Is beehiiv or Ghost cheaper?

beehiiv starts at $43/mo (Scale, up to 1,000 subscribers, billed annually; $49 monthly) (free plan available). Ghost starts at $18/mo billed yearly (Starter, up to 1,000 members); $0 to self-host plus infrastructure (free plan available).

beehiiv vs Ghost

An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.

The short answer

Editorial assessment

Ghost compared with beehiiv

beehiiv is the newsletter-as-media-business platform, with an ad network, boosts, referral programs, and stronger growth mechanics; Ghost is a publishing platform with a CMS, full theme control, and open-source ownership. Both take 0 percent of subscriptions. Take beehiiv if sponsorship revenue and paid audience growth are the business model; take Ghost if your publication is a website with a design identity and you want to own the stack.

Choose beehiiv if

Newsletter operators building a media business, solo writers through multi-title publishers, who want growth loops and ad or subscription revenue built into the platform rather than assembled from tools.

Choose Ghost if

Independent publishers and small media businesses earning real subscription revenue who want to keep all of it, own their platform, control their design completely, and treat their publication as a website rather than a newsletter that happens to have an archive.

Side by side

13 attributes

Attribute	beehiiv	Ghost
Category	ESPs	ESPs
Starting price	$43/mo (Scale, up to 1,000 subscribers, billed annually; $49 monthly) (free plan available)	$18/mo billed yearly (Starter, up to 1,000 members); $0 to self-host plus infrastructure (free plan available)
Pricing model	Subscriber-banded plans (bands from 1,000 up to 100K+, selected on the pricing page) with unlimited email sends on every tier; monetization features, not sending volume, differentiate the paid plans. Annual billing discounts roughly 12%.	Ghost(Pro) managed hosting priced by member count across four plans, with unlimited email sends on every plan and 0 percent taken from subscription revenue. Alternatively self-host the MIT-licensed software at no licence cost, paying only for a server and for Mailgun, which is the only supported bulk email provider on self-hosted installs.
Free plan	Launch: up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends, newsletter, website, and podcast tools, custom domains, recommendation network, campaign analytics, API (excluding Send API), MCP read access.	No free managed tier, but the software itself is MIT-licensed and free to self-host forever with no feature gating in core.
Free trial	Paid plans offer a free trial ('Try for free'); the Launch plan is free forever	14 days on all new Ghost(Pro) accounts, no credit card required
Best for	Newsletter operators building a media business, solo writers through multi-title publishers, who want growth loops and ad or subscription revenue built into the platform rather than assembled from tools.	Independent publishers and small media businesses earning real subscription revenue who want to keep all of it, own their platform, control their design completely, and treat their publication as a website rather than a newsletter that happens to have an archive.
Setup time	Under an hour to a working publication with website and custom domain; the AI website builder shortcuts design. Migrating an existing list plus archive from Substack or an ESP is typically a same-week project using beehiiv's import tooling.	An hour on Ghost(Pro) to a live publication with a default theme, a newsletter, and Stripe connected. Self-hosting is a half-day for someone comfortable with a Linux server, longer if you also want native analytics, which requires standing up a Tinybird backend. Building or customizing a Handlebars theme is a separate project measured in days.
Learning curve	Low for writing and sending; moderate for the monetization surface, where ad network standards, boosts, and referral mechanics each have their own learning curve and quality thresholds.	Low for writing and membership, moderate for design, and genuinely technical if you self-host. The editor and membership system are approachable. Theme development requires Handlebars and front-end skills, and NQL takes a little study before member filtering clicks. Self-hosting demands real system administration competence, including the Mailgun-only bulk email constraint that catches people out.
Platforms	Web app, REST API, Webhooks (Scale+), Send API (Max+), beehiiv MCP and Agent	Ghost(Pro) managed hosting, Self-hosted on Ubuntu with Node 22, MySQL 8, and NGINX, Headless via the Content API behind any front-end framework
Compliance	CAN-SPAM tooling, GDPR-aligned processes (self-reported)	GDPR with a DPA auto-accepted through the terms of service, Cookie-free first-party analytics, No advertising and no data resale
Founded	2021	2013
Headquarters	New York, NY, US	Registered in Singapore as a non-profit foundation; the team is fully remote across five continents
Ownership	Venture-backed	Non-profit foundation with a constitution meaning it can never be bought or sold; no venture capital, no external investors, and 100 percent of revenue reinvested

Strengths and limitations

beehiiv

Strengths

Monetization depth no ESP rival matches: native ad network, sponsorship storefront, boosts, digital products, and 0% take-rate paid subscriptions.
Growth mechanics (recommendations, referrals, magic links, gated content) are first-party features, productized from the Morning Brew playbook by the people who built it.
Unlimited sends on every plan, including free, keeps billing predictable and rewards engaged, frequent publishing.
Full-stack publishing: email, SEO-visible website, link-in-bio, and (since 2026) native podcast hosting at 0% of creator revenue under one roof.

