Substack Statistics 2026: Users, Revenue and Funding

The problem

"How are you pulling from substack? Last I checked there wasn't a public API." (r/Newsletters, March 2026)

"Creators need to demand protection." (r/Substack, May 2026, on tools that scrape writers' work)

This is a niche pain, and it cuts both ways. People who need Substack numbers, such as sponsors, analysts and journalists, rarely ask in public. We found 1 such thread among the 111 forum sources we coded. Writers, meanwhile, are wary of anyone scraping their publications. The fix is a page of platform-level figures, each traced to a public source, with no per-publication scraping.

Where do these numbers come from?

Substack statistics get copied from one roundup to the next, and they often lose their dates and sources along the way. This page keeps only figures we could trace to a public page we read on 21 October 2026. Each one is labelled:

• Self-reported: Substack said it.
• Press: a news outlet reported it.
• Third-party estimate: an outside firm modelled it.

Where a widely repeated number had no traceable source, we left it out and say so below.

What are the key Substack statistics in October 2026?

Statistic	Figure	Date	Label	Source
Paid subscriptions	5 million "and counting"	Announced March 2025; still the headline in Oct 2026	Self-reported	substack.com/about; TechCrunch
Paid subscriptions, earlier	2 million	2023	Self-reported, via press	TechCrunch
Weekly audience	"Tens of millions" read, watch and listen every week	Oct 2026	Self-reported	substack.com/about
New subscribers from Substack's network	"More than half"	Oct 2026	Self-reported	substack.com/about
Paid subscriptions from Substack's network	"30%+"	Oct 2026	Self-reported	substack.com/about
Posts discovered in the app daily	"1 million+"	Oct 2026	Self-reported	substack.com/about
Series C	$100M, led by BOND and The Chernin Group	July 2025	Press	TechCrunch
Valuation	$1.1B (vs $650M in 2021)	July 2025	Press	TechCrunch
Substack's fee	10% of each subscription payment	Oct 2026	Self-reported	Substack help
Annualized revenue	$45M (up from $37M at end of 2024)	July 2025	Third-party estimate	Sacra
Payments volume behind that estimate	~$450M across ~5M paid subscriptions	2025	Third-party estimate	Sacra
substack.com visits	~172.2M	September 2026	Third-party estimate	Similarweb
substack.com global rank	#209	September 2026	Third-party estimate	Similarweb

How many people use Substack?

Nobody outside Substack knows the number of unique people. Substack's about page gives two different measures:

• 5 million paid subscriptions. This counts subscriptions, not people. A reader who pays for three newsletters counts three times.
• "Tens of millions" of weekly readers, viewers and listeners. This is a range, not a number.

Third-party roundups often quote larger "active subscription" totals. We couldn't trace those to a primary Substack statement, so we don't repeat them here. If you need a single figure, say "5 million paid subscriptions, self-reported, March 2025". Don't turn it into "5 million users".

How much revenue does Substack make?

Substack is private and doesn't publish its financials. The most specific public estimate comes from Sacra. It estimates Substack hit $45M in annualized revenue in July 2025, up from $37M at the end of 2024, by "taking 10% of roughly $450M GMV across 5M paid subscriptions".

The arithmetic follows from Substack's published fee. The pricing help article says Substack "keeps 10% of subscription revenue". So a writer earning $100,000 gross pays Substack $10,000, plus Stripe fees. Writers' gross revenue (the ~$450M) and Substack's revenue (the ~$45M) are often confused in roundups. Keep them apart.

What does Substack charge writers?

From Substack's help centre, as of October 2026:

Fee	Amount
Publishing (free newsletters)	Free
Substack fee on paid subscriptions	10% of each payment
Stripe card processing (US cards)	2.9% + $0.30 per payment
Stripe Billing (recurring)	0.7%
Custom domain	One-time $50
iOS in-app purchases	Substack's 10% is based on the web price; writers choose whether app prices rise to cover Apple's fees

How is Substack funded?

According to TechCrunch, on 17 July 2025 Substack raised a $100M Series C led by BOND and The Chernin Group. Andreessen Horowitz, Klutch Sports Group founder Rich Paul and Skims co-founder Jens Grede also took part. The round valued Substack at $1.1B, "almost 70% higher than its 2021 valuation of $650 million". We found no newer priced round as of October 2026.

How much traffic does substack.com get?

Similarweb's public overview for substack.com shows about 172.2M visits and a global rank of #209 for September 2026, with traffic down 2.13% on the previous month (Similarweb). Two caveats:

• Similarweb figures are modelled estimates.
• They cover the substack.com domain only. Publications on custom domains, email opens and app use aren't included.

What do leaderboards and other platform numbers tell us?

Substack documents how its leaderboards work, though not how many publications earn money (leaderboards help):

• Rising ranks publications by paid subscription growth and updates every few hours.
• Top Bestsellers ranks them by annual recurring revenue and updates daily.
• Country leaderboards show 50 publications per list in the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.
• Substack Around the World covers more than 50 countries.

We don't publish counts built by scraping leaderboards or publication pages. Substack's Terms of Use prohibit crawling and storing "any significant portion of the content", and per-publication figures belong to their writers.

Two more dated data points from October 2026:

• Notes via Buffer. In its first week, Buffer said "Almost 3k posts have been shared to Substack Notes" through its integration (Buffer on X, self-reported).
• Open rates. From 14 October 2026, Substack stopped recording email opens from subscribers in France and Italy (Substack help). Open-rate comparisons across that date need care.

Which Substack statistics should you not trust?

• Figures with no date. Substack's paid count was 2M in 2023 and 5M in 2025, so an undated number is close to useless.
• "Users" built from "subscriptions". These double-count people who pay for several publications.
• Writer gross revenue labelled as Substack revenue. The two differ by a factor of ten.
• Counts scraped from leaderboards. They're partial, they go stale quickly, and collecting them conflicts with the Terms.

How can I get statistics for my own publication?

Your own numbers are the ones you can trust. Every writer can export their subscriber list and post stats, and Bestseller admins can query them through Substack's official MCP server. For what each dashboard metric means, see Substack analytics explained. For connections, see Substack integrations.

newsletterapi offers an analytics API that works from your own export, with cohorts, retention and source quality, plus an MCP server for agents. Both work only on data you upload or authorise for your own publication.