Substack
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
Substack is an American platform for paid newsletters and subscriptions to an author. The arrangement is simple: you start a publication, a reader leaves an email address, and every post arrives as a letter while also living as a page on the web. On top of that you can switch on a paid subscription, and the money goes from the reader straight to you, with the platform keeping its share.
The key number for this category is published openly here. The platform writes about itself: “90% goes to you. The rest supports the platform” — and in the same place clarifies that authors keep 90% of revenue after card-processing fees. So the platform's share is 10%, and that is before the payment fee, which is withheld separately.
One important caveat worth keeping in mind: the percentage is not named in the author's contract itself. The publisher agreement says only that the author pays the platform “a percentage of the total amount charged to readers”, and that the size of this percentage is set between the author and Substack at account registration. The 90/10 figure is a marketing statement on the storefront, not a clause of the contract.
Who's here
The numbers the platform gives about itself on its "About" page: 5 million paid subscriptions, plus "tens of millions" of people who read, watch and listen on Substack every week. Neither figure comes with a methodology or a measurement date — these are the company's claims about itself.
The same page carries two numbers about its own network, and they do not agree with each other. One: “more than half of new subscribers come from Substack's built-in network”. The second, a line below: “more than 30% of paid subscriptions come from within the Substack network”. These are apparently about different things — subscribers in general versus paid subscriptions — but on a single page it reads as a contradiction, and we record it as it stands.
One more measurement from the same source: more than 1 million posts a day are put in front of potential subscribers in the app.
There is no breakdown by country or language on the public pages we checked. Geography is hinted at indirectly by the legal section: disputes under the publisher agreement are heard by arbitration in the County of San Francisco, California, in English, while the terms of use are governed by US federal law and the law of the state of California.
Getting started
Registration is ordinary, with no document checks at the door and no audience threshold. The age requirement is stated plainly, twice: you may not use Substack if you are under 16, and the same wording is repeated in the publisher agreement.
Paid subscriptions are enabled separately, and the platform names no thresholds along the lines of "first get to N subscribers": the page on going paid says only that setup takes "a few minutes" and requires no technical knowledge. The same page shows an income calculator with subscription price options of 5, 7, 10, 15, 30 and 75 dollars a month — these are examples in a calculation interface, not a mandatory list of tiers.
A custom domain is a paid option. The platform's official post announces a one-off fee of 50 dollars per publication; the post is dated 21 October 2020.
What you can publish
The platform lists the formats on its storefront for writers: text, podcasts recorded through its own studio, video and live streams, with a podcast published simultaneously to Substack, Apple, Spotify and YouTube, and premium episodes reservable for paid subscribers.
The rights to what you write stay with you. The agreement opens with a direct statement: “first and foremost, you own what you create”, and the terms of use add that any original content you post remains yours. The platform takes a limited licence — to promote your publications and to let others read and download them through Substack. The writers' storefront puts the same thing more briefly: “you always own your intellectual property, your mailing list and your subscriber payments”.
What is forbidden is described in the terms of use in broad categories: fraudulent and threatening posts, spam, harvesting data by scraping, and attempts at unauthorised access to other people's accounts and systems.
How to grow
The platform does not disclose its ranking mechanics. The only thing it writes about growth itself: subscribers find new authors through recommendations, Notes and joint posts — that is, a list of tools, not a description of an algorithm. The numeric claims about this network's contribution are given above and, as noted, disagree with each other.
A separate element is the Substack app: it is the app that the figure of 1 million posts a day reaching potential subscribers is attached to.
Path to monetization
What the platform keeps
The public figure is 10% (the platform phrases it as “90% goes to you”). In the contract, to repeat, the percentage is not fixed and is “set between you and Substack at registration”. The practical conclusion: check your own rate in your own dashboard, not in the advertising.
On top of the platform's share comes the payment service's fee. The agreement describes it without naming it: the author must accept payments only through the third-party payment platform the platform has chosen, and this platform itself remits the platform's share and withholds the applicable fees as payments come in. The name of the service and the size of its fee do not appear on any official public page we managed to read.
A hard ban on circumventing payment
A separate clause of the agreement is titled "No circumvention". The author is forbidden to collect payment for a publication outside Substack or by any alternative means, including through links to PayPal or to a separate Patreon page; the author must report any offers to bypass payment to the platform immediately. If you were counting on keeping the storefront on Substack while collecting the money elsewhere, the contract forbids that outright.
Refunds, taxes and leaving
Refunds are in most cases at the author's discretion, but in some cases the platform issues a refund to the reader automatically under its refund policy. Taxes are entirely on the author: they are responsible for all federal, regional, local and foreign taxes and levies connected with the publication.
The most awkward thing for planning is what happens when a publication closes: if you delete the publication or stop publishing before the end of a term a subscriber has paid for, all obligations — including a refund for the unused part of the subscription — fall on you alone, and the platform is entitled to keep the share it has already received.
Tools and automation
The official interface is read-only
Substack has official programmatic access, and its terms are published: Developer API Terms of Use in the edition of 8 January 2026. They are worth reading carefully, because this is not the API usually expected of a publishing platform.
It serves only public profile and publication data — name, LinkedIn link, links to other social profiles, total subscriber count, bestseller status, appearance in rankings, profile description and the addresses of the profile and the publication. You are permitted to display this data, build search, analytics and integrations on it, and link back to the original public source. There is no publishing through this interface.
The prohibitions are strict: you may not infer non-public or sensitive attributes of authors, aggregate data for surveillance, profiling or behavioural targeting, use it for unwanted mailings, sell or redistribute it as a standalone dataset, or reproduce or substitute the platform's own core features. Rate limits and quotas are set by the platform at its discretion, and it may change or switch off access at any moment.
Scheduling tools
Count on the built-in editor and on the platform's own email delivery.
Limits and rules
- Age. Not under 16.
- The platform's share. The storefront names 10% (“90% goes to you”), the contract names a percentage agreed at registration.
- Payments. Only through the payment service chosen by the platform; circumvention, including PayPal and Patreon, is forbidden.
- Custom domain. A one-off 50 dollars per publication.
- Law. The law of the state of California; arbitration in the County of San Francisco, in English.
- Closing a publication. Obligations to subscribers who have paid remain with the author.
- API. Read-only access to public data, no publishing, with the platform entitled to change limits and revoke access.
Who it's for
Suits you if you write in English for a paying audience and want your relationship with the reader to run through email rather than through a feed. There is no barrier to entry: a paid subscription is switched on in “a few minutes”, and the platform earns only alongside you — “our business model depends entirely on your success: we only make money when you make money”.
Suits projects that care about owning what is theirs: the agreement explicitly confirms both ownership of the content and ownership of the mailing list.
Does not suit you if you want to collect money outside the platform — that is directly forbidden. Does not suit you if you need programmatic publishing: the official interface can only read public profiles. And be careful if you ever plan to close the publication: obligations to subscribers who have paid will remain yours.
Tools for this platform
The list is built from the tools' own facts: every line is a tool's statement that it supports the platform, with the source named. A tool missing from the list only means we have no such statement.
Other tasks:
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself as follows: «The app for independent voices»
Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the interface language of the home page: en
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang
source, checked 2026-07-28
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