Substack is free until you charge. Then it takes 10% of every paid subscription, forever. Ghost costs a flat monthly fee and takes nothing. That's the entire comparison for anyone earning — the rest is detail.
Run your own numbers
- At $150/month in subscriptions, the costs roughly cross over.
- At $1,000/month, Substack keeps $100 every month. Ghost costs about $25.
- At $5,000/month, you're paying $6,000 a year for a platform you don't own.
Where Substack honestly wins
Discovery. Notes and recommendations send new readers to new writers, and that's real. If you're still testing whether an audience exists, start there — just export your list every month. Renting is fine as long as you keep a copy of what's yours.
Once you're earning, the math stops being close.