beehiiv's New Pricing vs. Kit and Substack: What We Can Confirm
beehiiv renamed and repriced its plans on Oct 1, 2026; Kit has a temporary discount. Here's what's officially confirmed, and what still isn't.
beehiiv's rename and price increase (Lite now $49/month, Pro $95/month, Pro's subscriber ceiling up to 250,000) is officially confirmed.
A precise "who's cheapest at 10,000 subscribers" number for beehiiv or Kit is not: both platforms compute their subscriber-tier pricing with a client-side calculator that doesn't hand over numbers to automated retrieval, so this update reports what's confirmed and names what isn't.
Why this update, and why the gap matters
ToolPulse's Oct 6, 2026 comparison of beehiiv, Kit and Substack used beehiiv's then-current plan names (Launch, Scale, Max). Five days later, our Weekly #2 report covered beehiiv's rename and repricing, effective Oct 1, 2026. This piece re-checks all three vendors' official pages directly, confirms what changed, and tries again — as planned — to get beehiiv's and Kit's subscriber-tiered pricing at a specific list size like 10,000 subscribers directly from an official source rather than from secondary trackers. That attempt still didn't work, which is itself useful information for anyone trying to budget around these numbers.
Pricing at a glance
As of Oct 10, 2026, per each vendor's official pages.
| Platform | Free tier | Entry paid plan | Top-end plan shown | Pricing at 10,000 subscribers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| beehiiv | Up to 2,500 subscribers | Lite: $49/month billed yearly (starting price), up to 100,000 subscribers | Pro: $95/month billed yearly (starting price), up to 250,000 subscribers | Not confirmed from beehiiv's own page (see note below) |
| Kit | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Creator: $33/month ($390/year), priced for 1,000 subscribers | Pro: $66/month ($790/year) for 1,000 subscribers; currently discounted to ~$50/month ($593 first year) through Nov 7, 2026 | Not confirmed from Kit's own page (see note below) |
| Substack | No platform fee to publish a free newsletter | No flat plan — 10% of paid-subscription revenue, plus Stripe fees | Same 10% rate regardless of revenue | Not applicable — Substack has no subscriber-count-based plan |
Sources: beehiiv.com/pricing and beehiiv's official pricing-change announcement (both retrieved Oct 10, 2026), kit.com/pricing (retrieved Oct 10, 2026), Substack's fee structure per its official help-center article "How much does Substack cost?" (blocked automated retrieval with an HTTP error on Oct 10, 2026, as it has on previous ToolPulse attempts; re-confirmed via several independent sources describing the same unchanged fee breakdown).
beehiiv
beehiiv's official announcement confirms the rename took effect for new customers on Oct 1, 2026, with existing customers moving over at their first renewal on or after Nov 1, 2026 — annual subscribers keep their current price through the end of their current term, and monthly subscribers get at least 30 days' notice before the new rate applies. Three paid tiers were renamed (Launch→Free stayed free, Scale→Lite, Max→Pro) and Pro's subscriber ceiling rose from 100,000 to 250,000. beehiiv's own blog post frames this as broader feature access at each tier rather than a pure price increase, and states the company still takes 0% of paid-subscription revenue on Lite and above. What beehiiv's page does not show as static content is a computed price for a specific subscriber count above the plan's starting point — the $49 and $95 figures above are the lowest listed rate per plan, not a universal price. Several independent pricing-tracker sites report beehiiv charging roughly $139/month for Lite and $239/month for Pro at 10,000 subscribers, but ToolPulse could not verify those specific figures on beehiiv's own site on this run, so they are not presented as confirmed.
Kit
Kit's regular pricing is unchanged since ToolPulse last checked: Creator at $33/month ($390/year) and Pro at $66/month ($790/year), both prices stated "for 1,000 subscribers" on Kit's own page. What's new since Oct 6 is a time-limited offer, still live as of this check: 25% off the first year of Pro Annual, bringing the effective first-year cost to roughly $50/month ($593 total), running through Nov 7, 2026 — after which Pro renews at the standard annual rate. As with beehiiv, Kit's page does not expose the computed price at higher subscriber counts as retrievable text; it only states the 1,000-subscriber baseline and that a slider recalculates the price as list size grows. Independent trackers cite figures in the $139–$189/month range for 10,000 subscribers depending on plan, but none of that is confirmable on Kit's own page as of this check, so ToolPulse is not reporting a specific number.
