beehiiv pricing in 2026: the subscriber ladder
The free plan runs to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends. The rung above it costs $49, and every rung after that arrives without asking you first.
beehiiv costs nothing up to 2,500 active subscribers and $49 a month at the first paid rung, which is the widest free-to-paid gap of any platform in our email pricing guide. Everything interesting about beehiiv pricing happens at the thresholds: 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 75,000, 100,000. Cross one and the bill steps by itself. We pulled the full matrix out of beehiiv's own pricing widget on August 7, 2026 and checked the arithmetic, so the numbers below are the live ones rather than a 2024 review's memory of them.
The plans
| beehiiv plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch (free) | $0 per month flat | $0/mo billed annually | Up to 2,500 active subscribers, unlimited sends, website + podcast, custom domains, no automations, beehiiv branding stays, no Send API |
| Scale at 1,000 subs | $49 per month at up to 1,000 subscribers | $43/mo billed annually | Tiered by active subscriber count up to 100K; adds automations, ad network, 0% take-rate paid subscriptions, digital products, webhooks, 3 team seats, 3 publications |
| Scale at 2,500 subs | $69 per month at up to 2,500 subscribers | $61/mo billed annually | $729 billed annually |
| Scale at 5,000 subs | $89 per month at up to 5,000 subscribers | $78/mo billed annually | $940 billed annually |
| Scale at 10,000 subs | $109 per month at up to 10,000 subscribers | $96/mo billed annually | $1,151 billed annually; higher tiers: $169/mo at 25K, $249 at 50K, $289 at 75K, $329 at 100K (monthly billing) |
| Max at 1,000 subs | $109 per month at up to 1,000 subscribers | $96/mo billed annually | Adds branding removal, Send API, RSS-to-send, dynamic content, up to 10 publications, unlimited team seats, priority support |
| Max at 5,000 subs | $169 per month at up to 5,000 subscribers | $149/mo billed annually | $1,785 billed annually |
| Max at 10,000 subs | $219 per month at up to 10,000 subscribers | $193/mo billed annually | $2,313 billed annually; $289/mo at 25K, $379 at 50K, $419 at 75K, $459 at 100K (monthly billing) |
| Enterprise | Custom custom pricing at 100K+ subscribers | n/a | Custom quote only: dedicated IPs, account manager, SSO, custom publication limits |
Prices checked August 2026 against the beehiiv pricing page.
Launch deserves its reputation. Up to 2,500 active subscribers, unlimited sends, a hosted website, a podcast feed, custom domains, and read access to the API, for zero. Set that against the rest of the field at August 2026 prices: Mailchimp's free plan holds 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends, and MailerLite's holds 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails. Only two free plans give away more, Kit's at 10,000 subscribers and Substack's with no cap at all, and Substack collects 10% of any paid revenue in return. What Launch withholds is automations, the Send API, and branding removal, which is a coherent line: it gives away distribution and charges for machinery.
The math nobody shows
Every subscriber gets cheaper, except the ones that do not
Scale's cost per subscriber falls steadily as the list grows, which reads as generous until you notice where the money actually goes.
| Active subscribers | Scale, monthly billing | Cost per subscriber per month |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $49 | 4.9 cents |
| 2,500 | $69 | 2.8 cents |
| 5,000 | $89 | 1.8 cents |
| 10,000 | $109 | 1.1 cents |
| 25,000 | $169 | 0.7 cents |
| 50,000 | $249 | 0.5 cents |
| 100,000 | $329 | 0.3 cents |
Now price the subscriber who crosses a line. One person past a threshold buys the entire next tier, and the worst deal on the whole ladder is the day after a jump.
| The moment you cross | New monthly bill | Cost per subscriber | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,501 | $89 | 3.6 cents | up from 2.8 |
| 5,001 | $109 | 2.2 cents | up from 1.8 |
| 10,001 | $169 | 1.7 cents | up from 1.1 |
| 25,001 | $249 | 1.0 cents | up from 0.7 |
Subscriber 10,001 is a 55% price increase delivered by a stranger signing up for your free newsletter. That is the single fact to carry into any beehiiv budget: your bill is set by the top of your tier, not by your list.
The free cliff is the biggest one
Nothing exists between $0 and $49. Worse, a list crossing 2,500 does not land on the $49 rung, because that rung ends at 1,000 subscribers. It lands at $89 a month, up to 5,000. So the practical shape of the Launch plan is a free ride that ends in a step from $0 to about $1,068 a year on monthly billing, or $940 prepaid annually. Plan for it early, because it arrives on a growth day, which is exactly when nobody is reading the invoice.
