beehiiv vs Ghost: a newsletter business or a publication you own?

Editorially reviewed by Carlos Gil. Prices and features checked on beehiiv's and Ghost's official pricing pages and help docs on 2026-10-09. beehiiv links on this page are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission if you sign up. Ghost links earn us nothing. How we review · How we make money.

beehiiv is a newsletter business with a website attached: free up to 2,500 subscribers, a built-in ad network, paid recommendations and 0% of your paid-subscription revenue. Ghost is a publication you own that also sends email: a full CMS with no free hosted plan, no Ghost branding on any plan, 0% Ghost fees on paid memberships through your own Stripe account, and open-source code you can self-host. If you want the platform to help you earn from sponsors and ads, start with beehiiv. If you want the site, the design and the payment relationship fully in your hands, start with Ghost.

Both take 0% of paid subscriptions, so the real differences are what you pay at your list size, how you plan to earn beyond subscriptions, how much the website matters, and how easily you can leave. Full write-ups: beehiiv review and Ghost review.

The short version

• beehiiv costs nothing until 2,500 subscribers, then Lite starts at $49 a month billed yearly. It brings the earning tools to you: Ad Network, paid recommendations, a sponsorship storefront on Pro. The trade-offs are "Powered by beehiiv" branding until Pro and a paid-subscriber exit that is harder than it sounds (more below).
• Ghost(Pro) starts at $15 a month billed yearly, but Starter can't take payments, so most earning publications land on Publisher at $29 a month billed yearly. Prices rise with members. You get a real website with themes and SEO controls and no Ghost branding. You bring your own audience and your own sponsors.

Pricing at a glance

All prices USD, from beehiiv.com/pricing (including its subscriber slider) and ghost.org/pricing (including its member slider), checked 2026-10-09. beehiiv says yearly billing saves up to 20%. Ghost's Starter card displays "$18 billed yearly" while its pricing script charges $180 a year, which works out to $15 a month; we use the script's numbers.

What it costs at three list sizes

Example. Assumptions: one publication, one writer, annual billing unless noted, prices at the top of each subscriber or member band, no taxes, no add-ons, no ad or recommendation income. Ghost counts free and paid members toward its limit; beehiiv counts subscribers. In the 10,000-subscriber case, 250 readers pay $8 a month (monthly billing to the reader), which is $24,000 a year. Stripe fees are assumed at the same 2.9% + $0.30 per charge on both platforms: 3,000 charges a year come to about $1,596.

What the numbers say:

• Under 2,500 subscribers with no paid tier, beehiiv is free and Ghost is not. That's the single biggest price gap between them.
• Once you charge readers, Ghost Publisher is cheaper at 10,000 by $372 a year against Lite, and by $1,332 against Pro if branding matters to you.
• beehiiv can close that gap through ads. beehiiv's pricing page shows an "Avg. $39/mo" ad-monetization badge. That is beehiiv's own figure with no stated method, so treat it as a vendor claim, not a forecast. At $39 a month, the Ad Network would cover $468 a year, roughly the Lite-to-Publisher difference.
• A platform that keeps 10% would take $2,400 of that $24,000. That's the comparison in beehiiv vs Substack.

Head-to-head on eight criteria

Cost at your list size

beehiiv is cheaper at the start and Ghost is cheaper once you're paying for a mid-size list. beehiiv's slider takes Lite from $49 a month (yearly) at 1,000 subscribers to $119 at 10,000 and $169 at 25,000. Ghost Publisher goes from $29 to $88 to $141 over the same range. The exception is the no-branding case: beehiiv Pro and Ghost Business both cost $2,388 a year at 10,000, but Ghost doesn't need Business to drop its branding.

Paid subscriptions

Neither takes a platform cut. beehiiv's pricing FAQ says it keeps 0% of paid-subscription and digital-product revenue and lists Stripe's fee at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Ghost's pricing page lists 0% transaction fees from Ghost on Publisher and up, with payment-processor fees still applying. Ghost Starter can't take payments at all, so don't budget $15 a month if you plan to charge readers.

Other ways to earn

This is beehiiv's strongest ground. Its Ad Network FAQ (updated October 1, 2026) says the network is open on all paid plans to publishers actively sending, pays on CPM or CPC, and pays out on the 20th of each month. beehiiv doesn't disclose what share it keeps from advertisers. Paid recommendations, which replaced Boosts on October 1, 2026, let you earn by recommending other newsletters or pay to acquire subscribers, with a 20% fee built into the marketplace price. Ghost has none of these marketplaces. It lets you plug outside ad networks into your site on Publisher and up, and every sponsorship deal is yours to find and sell.