Limitations

Automation builder is years younger than Kit's or MailerLite's; complex branching lifecycle flows are not the platform's strength.
Not a general-purpose marketing ESP: no ecommerce integrations story, no store-triggered campaigns, and the Send API only arrives on Max.
Key operational features are gated high: branding removal, dynamic content, and the Send API all require Max at roughly double Scale's price.
Subscriber-banded pricing with an aggressive cliff after the free tier; a 2,600-subscriber list jumps from $0 to a paid band immediately.

Ghost

Strengths

Zero percent taken from subscription revenue on Publisher and above, which compounds into tens of thousands of dollars a year for any successful publication.
Unlimited email sends on every plan, so send frequency never drives cost, which is close to unique in this category.
MIT-licensed open source with a genuine self-hosting path and no feature gating in core, making the exit real rather than rhetorical.
A non-profit foundation structure that legally cannot be bought or sold, with no venture capital and all revenue reinvested, which removes the acquisition and take-rate-increase risk every competitor carries.

Limitations

The Starter plan does not support paid subscriptions at all and excludes custom themes and most integrations, which makes the $18 headline price misleading for anyone intending to monetize.
Automation is new and narrow. Email sequences only reached beta in June 2026 and are triggered by new membership rather than by arbitrary behavior, so this is not a branching workflow builder.
No native newsletter A/B testing or subject-line split testing, which is a real gap for anyone optimizing open rates.
No meaningful discovery engine. Recommendations and ActivityPub help, but there is nothing comparable to Substack's Notes feed or beehiiv's boost marketplace for finding new readers.

Pricing compared

beehiiv

Subscriber-banded plans (bands from 1,000 up to 100K+, selected on the pricing page) with unlimited email sends on every tier; monetization features, not sending volume, differentiate the paid plans. Annual billing discounts roughly 12%.

Launch (Free)$0
Scale$43/mo billed annually ($517/yr) at up to 1,000 subscribers; $49 monthly
Max$96/mo billed annually ($1,151/yr) at up to 1,000 subscribers; $109 monthly
EnterpriseCustom

Judged as an ESP, beehiiv is mid-priced: at 1,000 subscribers, Scale's $43 to $49 costs more than Kit Creator and about 2.5x MailerLite Comfort. Judged as a media stack, the calculus flips: unlimited sends, a website, podcast hosting, referral tooling, an ad marketplace, and 0% take on subscriptions replace several subscriptions and a revenue share, and a publication earning from the ad network or paid tiers can plausibly run cash-positive on the platform fee. The free Launch tier at 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends is the strongest free monetizable-newsletter offer around, with the deliberate catch that every earning feature sits behind Scale.

Ghost

Ghost(Pro) managed hosting priced by member count across four plans, with unlimited email sends on every plan and 0 percent taken from subscription revenue. Alternatively self-host the MIT-licensed software at no licence cost, paying only for a server and for Mailgun, which is the only supported bulk email provider on self-hosted installs.

Starter$18
Publisher$29
Business$199
CustomQuoted
Self-hosted$0 licence

Ghost is exceptional value for a publication with real subscription revenue and poor value for one without. The 0 percent take rate, unlimited email sends, and full theme control mean that at $200,000 of annual revenue Ghost(Pro) Business costs about $2,400 a year against roughly $20,000 to Substack, and you get a real website and real APIs in the exchange. Below monetization the calculus reverses: $29 a month is a genuine cost where Substack and beehiiv both offer usable free tiers, and Ghost gives you no discovery engine to compensate. The Business tier at $199 is also a sharp cliff from $29 that deserves modelling against beehiiv at the same member count. The self-hosting option is real and valuable as an escape hatch, but treat it as insurance rather than as a way to save money, because a VPS plus Mailgun commonly costs more than the Publisher plan does.

Editorial verdict on each

beehiiv

Momentum

beehiiv is the best platform in this comparison for turning a newsletter into a business, and it is not close: no competitor pairs growth loops with an ad marketplace, boosts, and 0% take-rate subscriptions, and the free tier is genuinely generous. It is also the most narrowly aimed. As general-purpose email software its automations trail Kit and MailerLite badly, useful features pool in the Max tier, and the venture-backed pace that ships podcast hosting in a quarter also reshuffles packaging more often than conservative buyers will like. If audience revenue is the plan, start here; if email is a channel serving some other business, look elsewhere in this category.

Read the full beehiiv profile

Ghost

Ghost is the right answer for a publication that has stopped being a newsletter and become a business. Zero percent on subscriptions, unlimited email sends, full Handlebars theme control, native cookie-free analytics, an open-source escape hatch, and a non-profit structure that legally cannot be sold together make it the only product in this category with no plausible story about how it gets worse later. The 2026 additions of email sequences, gift subscriptions, and dynamic member filters closed the automation gap that used to be the standard objection, and ActivityPub gives it a distribution surface nobody else has. The costs are real: $29 a month before you have earned anything where Substack and beehiiv are free, no discovery engine to speak of, no newsletter A/B testing, a sharp cliff to $199 on Business, and a self-hosting path that is cheaper in licence terms only. Choose Ghost when you have revenue to protect and a design identity to express. Choose Substack or beehiiv when you still need an audience more than you need control.

Read the full Ghost profile

beehiiv profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Ghost last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.