Substack User and Revenue Statistics
Written by Brian Dean
Substack launched in 2017 as a tool for starting paid email newsletters.
Within a year, the company had turned a mission to help writers reach audiences that value them into a platform with 25,000 paying subscribers.
Now, the company boasts having over 2 million paid subscriptions (out of 35 million active subscriptions on the platform).
So, how big is Substack in the overall economy? And what were the details behind their rapid rise?
Here’s a summary of what you’ll find out on this page:
- Substack Usage Statistics (Top Picks)
- Substack Monthly Active Users
- Substack Paid Subscriptions
- Substack Paying Subscribers
- Substack Writers
- Substack Business Model
- Highest Earning Newsletters on Substack
- Substack Funding
- Substack Valuation
- Substack Top Author Earnings
Substack Usage Statistics (Top Picks)
- Substack has more than 20 million monthly active subscribers.
- Substack hit 2 million paid subscriptions.
- More than 17,000 writers get paid on Substack.
- The top 10 authors on Substack collectively make $25 million per year.
Substack Monthly Active Users
According to the company update shared in February 2023, Substack has over 20 million monthly active subscribers.
Traffic estimates show that Substack had 49.4 million unique visitors to its website across desktop and mobile devices in January 2024. That’s an increase of 41.95% since August 2023.
Here’s a table with unique visitors to Substack since August 2023:
| Date | Substack unique visitors |
|---|---|
| August 2023 | 34.8 million |
| September 2023 | 38 million |
| October 2023 | 39.8 million |
| November 2023 | 38.9 million |
| December 2023 | 45.9 million |
| January 2024 | 49.4 million |
Substack Paid Subscriptions
According to the company, Substack has more than 2 million paid subscriptions on the platform. Number of paid subscriptions on Substack doubled from 1 million since November 2021.
Paid subscriptions may not represent unique paying subscribers.
To put in a perspective, the total number of active subscriptions hit 35 million (as of April 2023).
Paying subscriptions account for 5.71% of all active subscriptions on the platform.
Sources: Substack 1, Substack 2, Axios
Substack Paying Subscribers
According to the latest update, Substack has more than 500,000 paying subscribers (as of February 2021). Substack no longer provides updated data on the number of unique paying subscribers publicly.
Here’s a full breakdown of Substack’s paid subscriptions over time:
| Date | Paying subscribers |
|---|---|
| July 2018 | 11,000 |
| October 2018 | 25,000 |
| April 2019 | 40,000 |
| July 2019 | 50,000 |
| March 2020 | 100,000 |
| September 2020 | 250,000 |
| December 2020 | 250,000+ |
| February 2021 | 500,000+ |
Sources: Niemen Lab, Substack 1, Substack 2, TechCrunch, Axios, Youtube
Substack Writers
There are more than 17,000 writers who get paid for their newsletters published on Substack.
Source: Axios
Substack Business Model
Publishing is free for creators on Substack. For paid subscriptions, a 10% commission fee is charged by Substack. And another 2.9% + 30 cents per payment and 0.5% for recurring payments is charged by Substack’s payment provider (Stripe).
Source: Substack
Highest Earning Newsletters on Substack
Top 27 highest earning newsletters on Substack are estimated to generate at least $22 million in subscription revenue.
Here’s a complete list of top earning newsletters on Substack ranked by minimum implied revenue (Substack doesn’t provide specific data on number of paying subscribers; data as of February 2023):
| Newsletter | Annual subscription revenue |
|---|---|
| Letters from an American | $5,000,000 |
| The Pragmatic Engineer | $1,500,000 |
| Lenny’s Newsletter | $1,500,000 |
| Bulwark+ | $1,000,000 |
| The Fifth Column | $1,000,000 |
| The Free Press | $800,000 |
| Slow Boring | $800,000 |
| Tipping Point Prophecy Update | $770,000 |
| House Inhabit | $700,000 |
| The Isolation Journals | $600,000 |
| Parent Data | $600,000 |
| Unreported Truths | $600,000 |
| Blocked and Reported | $550,000 |
| Racket | $500,000 |
| Dr Mercola’s Censored Library | $500,000 |
| Culture Study | $500,000 |
| a newsletter | $500,000 |
| Your Local Epidemiologist | $500,000 |
| The Weekly Dish | $500,000 |
| Popular Information | $500,000 |
| Steady | $500,000 |
| Who is Robert Malone | $500,000 |
| Proof | $500,000 |
| Robert Reich | $500,000 |
| Steve Kirsch’s newsletter | $500,000 |
| The North Star | $500,000 |
| The Martyr Made Substack | $500,000 |
Source: Press Gazette
Substack Funding
Substack has raised a total of $90.2 million across 5 funding rounds.
Notable investors include Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz.
| Funding round, Date | Funding amount |
|---|---|
| Pre Seed, January 2018 | $120 thousand |
| Seed, April 2018 | $2 million |
| Series A, July 2019 | $15.3 million |
| Series B, March 2021 | $65 million |
| Community Fundraising (Wefunder) | $7.8 million |
Sources: Crunchbase, Fortune, Axios, Wefunder
Substack Valuation
After Substack’s latest Series B round, the company is now valued at $650 million.
That’s up from a valuation of only $48.65 million in July 2019.
Source: TechCrunch
Substack Top Author Earnings
The top 10 authors on Substack collectively make more than $25 million a year. An increase from $15 million in February 2021, and $10 million in December 2020.
Here’s the complete breakdown of Substack’s author earnings:
| Date | Annual earnings of top 10 authors on Substack |
|---|---|
| September 2020 | $7 million |
| December 2020 | $10 million |
| February 2021 | $15 million |
| October 2021 | $20 million |
| October 2022 | $25 million |
Sources: Substack 1, Substack 2, Axios, YouTube, Fortune,
Conclusion
That’s it for my collection of Substack growth data and figures.
Demand for non ad-based media models has been taking off. With newsletters leading the pack.
Substack is both riding and driving this growing trend.
So it will be interesting to see what’s coming next for Substack.