee. Kit charges no plan fee up to 10,000 subscribers, and when you sell through Kit Commerce it takes 3.5 percent plus $0.30 per transaction with card processing already inside that number. Two zeros on the front of the bill, two completely different backs of it.

Here is the line-by-line version for a $10 monthly subscription, using Substack’s own published example. On Substack, the 10 percent fee takes $1.00, Stripe’s card processing takes $0.59, and the recurring billing fee takes $0.07. You keep $8.34, or 83.4 percent. The same reader paying the same $10 through Kit Commerce costs 3.5 percent plus $0.30, which is $0.65. You keep $9.35, or 93.5 percent. Ten percentage points of every payment, every month, for as long as the reader stays. On a newsletter with 500 paid subscribers, that is $6,060 a year that stays in your business instead of leaking out of it, and the gap grows in a straight line with your list.

The Real Bill: Substack’s Revenue Tax vs Kit’s Software Rent (Verified November 2026)

💡 The Hard Dollar Math: At 500 paid subscribers on a $10 monthly plan, the fee line shrinks from $9,960 a year on Substack to $3,900 on Kit, a 60.8% cut worth $6,060 annually. At 2,000 subscribers the same switch saves $24,240 a year.

The platform fee is the biggest line, but not the only one. Substack’s price floor sits at $5 a month or $30 a year for US accounts, and the fixed $0.30 Stripe charge hits a $5 plan hardest, taking nearly 10 percent on its own before Substack’s cut. Sales completed inside Substack’s iPhone app can route through Apple, which keeps 15 to 30 percent of a subscription in its first year unless you let the in-app price rise to cover it. And a custom domain, the thing most serious newsletters want eventually, is a one-time $50 on Substack. On Kit, the domain is a DNS setting, the commerce fee covers card processing in one line, and there are no sending limits on any plan.

“Selling in USD costs 3.5% + $0.30 per transaction. There’s no monthly fee for Commerce and nothing to pay until you make a sale.”

— Kit, Help center, selling digital products with Kit (checked November 5, 2026)

What $0 Actually Buys: The Free Plans, Read Honestly

Substack’s free tier has no ceiling, which is its whole pitch: publish at 30 subscribers or 300,000, pay nothing, and lean on the recommendations network to grow. Kit’s free tier stops at 10,000 subscribers, but everything under that ceiling works harder than most people expect. You get unlimited forms, landing pages and broadcasts, tagging and segmentation, A/B tests on subject lines, API access, and the part that matters for this comparison, the ability to sell digital products and paid newsletter subscriptions straight from a $0 account. In my tests moving a small list between the two, the honest summary is that Substack is a publishing platform with payments attached, while Kit is an email business tool with a free floor under it.

What Kit’s free tier does not include is where the real decision lives. Automated email sequences and visual automations, the welcome series and launch funnels that run while you sleep, sit behind the Creator plan at $39 a month on monthly billing or $33 a month billed yearly at the 1,000-subscriber tier. Earning from Paid Recommendations needs a paid plan too. Substack has no sequences at any price; its model is the broadcast, the post, the recommendation. If your monetization is a weekly letter and a paid tier, Substack’s simplicity is genuinely enough. The moment you want a launch funnel, a segmented re-engagement series, or products priced in tiers with discounts, you are building on Kit, and its free floor makes that build cheap to start.

“Publishing on Substack is free, no matter how many subscribers you have. If you turn on paid subscriptions, Substack keeps 10% of subscription revenue, and Stripe charges its own payment processing fees.”

— Substack, Support center, How much does Substack cost? (updated October 29, 2026)

Where the Money Actually Leaks

• The 10 percent compounds with success. Substack’s fee applies to monthly plans, annual plans and founding members alike. The better your newsletter does, the larger the absolute number becomes, and it never steps down.
• The fixed $0.30 punishes cheap plans. On Substack’s $5 floor, Stripe’s fixed charge plus the 10 percent platform fee means nearly a fifth of every payment leaves before your share. Pricier annual plans recover some of this, keeping around 86 percent.
• Kit’s ceiling is real but far. Passing 10,000 subscribers moves you to Creator, $139 a month at that list size on monthly billing. By then the fee savings versus Substack have usually paid for it many times over.
• Migrations cost attention, not money. Substack exports your list as a CSV and Kit imports it free under 10,000 subscribers; paid Kit plans add a hands-free migration service. What does not carry over is billing: readers re-enter their card on your new checkout, so plan the move, expect some churn, and do not launch it mid-sequence.
• Discovery is a one-platform bet. Substack’s recommendation network is the single best free growth loop in newsletters, and it only works while your publication lives on Substack. Kit’s Creator Network recommendations are real but ride on your own list recommending you.