Annual billing is exactly 12%, and it checks out
Most platforms round their annual discount into vagueness. beehiiv's is arithmetically clean: every published annual total equals the monthly price times twelve times 0.88. Scale at 5,000 subscribers is $89 monthly and $940 a year, which is $89 x 12 x 0.88 = $939.84. At 10,000 it is $1,151. Max at 10,000 is $2,313. If you are staying more than a year, prepay; the discount is real and it does not expire into a higher renewal rate the way an introductory promo does.
What the software has to earn
Here is the arithmetic beehiiv does not print, and it is the fairest way to judge the price. Take a weekly newsletter, which is about 4.33 sends per subscriber per month, and ask what effective revenue per thousand emails just covers the plan.
| List size | Scale, monthly | Sends per month | Break-even per 1,000 sends |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,500 | $69 | 10,825 | $6.37 |
| 5,000 | $89 | 21,650 | $4.11 |
| 10,000 | $109 | 43,300 | $2.52 |
| 25,000 | $169 | 108,250 | $1.56 |
beehiiv publishes no guaranteed ad rate and we are not going to invent one, so treat those figures as the bar rather than a forecast: if your ad network payouts and sponsorships clear roughly $4 per thousand sends at 5,000 subscribers, the platform is free and the argument is over. If they clear nothing, you are paying $1,068 a year for a send button with a website attached.
Paid subscriptions are the cleaner case, because beehiiv takes 0% and only Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30 applies. A $5 monthly subscription nets you $4.56. Scale at 5,000 subscribers costs $89, so twenty paying readers cover it; Max at the same size costs $169, so thirty-eight do. Compare that with Substack, where the all-in cut on a $5 subscription is 19.6% and you net $4.02. The crossover is around 166 paying subscribers, roughly $830 a month of gross subscription revenue: below that, Substack's percentage is cheaper than beehiiv's flat fee, and above it beehiiv wins and keeps winning.
The Max premium is not a flat surcharge
Removing "powered by beehiiv" means moving to Max, and the gap between the two plans widens as you grow: $60 a month more at 1,000 subscribers, $80 at 5,000, $110 at 10,000, $130 at 100,000. Max also carries the Send API, RSS-to-send, dynamic content, unlimited team seats, and up to 10 publications against Scale's 3 seats and 3 publications. Decide on the features, not the logo. Paying $110 a month extra to delete six words of footer text is the most expensive typography decision in the category.
One more ceiling: both plans stop at 100,000 subscribers. Past that it is Enterprise, quote only, with dedicated IPs, SSO, and an account manager, so there is no published number to budget against.
Is it worth it?
If beehiiv's rails are producing revenue or subscribers, yes, comfortably. The recommendation network and paid Boosts acquire real readers, the ad network and sponsorship storefront put money in the product, and paid subscriptions carry no platform cut. Billing counts active subscribers only, per beehiiv's own support article updated June 22, 2026, so dead weight costs nothing. The limitation to price in: those rails are the switching cost, and they do not export.
Under 2,500 subscribers, stay free and stop reading pricing pages. Launch covers a custom domain, a website, and unlimited sends. Nothing on the market beats $0 for a list that size unless you specifically need automations.
If you send a newsletter and never touch the monetization tools, the ladder is a tax. A 10,000-subscriber list with no ads and no paid tier pays $1,308 a year on monthly Scale for sending and hosting. Our case is that the same work fits in $50 per domain flat: unlimited subscribers, a threaded team inbox covering every address on the domain, and deliverability handled in code, which means SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured, a warm-up throttle, automatic suppression, and RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe on every campaign. The honest gaps: no hosted website or podcast, no recommendation network, no paid subscriptions (bring your own Stripe), and waitlist onboarding. Media sites running several properties tend to feel the per-domain math first, and the full side by side is at LetterDuck vs beehiiv.
If your readers reply, budget for a second tool. beehiiv is outbound. Replies land wherever your domain's mail already goes, which for most publishers is one person's personal inbox. That is a real operating cost even though it never appears on the beehiiv invoice, and it is the argument in our guide to running a newsletter on your own domain.
The flat-rate comparison
Billing-basis note: the beehiiv column below uses annual-billing effective prices, which are 12% under the monthly numbers quoted throughout this page. LetterDuck is flat, so its column does not move.
| Monthly cost at | beehiiv | LetterDuck |
|---|---|---|
| 500 subscribers | $43 | $50 flat |
| 1,000 subscribers | $43 | $50 flat |
| 5,000 subscribers | $78 | $50 flat |
| 10,000 subscribers | $96 | $50 flat |
Public list prices, August 2026, annual billing where offered. beehiiv: Scale plan on annual billing. On monthly billing the same list sizes cost $49, $49, $89 and $109. The free Launch plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers. LetterDuck is $50 per domain, flat, unlimited addresses and subscribers.