Digital goods
Substack fee calculator
Paid newsletter subscriptions. 10%, plus Stripe card and Billing fees.
Publishing on Substack is free; once you turn on paid subscriptions, Substack keeps 10% of each subscription payment. Readers pay through your own Stripe account, and Stripe takes its own cut from the same payment: its standard card rate of 2.9% + $0.30, and a further 0.7% Stripe Billing fee because Substack subscriptions are recurring. That is three charges from two companies on every payment, and the $0.30 is fixed, so the share lost is highest on a cheap monthly price and lower on an annual one.
The sale
Optional — for profit
On a $45.00 sale, $6.43 goes in fees — 14.3% of what the buyer paid: $4.50 to Substack and $1.93 to Stripe — and $38.57 reaches you. You keep 85.7% of the order.
Every line of it
| Buyer pays | item + shipping | $45.00 |
Substack fee | 10% of $45.00 | −$4.50 |
Stripe card processing Charged by Stripe, not Substack, on the whole payment. | 2.9% of $45.00 | −$1.31 |
Stripe per-transaction fee Charged by Stripe, not Substack, on the whole payment. | $0.30 flat | −$0.30 |
Stripe Billing Stripe’s fee for recurring payments, on top of card processing. | 0.7% of $45.00 | −$0.32 |
| Total fees | −$6.43 | |
| Reaches your account | $38.57 | |
On this sale, Substack ranks 25 of 29 for what reaches you.
Compare all platformsWhat this calculator does not cover
- Only card payments are modelled. Readers can also pay by direct debit and other local methods, which Stripe prices differently by country; Substack's own examples for a US Stripe account include SEPA Direct Debit at 0.8% + 30¢, capped at $6.00.
- Substack lists the 0.7% Stripe Billing fee as applying to recurring subscriptions. Every paid Substack subscription is recurring, and Stripe charges Billing on all billing volume, so it is applied to every payment here, the first one included.
- Substack gives the 2.9% + $0.30 card rate for US cards. The international-card and currency-conversion surcharges come from Stripe's own published US pricing, the same model as the Stripe calculator. A creator on negotiated or non-US Stripe pricing will see a different processing figure; the Substack 10% is unaffected.
- Subscriptions bought in the Substack iOS app carry an Apple service fee. Substack says its 10% is based on your web price, but it does not state Apple's rate, so in-app purchases are not modelled.
- Substack sells subscriptions, not goods, so there is no shipping field. The optional custom domain is a one-time $50, not a per-payment fee, so it is not included.
Substack fees: common questions
How much are Substack fees on a $50 sale?
$7.10 in fees on a $50 sale ($5.00 to Substack and $2.10 to Stripe), leaving you $42.90 — an effective rate of 14.2%. On $100 it is $13.90, leaving $86.10. The effective rate is higher on the smaller sale because part of the fee is a fixed amount per transaction, which weighs more heavily on smaller orders.
What are Substack's fees, exactly?
On a $50 sale, the fees are Substack fee of $5.00 (10% of $50.00), Stripe card processing of $1.45 (2.9% of $50.00), Stripe per-transaction fee of $0.30 ($0.30 flat), Stripe Billing of $0.35 (0.7% of $50.00). That comes to $7.10 in total. There is no monthly fee.
What should I charge on Substack to keep $50?
Work it backwards rather than guessing: at Substack's rates you have to charge more than $50 to keep $50, because the fee is taken from what the buyer pays. The what-to-charge calculator solves for the exact price, including any flat per-transaction fee, and rounds up to the cent so you are never left short.
What does this Substack calculator not include?
Only card payments are modelled. Readers can also pay by direct debit and other local methods, which Stripe prices differently by country; Substack's own examples for a US Stripe account include SEPA Direct Debit at 0.8% + 30¢, capped at $6.00.
Are these Substack fees up to date?
They were read from Substack's own published fee schedule on October 7, 2026, and the source is linked on this page so you can check it yourself. An automated check re-reads every source page weekly and flags any that have changed. Fee schedules do move without notice, so where this page and Substack disagree, Substack is right.
That is what the fees on Substack take. What the unit actually earns is another question again, once shipping, advertising and the orders that come back are in the picture — work out the true margin.
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These calculators are free, and they stay free
There is no account, no email wall and nothing for sale here, which is deliberate — it is what lets the site publish what platforms actually charge and link to where each rate came from. Re-reading ten fee schedules every week is the unglamorous part, and it is what keeps the numbers worth trusting. If that saved you a bad listing decision, you are welcome to put a little toward the domain and the hosting. If it did not, please do not.
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