Substack
substack.com
Publish and charge, with no monthly fee
FreeFree plan
Ghost
Open-source publishing with memberships
Free trialNewsletters & PublishingSince 2013
from $18/moVisit ghost.org
What Ghost is
Independent publishing platform with newsletters, paid memberships and a proper CMS. Self-host free or use Ghost(Pro).
What Ghost has cost
We have read this pricing page 13 times since Jan 2021, including archived copies of it. Each figure below was pulled from the page itself, not from a summary of it.
- $36/moJan 2021 · Basic · 1 reading · archived page
The entry plan changed name here, from Basic to Starter. That is a different plan, so the two prices are not a rise or a cut.
$15/moJul 2021 · Starter · 1 reading · archived page- $9/mo*Jul 2022 – Jul 2025 · Starter · 6 readings · archived page
- $18/mo*Jan 2026 – Sept 2026 · Starter · 5 readings · archived page
* That reading is the effective monthly cost when paying for a year up front, which is what the page published at the time.
Gaps are ours, not the vendor's: where a capture was unreadable, or the price could not be tied to a plan at all, no reading was recorded rather than a guess. See every price change we can stand behind.
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Free trial
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Trial length and card requirement are set by the vendor.
Ghost alternatives
Other tools in newsletters & publishing that cover similar ground. Full comparison.
Where Ghost sits on price
Entry prices across Newsletters & Publishing, cheapest first.
- Buttondown$9*
- EmailOctopus$9
- Paragraph$16
- Ghost$18
- Flodesk$25
- Curated$39
- beehiiv$49
- Newslet$69
7 of these 8 prices were read from the vendor's own pricing page; the rest are marked * and are indicative. The median is taken across the 6 verified prices in Newsletters & Publishing. 2 more tools in this category do not publish an entry price and are not plotted.
Ghost pricing questions
- How much does Ghost cost?
- Ghost starts at $18 a month on its Starter plan, billed annually. That figure was read from ghost.org's own pricing page on 21 September 2026.
- Does Ghost have a free plan?
- No ongoing free plan. Ghost offers a free trial, after which a paid plan is required.
- What is Ghost used for?
- Independent publishing platform with newsletters, paid memberships and a proper CMS. Self-host free or use Ghost(Pro). People mainly use it to publish a blog, start a newsletter, sell memberships.
- What are the best alternatives to Ghost?
- The closest alternatives in the same category are Substack, beehiiv, Newslet, Flodesk. Substack and beehiiv publish a free plan.