Substack vs Ghost comes down to one trade: Substack costs nothing up front and takes 10% of every paid subscription forever, while Ghost charges a flat monthly fee and takes 0% of your revenue. For a writer testing whether anyone will pay, Substack is the easier and cheaper start. For a publication already earning a few hundred dollars a month, or one that wants its own brand, domain, and design, Ghost is the better long-term home, because the math tips in its favor quickly and you own more of the stack.
Neither platform is a bad choice, and moving between them is documented and common. The real question is whether you want to rent an audience network or own a publishing business. This comparison sets out documented pricing, fees, discovery features, and export paths so you can pick once and avoid a migration you did not need. Prices below come from public pricing pages and recent third-party reports, so verify current figures before you commit.
How We Compared These Newsletter Platforms
We compared Substack and Ghost on documented plan contents, published fees, and the export and migration options each one describes in its own help pages, plus patterns across published user reviews and creator write-ups. We did not run a live publication on either platform, and we do not quote invented open rates or growth figures. The yardstick was the same for both: what it costs at three revenue levels, how much control you get over brand and data, how readers find you, and how hard it is to leave.
The fee math favors Ghost once you earn real money
Substack is free to publish. Its documented cut is 10% of paid subscription revenue, and Stripe processing comes on top, which recent guides put at roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents per charge plus a small recurring billing fee. Creator write-ups commonly estimate the all-in take at around 13% to 16% of gross. A custom domain is a one-time $50 add-on. Recent reports also note that Substack added iOS in-app purchases in 2025, where Apple's cut can apply to subscriptions bought in the app unless the writer opts out.
Ghost(Pro), the hosted version, charges a monthly fee and takes 0% of subscription revenue, with only Stripe fees applying. Recent reports list Starter at roughly $15 to $18 per month billed yearly with about 1,000 members and no paid subscriptions, Publisher at roughly $29 per month billed yearly with paid subscriptions and custom themes, and Business at roughly $199 per month billed yearly. Publisher and Business scale with member count. Ghost is also open source, so you can self-host it for the cost of a server and a bulk email provider. Verify current Ghost pricing, because sources disagree on the Starter price and member caps.
Here is how the fee gap plays out, using the reported prices above and ignoring Stripe fees, which both share. At $300 a month in paid subscriptions, Substack's 10% is about $30, close to Ghost Publisher's annual-billed rate, so it is roughly a wash. At $1,000 a month, Substack keeps about $100 while Ghost Publisher stays near $29 plus any member-count increase. At $5,000 a month, Substack's cut is about $500 a month, which pays for a lot of Ghost. The crossover sits somewhere between a few hundred and a thousand dollars of monthly revenue, depending on list size.
| Factor | Substack | Ghost |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Free | Reported from about $15 to $29 per month hosted, or self-host |
| Revenue cut | 10% plus Stripe fees | 0% plus Stripe fees |
| Custom domain | One-time $50 | Included on hosted plans |
| Design control | Limited templates | Full themes and code access |
| Built-in discovery | Strong: app, Notes, recommendations | Lighter: recommendations, social web |
| Best fit | Writers starting out or testing paid | Established publications and brands |
Substack wins on discovery and simplicity
Substack's strongest documented advantage is its network. Readers browse and subscribe inside the Substack app, Notes works as a social feed, and the recommendations system lets publications suggest each other at signup. Creator write-ups consistently credit recommendations as a meaningful growth source, especially for new writers. Substack also bundles podcasting, video, chat threads, and comments with nothing to configure. Setup takes minutes, and there is no hosting, theme, or email provider to manage.
The costs are control and brand. Substack publications look like Substack publications, readers increasingly think of themselves as Substack subscribers, and the platform's policies, app, and fee structure are not yours to change. For a closer look at the platform alone, see our Substack review.
Ghost wins on ownership, design, and business features
Ghost is a full publishing system with memberships and newsletters built in. You get custom themes, your own domain from day one, multiple newsletters per site, tiered memberships, native analytics, and integrations through webhooks and Zapier. Ghost is run by a nonprofit foundation and the core software is open source, which reviewers often cite as a reason to trust its long-term direction. Recent releases added social web support, so Ghost posts can be followed from federated networks such as Mastodon and Threads, which partly answers the discovery gap.
The trade is effort. Ghost expects you to bring your own audience, choose and tweak a theme, and think about SEO. Reviewers describe it as more work than Substack in the first month and less frustrating by the first year. Self-hosting saves money but adds server upkeep and a separate bulk email service, so most small publishers are better off on Ghost(Pro).
Leaving either platform is documented and doable
Both platforms let you export your subscriber list and posts. On Substack, paid subscriptions run through your own connected Stripe account, which is what makes moving paid subscribers to Ghost possible, and Ghost publishes a migration path for Substack imports. Going the other way also works. The practical risk is not lock-in of data but lock-in of audience habit: readers who found you through the Substack app may not follow you off it. If you are weighing other newsletter tools too, our beehiiv vs Substack comparison and our roundup of the best email marketing software cover the wider field, including tools such as Kit that suit creators who sell products alongside a newsletter.
Which one to choose
Choose Substack if you are starting from zero, want to write rather than configure, and value the built-in network more than the 10% you will give up early on. Choose Ghost if you already have an audience, earn or expect to earn more than a few hundred dollars a month, care about brand and design, or want the option of running your own server. A common, sensible path is to start on Substack, then move to Ghost once revenue makes the fee painful.
The bottom line: start on Substack if you are testing whether readers will pay, and move to Ghost once your revenue makes a 10% cut more expensive than a flat monthly fee.