Growth

Both have mutual recommendations. Ghost adds a listing in its Explore directory and ActivityPub distribution, which Ghost says lets readers follow your publication from places like Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky and Flipboard. beehiiv adds the option to buy growth through paid recommendations. If you're starting from zero and want built-in discovery at a larger scale, read our beehiiv vs Substack comparison.

Website, SEO and design

Ghost is a website first. Its pricing page lists meta tags, structured data, XML sitemaps and canonical URLs on every plan, and custom themes on Publisher and up. Ghost themes are code (its developer docs describe them as Handlebars themes), so deep design changes need a developer or a marketplace theme. beehiiv includes a website and an AI website builder on every plan, which is quicker to set up and less flexible. If search traffic to your archive is a core part of your plan, this criterion should weigh heavily.

Email and automation

beehiiv lists email automations from Lite and adds click-triggered automations and dynamic content on Pro. Ghost's pricing page lists unlimited sends, managed deliverability with bounce management and reputation monitoring, and multiple newsletters, but no email automation feature. If you run welcome sequences or launch funnels, beehiiv covers more, and Kit covers more still: see Kit vs beehiiv.

Branding and domain

Both support your own domain: Ghost on every plan, beehiiv on paid plans (beehiiv's help center and pricing comparison table say paid plans, though its Free plan data still lists custom domains; checked Oct 31, 2026). Ghost goes further on the brand: its pricing page lists white-label branding on all plans, and Ghost(Pro) sites get a free .link domain for the first year. On beehiiv, the "Powered by beehiiv" mark stays until Pro. Ghost's custom sending domain (your own address in the From line, with DKIM and SPF) starts on Publisher; beehiiv's docs say a custom domain can cover web, sending and branded links.

Ownership and portability

Both let you export subscribers and posts. Ghost exports content and settings as JSON, members with labels and subscription status as CSV, post analytics as CSV and themes as zip files. beehiiv offers quick and full subscriber exports and a post export on every plan; download links last 24 hours.

Paid subscribers are where they differ. Ghost connects to a Stripe account you own. Ghost's own beehiiv migration guide says the Stripe account associated with a beehiiv site "cannot be used or connected to any other platform", so paying subscribers don't move by reconnecting Stripe. Ghost says customers and subscriptions can be copied to a new Stripe account, with help from its migrations team on Ghost(Pro) or open-source tools if you self-host. That's Ghost's account of a competitor, so ask beehiiv how a paid-subscriber export works before you launch a paid tier. Ghost also gives you the ultimate exit: the software is open source, so you can run it yourself.

Fit-based picks

Choose beehiiv if

• You're under 2,500 subscribers and want to start free with a website (a custom domain needs a paid plan).
• You want the platform to bring you money beyond subscriptions: ad placements, paid recommendations and, on Pro, a sponsorship storefront.
• You want email automations without wiring up another tool.
• You can live with beehiiv branding on Lite, or the Pro price fits your budget.

Start on beehiiv's free planAFFILIATE

Choose Ghost if

• The website and archive matter as much as the email, and you care about SEO controls and design.
• You want paid memberships through a Stripe account you control, with no Ghost fee and no Ghost branding.
• You'd rather sell your own sponsors than join an ad marketplace.
• You want the option to self-host the software one day.

See Ghost's pricing

Consider neither if

• Your newsletter mainly sells your own courses and products through tagged launch sequences. Look at Kit first.
• You're starting from zero, want a built-in reader network, and are fine giving up 10% of paid revenue. Look at Substack.
• You want the cheapest possible list tool with no website. Our best newsletter platforms roundup compares budget options.

What would change our read

• If beehiiv moved branding removal to Lite or published its Ad Network revenue share, its value at mid-size lists would improve.
• If beehiiv documented a clean way to move paying subscribers to another platform, the ownership gap would narrow.
• If Ghost added a free hosted tier, or payments on Starter, the small-list math would change.
• If Ghost raised Publisher prices, rerun the 10,000-subscriber Example.

For the rest of the stack around your newsletter, see the best tools for newsletter writers. Try beehiiv freeAFFILIATE or compare Ghost(Pro) plans.