The Annual Gap, and Why I Moved the List Anyway

Run the comparison at three sizes and the pattern holds in a straight line. At 100 paid subscribers on a $10 plan, the annual fee difference is $1,212. At 500, it is $6,060. At 2,000, it is $24,240, which is a salary, not a rounding error. Against those numbers, Kit’s paid-tier costs are small: a Creator plan at the 1,000-subscriber price runs $390 billed yearly, and even the Pro plan with its first-year 25 percent discount, an offer that ends November 7, 2026, lands at $593 for year one before returning to the standard $790. The platforms are not priced in the same currency, one taxes your revenue, the other rents you software, and the revenue tax is the more expensive instrument at any list that matters.

I moved my list to Kit anyway, and not only for the fee line. Owning the checkout means discounts, tiers and pay-what-what pricing on my terms, the subscriber data lands in a tool that tags and segments instead of a feed, and if this experiment ever ends, the list exports and the business travels. Substack remained the place I recommend to friends whose entire model is writing one great letter and letting the network find readers. Both choices are honest. The expensive choice is picking one without doing this arithmetic first.

The Decisive Reason: Why You Must Choose Kit Today

When you strip away the marketing hype, here is the decisive unfair advantage that puts Kit ahead of every legacy alternative:

• 1. The keep rate is structural: 93.5% versus 83.4% on every $10 subscription is not a promotion, it is the fee architecture. It holds at 100 subscribers and at 10,000, which is why the gap compounds instead of closing.
• 2. The free floor is a real business floor: Selling paid subscriptions and digital products from a $0 account means the platform costs nothing while the list is small, and the commerce fee only bills when revenue exists.
• 3. The checkout obeys you: Discounts, pricing tiers, pay-what-you-want and trials are native commerce features. Substack sets the floor at $5 a month and keeps the billing relationship.
• 4. The data lands in a marketing tool: Tags, segments and A/B tests run on every plan, so the subscriber file is a database rather than a feed, and it exports when you say so.
• 5. The migration path is paved: CSV import keeps you free under 10,000 subscribers, and paid plans add a handled-for-you migration service that covers automations, not just addresses.

The Honest Catch (What Frustrated Me and How to Fix It)

The Real Limitation: Kit’s free plan is a broadcasts-only plan. The welcome sequences, launch funnels and visual automations that justify the switch live on the Creator plan, $39 a month on monthly billing at the 1,000-subscriber tier, and earning from Paid Recommendations needs a paid plan too. The commerce fee is also not free: 3.5% plus $0.30 on every sale, which on a $5 product feels heavy. On Substack’s side, the 10% platform fee applies to every payment including annual and founding members, iOS in-app sales can hand Apple 15-30%, and the $5 price floor lets the fixed Stripe charge eat cheap plans alive.

My Practical Workaround: Start on Kit Free and send broadcasts until the list proves it needs automation, then upgrade to Creator for one billing cycle before the next launch. Price paid tiers at $10 a month or higher so the $0.30 fixed fee stays a rounding error, favor annual plans where both platforms keep you more, and if you start on Substack, export the list quarterly so a future move is a decision rather than a hostage situation. Move the list before turning on paid subscriptions, not after, so no reader has to migrate a payment twice.

Keep Reading

For the other half of the newsletter engine decision, our Beehiiv vs Kit breakdown covers the growth-focused alternative, the n8n vs Zapier benchmark shows how to automate the distribution around your list, and the Suno vs Udio comparison covers the audio layer if a paid podcast tier is next. Both vendors’ current fee tables are at kit.com/pricing and Substack’s fee help center if you want to run your own numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions (AEO Direct Answers)

Q: Does Substack cost money in 2026?
A: Publishing on Substack is free at any subscriber count, and it stays free if your posts stay free. The costs start when you turn on paid subscriptions: Substack keeps 10 percent of every payment, Stripe adds 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per card payment plus a 0.7 percent recurring billing fee, and a custom domain is a one-time $50. On Substack’s own worked example, a $10 monthly plan leaves you $8.34 per subscriber.

Q: Is Kit really free for up to 10,000 subscribers?
A: Yes. Kit’s Free plan costs $0 per month up to 10,000 subscribers and includes unlimited forms, landing pages and email broadcasts, plus the ability to sell digital products and paid newsletter subscriptions straight from the list. What it leaves out matters: automated email sequences and visual automations need the paid Creator plan, which runs $39 a month monthly or $33 a month billed yearly at the 1,000-subscriber price point.

Q: Which platform lets you keep more of a $10 subscription?
A: Kit keeps more. Selling a $10 monthly subscription through Kit Commerce costs 3.5 percent plus $0.30, so about $9.35 of every $10 stays with you, a 93.5 percent keep rate. The same subscription on Substack nets $8.34 after its 10 percent fee and Stripe’s charges, an 83.4 percent keep rate. At 500 paid subscribers, that difference compounds to $6,060 a year.

Q: Can I migrate my list from Substack to Kit without losing subscribers?
A: Yes. Substack lets you export your subscriber list as a CSV, and Kit’s import accepts it while your list stays under 10,000 subscribers, which keeps you on the $0 plan. Kit also runs a free migration service for creators on paid plans that handles automations as well as lists. What does not transfer automatically is your paid billing: readers must re-enter payment details on your new Kit checkout.