Who keeps more of your paid subscription revenue?
Substack charges nothing to open an account and nothing each month, even with a large list, by Savage Reviews' account. In exchange it claims ten percent of every paid subscription, plus Stripe processing, and that slice never expires. beehiiv runs the mirror image. Free up to 2,500 readers, then a paid plan kicks in, and once you charge for your newsletter the platform takes no share of that money. The same channel quoted that paid tier at $43 in its January video and around $49 by June, so check the live price before you commit.
What does the 10% actually cost once you scale?
The percentage feels trivial until the list grows. Savage Reviews walked through the arithmetic. At $500 a month the two roughly tie, since Substack's $50 cut lands near beehiiv's fixed bill. Above that the lines separate. At $1,000 a month Substack collects $100, at $2,000 it collects $200, while beehiiv's charge holds flat. The channel also cited one operator pulling $20,000 a month who said the cut and Stripe fees drained close to $6,000 every month, near $72,000 across a year. Read that as one creator's report, not a fixed rate every newsletter will hit.
Can you trust the reviews pushing this conclusion?
Here is the part the videos skate past. Both head-to-head comparisons come from one channel, Savage Reviews, which runs affiliate links and an Amazon referral pitch on every upload. The third source is a conversation with Tyler Denk, who founded beehiiv, on a podcast that opened by handing out a beehiiv discount code. All three tilt the same direction. None of them is an independent stress test of Substack's case. The fee logic holds up on its own, but no neutral voice in this batch argued the other side.
Which platform fits which kind of creator?
What you sell decides the winner. If you write and want readers quickly without an upfront bill, Substack's free door and built-in network do genuine work, and Savage Reviews put its reach at 35 million readers with 3 million paying. Denk made the opposite pitch, built on owning your distribution. He pointed to Morning Brew landing in 3 million inboxes each morning, and to Ben Thompson running Stratechery solo for about a decade on his own infrastructure, charging $12 to $14 a month now after starting near $10, and reportedly clearing $3 to $4 million a year on subscriptions alone. That story sells a business stack, which is what beehiiv markets.