Substack
Substack's fee structure is unchanged: no fee to publish a free newsletter, 10% of paid-subscription revenue plus Stripe's processing fee (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction) and a 0.7% billing fee on recurring charges once paid subscriptions are turned on, and a $50 one-time fee for a custom domain. Substack's official help-center article on cost returned an access error to ToolPulse again on this run, the same result as on every previous attempt; the figures above are carried over from the last direct retrieval and re-confirmed against several independent sources that describe the identical fee breakdown with no reported change, so there's no indication anything moved here.
What this means for the "who's cheapest" question
For a list under roughly 2,500 free subscribers, nothing changed: all three remain free to publish on. For a free list between 2,500 and 10,000 subscribers, Kit's free tier still covers the whole range at no cost, while beehiiv requires Lite ($49/month) once a list passes 2,500 — that comparison hasn't moved since Oct 1. Above 10,000 subscribers, ToolPulse cannot currently hand readers a confirmed beehiiv-vs-Kit number, because neither vendor's official page exposes the calculated price at that list size as static content; anyone deciding based on that specific figure should run both vendors' own interactive calculators directly rather than rely on a secondary-source estimate, including the ones cited above. For a publication earning paid-subscription revenue, Substack's 10%-of-revenue model is unaffected by either vendor's repricing and remains the only one of the three with no subscriber-based plan at all.
Who should pick what
- Free list under 10,000 subscribers, no plans to charge readers: Kit's free tier covers the whole range at $0; beehiiv's free tier only covers up to 2,500 before Lite's $49/month applies.
- Already on beehiiv Lite or Pro: no action needed before your renewal; if you're on an annual plan, your current price holds until that term ends, per beehiiv's own announcement.
- Weighing a Kit Pro annual sign-up right now: the 25% first-year discount is real and confirmed directly from Kit's page, but it expires Nov 7, 2026 and reverts to the standard rate after the first year.
- Trying to budget for a specific subscriber count above the entry tier (e.g., 10,000+): use beehiiv's or Kit's own calculator directly — neither vendor's page gives ToolPulse a verifiable number to report for that case.
- Earning steady paid-subscription revenue already: this update changes nothing about the underlying math from the Oct 6 comparison — re-run it with beehiiv's new $49/$95 starting prices if you're close to the break-even point against Substack's 10% cut.
What this comparison doesn't cover
Neither beehiiv's nor Kit's official pricing page returns a computed price for subscriber counts above their stated baseline (2,500 for beehiiv's Free tier reference point, 1,000 for Kit's paid-tier reference point) as retrievable static content, so ToolPulse cannot confirm an exact figure at 10,000 subscribers or any other specific list size for either platform from an official source on this run. This comparison does not address deliverability, editor quality, migration friction, or support response times — none of that can be read from a pricing page, and ToolPulse has not used any of these three platforms to publish.
Sources & methodology
This comparison is based on the vendors' public information as of Oct 10, 2026, not on hands-on testing.
- beehiiv — Pricing, retrieved Oct 10, 2026
- beehiiv — official announcement of the October 2026 plan renaming and pricing changes, retrieved Oct 10, 2026
- Kit — Pricing, retrieved Oct 10, 2026
- Substack — "How much does Substack cost?" official help-center article (returned an access error to ToolPulse on Oct 10, 2026; fee structure re-confirmed via independent secondary sources describing the same breakdown, with no reported change since ToolPulse's last direct retrieval)
Tools in this post
beehiiv
beehiiv is a newsletter and publication platform with a free tier and two paid tiers (Lite and Pro) priced by plan, plus buil…
- Free plan
- From $49/month (annual billing) · Lite
- Prices checked Oct 2, 2026
Kit
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is an email newsletter and creator-marketing platform with a free tier and two paid tiers, priced b…
- Free plan
- From $33/month · Creator
- Prices checked Sept 29, 2026
Substack
Substack is a newsletter publishing platform with no flat platform fee for free publishing; it instead takes a percentage of …
- Free plan
- From $0.30 per transaction · Paid subscriptions
- Prices checked Sept 29, 2026
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