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 5 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 has over 5 million paid subscriptions.
- More than 17,000 writers get paid on Substack.
- The top 10 authors on Substack collectively make $40 million per year.
Substack Monthly Active Users
According to a podcast with the company CEO in May 2025, Substack has over 20 million monthly active subscribers.
Traffic estimates show that Substack had 47.6 million unique visitors to its website across desktop and mobile devices in September 2025. That’s an increase of 65.85% since September 2024.
Here’s a table with unique visitors to Substack since August 2023:
| Date | Substack unique visitors |
|---|---|
| August 2023 | 22.1 million |
| September 2023 | 22.4 million |
| October 2023 | 24.9 million |
| November 2023 | 24.1 million |
| December 2023 | 27.6 million |
| January 2024 | 29.1 million |
| September 2024 | 28.7 million |
| September 2025 | 47.6 million |
Sources: Substack, Semrush, Substack 2
Substack Paid Subscriptions
According to the company, Substack has more than 5 million paid subscriptions on the platform. The number of paid subscriptions on Substack has more than doubled from 2 million since 2024.
Paid subscriptions may not represent unique paying subscribers.
To put in a perspective, the total number of active subscriptions hit 35 million (as of September 2025).
Paying subscriptions account for 5.71% of all active subscriptions on the platform.
Sources: Substack 1, Substack 2, Axios, Substack 3
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
Today, 52 newsletters on Substack earn at least $500,000+ annually. These newsletters are estimated to generate at least $40.2 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 January 2025):
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 |
| Citrini Research | $1,250,000 |
| The Bulwark* | $1,025,000 |
| Noahpinion | $1,000,000 |
| Silver Bulletin | $1,000,000 |
| Meidas+ | $1,000,000 |
| Public | $1,000,000 |
| Chamath Palihapitiya | $1,000,000 |
| Slow Boring | $812,500 |
| The Preamble | $812,500 |
| Thinking About… | $812,500 |
| The Forgotten Side of Medicine | $812,500 |
| Whitepaper.mx | $812,500 |
| Tipping Point Prophecy Update | $812,500 |
| Vale Tutto – di Selvaggia Lucarelli | $750,000 |
| Zeteo | $750,000 |
| The Contrarian | $750,000 |
| Racket News | $750,000 |
| The Warning with Steve Schmidt | $750,000 |
| The Message Box | $750,000 |
| Capital Wars | $750,000 |
| Eliant’s Exploits | $725,000 |
| The Isolation Journals | $600,000 |
| The Good in Us by Mary L Trump | $600,000 |
| Proof | $600,000 |
| Unreported Truths | $600,000 |
| Serious Trouble | $600,000 |
| Big Salad | $600,000 |
| Blocked and Reported | $550,000 |
| Steady | $512,500 |
| House Inhabit | $500,000 |
| The Borowitz Report | $500,000 |
| Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance | $500,000 |
| Robert Reich | $500,000 |
| Popular Information | $500,000 |
| The Weekly Dish | $500,000 |
| Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg | $500,000 |
| Public Notice | $500,000 |
| What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking | $500,000 |
| a newsletter | $500,000 |
| Violet’s Substack | $500,000 |
| David Lebovitz Newsletter | $500,000 |
| Who is Robert Malone | $500,000 |
| Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake | $500,000 |
| Seymour Hersh | $500,000 |
| Your Local Epidemiologist | $500,000 |
| Story Club with George Saunders | $500,000 |
| Chartbook | $500,000 |
Source: Press Gazette, Press Gazette 2
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 $40 million a year. An increase from $25 million in October 2022, and $20 million in October 2021.
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 |
| October 2025 | $40 million |
Sources: Substack 1, Substack 2, Axios, YouTube, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal
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.
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