Free Substack Fee Calculator

Last updated: October 23, 2026

Quick answer: Substack's headline fee is 10% — but that is not what a subscription costs you. On a $10 monthly payment, Substack takes $1.00, Stripe takes $0.59 in card processing, and Stripe's recurring billing fee takes another $0.07: $1.66 in total, leaving $8.34. On a $5 subscription the same stack leaves just $4.02. This free Substack fee calculator prices the whole stack, payment by payment: enter your monthly and annual prices and your paid subscriber counts, and it shows the itemized fee breakdown, your monthly and annual net, what readers pay if they subscribe inside the iOS app (where Substack marks prices up so your net stays the same), and the beehiiv break-even — how many paid subscribers it takes before a flat monthly plan beats Substack's percentage cut. Everything runs in your browser; your prices never leave your device.

How to Use the Substack Fee Calculator

1. Enter your monthly price and how many paid subscribers are on the monthly plan, then your annual price and annual-plan subscribers. Most writers have both; the calculator keeps them separate because an annual payment carries one $0.30 fee per year, not twelve.
2. Enter your beehiiv plan cost per month — the flat fee you would actually pay there. beehiiv's tiers scale with total list size, so use the price for your list, not a headline number.
3. Pick the Apple App Store rate for iOS joins: 30% in a member's first year, 15% after a year of continuous billing. This only affects the iOS reader-price line, not your net.
4. Press Calculate Substack fees. Read the per-payment breakdown first (Substack vs Stripe card vs Stripe billing), then the monthly and annual nets, then the beehiiv break-even count.
5. Use the break-even count as your decision line: below it, Substack's percentage is cheaper than a flat plan; above it, the flat plan wins and every extra subscriber widens the gap.

Why Use Our Substack Fee Calculator?

• The full three-fee stack, itemized — Substack 10% + Stripe 2.9% + $0.30 + Stripe billing 0.7%, shown separately per payment instead of a single blended percentage that hides where the money goes.
• Monthly and annual plans in one view — a $100 yearly subscriber costs one $0.30 fee per year and nets $86.10, while twelve $10 monthly payments cost twelve $0.30 fees and net $100.08: the calculator shows both, so the annual discount's real cost is visible.
• Worked-check accuracy — $10/month nets $8.34, $5/month nets $4.02, $50/year nets $42.90: the same figures Substack's own calculator and every independent breakdown publish, so you can trust the model before you trust the totals.
• iOS reader-price estimate — Substack marks up in-app prices so your net stays the same; the calculator shows what a reader actually pays inside the iOS app at 30% and 15% Apple rates, so the 'why is it more expensive on my phone' question has an answer.
• beehiiv break-even count — because beehiiv takes 0% and Stripe applies on both sides, the break-even is simply plan cost ÷ (monthly price × 10.7%): at $10/month against a $99 plan, 93 paid subscribers is the line where flat pricing starts winning.
• 100% in your browser — your prices and subscriber counts never leave your device; no signup, no account.

Common Use Cases

• A writer at 400 paid subscribers wondering what she actually earns: At $10/month with 400 monthly subscribers, gross is $4,000, Substack takes $400, Stripe takes $264 ($236 card + $28 billing), and net is $3,336/month. The single most useful line is the per-payment one: $8.34 kept per $10 payment. Quote that number in your own planning instead of the gross — it is the number that pays rent.
• Deciding whether to push the annual plan: You have 100 annual subscribers at $100/year. Annual net is $8,610 for the year, or $717.50/month equivalent — against $8,340/month if those same 100 readers paid $10 monthly. The annual plan costs $13.98 per reader per year in lost net, but it locks in a year of retention and $8,610 of up-front cash. Run both sides before setting the annual price: a $100 annual price against a $10 monthly price is a 17% discount that costs you more than the discount looks like.
• The 5,000-subscriber break-even decision: At $10/month with 5,000 paid subscribers, Substack's cut alone is $5,000/month — $60,000 a year — plus $3,320/month in Stripe fees. Against a $99 beehiiv plan, break-even was 93 subscribers; at 5,000 you are paying roughly $5,000/month more than a flat plan for the platform. That is the moment the 'simplicity and discovery' argument has to justify $60,000 a year, and the calculator gives you the exact figure to argue with.
• Explaining the iOS price to a confused reader: A reader writes in: 'why does your newsletter cost $14.29 on my iPhone but $10 on the web?' The answer, from the calculator's iOS line: Substack raises the in-app price so Apple's 30% lands on the reader and your $8.34 net per payment is unchanged. Point the reader at web checkout if they want the $10 price — and never promise them the in-app price will match it.

Substack Fee Calculator vs Alternatives

• Substack's own going-paid calculator: The authoritative scale illustration — $10/month at 400 subscribers costs about $636/month in its example. What it cannot do is price your actual mix of monthly and annual subscribers, show the per-payment itemization, estimate iOS reader prices, or compute your beehiiv break-even. Use it to sanity-check the scale, use this page to price your publication.
• calcworker.com's Substack revenue calculator: A dedicated calculator with audience and conversion inputs — free subscribers, conversion rate, pricing tiers — that answers a different question: what could you earn if your list converts. This page answers the question after conversion: what do you keep from the subscribers you already have, payment by payment, and when does a flat plan beat the percentage.
• outrank.so's embedded calculator: A good fee explainer with a working calculator inside a pricing article — the $10 → $8.34 example and the iOS note both come from that tradition. An article's calculator is bounded by the article; this page is a standalone tool with monthly/annual split and break-even math the article does not attempt.
• Your own spreadsheet: The most flexible option — refunds, churn, tax, multi-tier pricing, all yours. The cost is building it and keeping Substack's and Stripe's rates current when they change (the billing fee moved from 0.5% to 0.7% in July 2024, and older articles still quote 0.5%). Use this calculator for the fast answer at pricing time; keep the spreadsheet for the monthly close if you already have one.

Substack's own calculator shows you the scale of the fee; single-purpose calculators show you the revenue you might earn. For the number that decides a price — what you keep per payment, per month, and per year, what readers pay on iOS, and the exact subscriber count where a flat plan wins — this page gives you all of it in one calculation, free and private.

Frequently Asked Questions