Substack costs nothing until you monetise, and then it takes 10% of every subscription for as long as that subscriber stays. On $5,000 a month in subscriptions that is $500 a month, forever — for a mailing list you could run for $30.
Substack is free to publish and takes 10% of subscription revenue once you charge, plus Stripe's roughly 2.9% and 30 cents per transaction, so you keep about 87%. Bluey charges for sending and takes 0% of your revenue: a 10,000-subscriber list emailed weekly is 40,000 sends at $30 a month on Grow. At $5,000 a month in subscription revenue, Substack's cut is $500 a month against Bluey's $30 flat. Substack's real value is discovery — the network, recommendations and the app genuinely grow audiences. Pick Substack while the network is doing the work; move once your revenue is large enough that 10% costs more than the growth it buys.
A platform fee on revenue is not a cost of getting started — it is a permanent share of a business you built. At $5,000 a month in subscriptions it is $500 a month, and it grows every time you do.
Substack sends posts. It does not really do segmentation, behavioural triggers or multi-step sequences. Once you want to email lapsed paid subscribers differently from free readers, or run an onboarding sequence, you have outgrown the tool.
On Bluey the list, the domain and the sending reputation are yours. That matters most at exactly the moment a platform changes its terms, its algorithm, or its cut.
Substack's network is a real asset and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Stay on Substack when:
The switch makes sense when your growth stops coming from the network and starts coming from you — at which point 10% is a fee on your own audience. Run the number: if the cut exceeds what the discovery is worth, move.
Substack exports your subscriber list, including which subscribers are paid. Moving means bringing your own Stripe account and rebuilding the paywall — a real project, but a one-off.
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Start free and get the checklistNothing until you charge readers. Once you do, Substack takes 10% of subscription revenue and Stripe takes roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, so you keep about 87%. At $5,000 a month in subscriptions that is about $675 a month going to fees.
Almost immediately, on cost alone. Substack's 10% reaches Bluey's $30 Grow plan at $300 a month in subscription revenue. The real question is not cost, it is whether Substack's network is still bringing you subscribers — if it is, that growth may be worth more than the fee.
Yes. Substack lets you export your full list including paid-subscriber status, and it does not lock the list. What does not export is the network: recommendations, Notes and app discovery stop when you leave.
Discovery, mainly, and managed payments. You take on connecting Stripe, building the paid gate and managing your own sending domain. You gain 10% of your revenue back, real segmentation, automation, and ownership of the reader relationship.
Bluey handles the list, the segmentation, the gated content emails and the transactional messages around access. Payments run through your own Stripe account, which is why the revenue share is zero — the money goes to you, not through a platform that takes a cut first.
Pricing verified 4 September 2026 against each provider’s public pricing page. Bluey figures use the Grow plan (send-based). Competitor tiers shift at least quarterly; figures marked “~” are interpolated between published tiers.
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