How to Make Money on Substack: Fees, Math and Real Figures

Can you actually make money on Substack?

Yes, but only from readers who choose to pay. Substack doesn't pay writers per read or per view. Its model is that readers pay a subscription price you set, and Substack keeps 10% of each payment while Stripe charges its processing fees (Substack Help). Starting is free; costs only appear when money comes in.

Everything below uses public, attributed figures, each labelled:

• Self-reported: Substack said it.
• Press: a news outlet reported it.
• Estimate: an outside firm modelled it, or we did the arithmetic.

We don't use per-publication earnings scraped from Substack, and we don't publish rankings.

How much do Substack writers make?

Substack doesn't publish average or median earnings. These are the public figures we could trace on 22 October 2026:

Figure	Value	Date	Label	Source
Writers earning over $1M a year	"More than 50 people"	June 2025	Press (CEO remark, reported)	Passionfruit
Paid subscriptions on Substack	5 million "and counting"	Oct 2026	Self-reported	Substack
Payments to writers behind Substack's revenue	~$450M across ~5M paid subscriptions	2025	Estimate	Sacra
Average per paid subscription	~$90 a year	2025	Estimate (our arithmetic on Sacra)	Sacra
Share of paid subscriptions from Substack's network	"30%+"	Oct 2026	Self-reported	Substack

Read these with care. The $1M figure (Passionfruit) describes the very top. The ~$90 average comes from dividing an estimate by a self-reported count, so it is rough. Neither tells you what a typical writer earns, and earnings are highly concentrated. For more platform-level figures, see Substack statistics.

Substack's own about page claims "A few hundred paid subscribers at $5/month can replace a salary." By our fee math below, 300 paid subscribers at $5/month keep about $14,472 a year after fees for US cards, so whether that replaces a salary depends on the salary.

How much do you keep after fees?

Fees from Substack's pricing article and Stripe's pricing page: Substack 10%, Stripe 2.9% + $0.30 per US card payment, and Stripe Billing 0.7% on recurring payments.

Plan	Payments per year	Gross per year	Fees per year	You keep per year	Share kept
$5/month	12	$60.00	$11.76	$48.24	80.4%
$10/month	12	$120.00	$19.92	$100.08	83.4%
$50/year	1	$50.00	$7.10	$42.90	85.8%
$80/year	1	$80.00	$11.18	$68.82	86.0%

The full per-payment breakdown is in is Substack free?. International cards, currency conversion and iOS in-app purchases cost more.

How many paid subscribers do you need?

Divide your target by what you keep per subscriber. This is pure arithmetic on the fees above (Substack, Stripe), assuming everyone pays the same plan and nobody churns:

Net income per year	at $5/month	at $10/month	at $50/year	at $80/year
$10,000	208	100	234	146
$50,000	1,037	500	1,166	727
$100,000	2,073	1,000	2,332	1,454

In practice you'll have a mix of monthly, annual and founding members, plus cancellations, so treat these as floors.

How big a free list does that take?

That depends on your free-to-paid conversion rate, and Substack doesn't publish a typical one. The table below uses illustrative assumptions, not benchmarks, to show how much the rate matters for a target of 500 paid subscribers:

If this share of free subscribers pays	Free list needed for 500 paid
1%	50,000
3%	16,667
5%	10,000
10%	5,000

Your own number is in your dashboard and export. Measure it rather than borrowing someone else's.

What are the ways to make money on Substack?

All of these are documented in Substack's help centre as of October 2026:

1. Paid subscriptions. Connect Stripe in Settings → Payments and set monthly and annual prices. The minimum is $5/month and $30/year for US-dollar accounts, and there's no annual-only option (Substack Help).
2. Founding members. An optional higher annual tier "as long as it's higher than your annual plan price". Substack says founding members are, for some creators, "a remarkably significant source of revenue" (Substack Help).
3. Pledges before you charge. Free readers can pledge to pay; pledges convert to paid subscriptions automatically when you enable payments (Substack Help). It's a low-risk way to test demand.
4. Group subscriptions. Sell seats to companies or institutions, with per-seat discounts or an unlimited offer (Substack Help).
5. Boost. An opt-in feature where Substack shows discounts, trials and pre-cancel offers to raise conversion and cut churn. Its upsell email goes to "~0.1% of the email list each day" with a default 20% discount (Substack Help).
6. Sponsorships. Creator Kits, a media kit for brand partners, are available to Bestseller publications or those "with at least 100 paid subscribers" (Substack Help).

How do you keep paid subscribers once you have them?

Income is new paid subscribers minus cancellations, and Substack gives you limited warning. One writer put it plainly:

"Substack does not flag which paid subscribers are going quiet." (r/Substack, April 2026)

Practical steps that rely only on your own data:

• Export monthly. Settings → Exports gives you your subscriber list and post stats as a zip. Comparing exports shows who stopped opening before they cancel. Our Substack analytics guide explains what each column means.
• Use the official MCP if you're a Bestseller. Substack's MCP server lets an AI assistant read retention and revenue for Bestseller admins.
• Track cohorts. The newsletterapi analytics API turns your uploaded exports into signup cohorts, engagement segments and an inactive-subscriber list, available as an API or through our MCP server. For how Substack's own developer surfaces fit together, read the Substack API guide.

What growth drives paid subscriptions?

Substack says "More than half of new subscribers come from Substack's built-in network" and "30%+" of paid subscriptions come from inside it (Substack, self-reported). That points at network features: recommendations from other writers, Substack Notes, and appearing on category leaderboards once you have paid growth (see Substack leaderboards explained). Our guide to growing your Substack covers tactics in more depth.

Substack's paid subscription count grew from 2 million in 2023 to 5 million in 2025 (TechCrunch), so the paying audience is growing. Whether you get a share of it depends on what you write, how often, and whether readers think it's worth paying for.