Substack Newsletter Revenue Calculator

The Substack revenue stack

Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue. Stripe processes the payment at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Combined, you keep about 83% on a typical $7/month subscription, and a little more as the price rises because the fixed $0.30 shrinks in proportion.

paid subscribers = free subscribers × conversion rate gross monthly = paid subscribers × monthly price substack fee = gross × 0.10 stripe fee ≈ gross × 0.029 + paid subscribers × $0.30 net monthly = gross − substack fee − stripe fee

A 5,000-person list converting at 3% = 150 paid subscribers. At $7/month:

• Gross: $1,050
• Substack fee: $105
• Stripe fee: $30.45 + $45 = $75.45
• Net: $869.55/month, or about $10,435 a year

Conversion rate is the variable that decides everything

Substack’s published averages put free-to-paid conversion at 5 to 10% for top performers, with 2 to 4% being typical for active newsletters. Below 1% means your free list is bloated with cold subscribers or your paywall offers too little marginal value.

At $7/month and 3% conversion, you need about 12,000 free subscribers to hit $30,000/year gross, which is roughly $25,000 after Substack and Stripe take their cut. That is full-time income for a writer in a low-cost area and a side project everywhere else.

Pricing, the most-asked question

Substack’s default $5/month or $50/year is the minimum that lets the platform’s payment system work without unprofitable Stripe fees. Most successful newsletters price between $7 and $15/month with $70 to $150/year annual options. Beyond $15/month, conversion drops sharply unless the content is professional-grade or B2B specific. Stratechery, at $15/month, is the usual example of an outlier, and it was built on years of free writing before a paywall ever appeared.

Annual subscriptions at a 15 to 20% discount over monthly are a smart default, but be clear about why. They cut your Stripe bill, since one $70 charge costs $2.33 to process where twelve $7 charges cost $6.04. What they do not do is raise revenue per subscriber: a 15% discount gives up far more than the $3.71 of processing it saves. The real return is churn. An annual subscriber cannot quietly lapse in month four, and the cash arrives up front instead of dribbling in.

What Substack actually pays you vs the alternative

Substack’s 10% is reasonable for the writer who values simplicity, the built-in recommendation network, and zero infrastructure. Writers with 5,000+ paid subscribers often migrate to Ghost or Kit, where the same revenue keeps 8 to 10% more after platform fees pay for the cost of hosting and tooling.

Churn, the silent killer

Substack doesn’t display churn prominently in its dashboard, but it matters more than acquisition. Most newsletters lose 5 to 10% of paid subscribers per month. Without consistent acquisition, a 200-paid newsletter losing 8% a month is down to 74 paid after a year of no new signups. Keeping the free-to-paid funnel healthy is what holds the line.

The “founding member” tier

Substack lets you offer a third tier (typically $100 to $500/year) for super-fans. Conversion is low (about 0.5 to 1% of free subscribers) but the revenue per subscriber is huge. A 5,000-list with 50 founding members at $200/year = $10,000 with no additional content burden. Worth offering once you have any paid subscribers at all.