beehiiv changed every plan name on October 1, 2026, and most price lists you’ll find still use the old ones. The free plan still covers 2,500 subscribers. What changed is what the two paid plans are called, what they cost at each list size, and which features sit behind each one.
What You Pay for beehiiv Comes Down to Two Choices
Your beehiiv bill depends on two things: the plan you pick (Free, Lite, Pro or Enterprise) and the subscriber tier your list falls into. Lite and Pro are priced by list size, so the same plan costs $49/month at 1,000 subscribers and $399/month at 100,000, both billed yearly (beehiiv pricing).
Why does this matter? Because the plan decides what you can do, and the tier decides what you pay for it. A writer with 900 subscribers who wants a welcome sequence pays for Lite. A writer with 2,400 subscribers who is happy with one welcome email pays nothing.
This guide covers both choices. We pulled the numbers from beehiiv’s public pricing page and its plan-change announcement, and we checked them against the billing page in our own beehiiv account.
Key Takeaways
Paid subscriptions on beehiiv generated $19M in 2025, up from $8M in 2024, according to beehiiv’s State of Newsletters 2026 report, and beehiiv takes 0% of paid subscription revenue. So what do you actually pay for? The plan, not a cut of your earnings. Free costs $0 up to 2,500 subscribers. Lite starts at $49/month and Pro at $95/month on yearly billing, and both rise with your list.
Quick Answer: What beehiiv Costs in 2026
beehiiv costs $0 on the Free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers, $49/month on Lite and $95/month on Pro for a list of up to 1,000 subscribers billed yearly, per beehiiv’s pricing page. Monthly billing raises those to $59/month and $109/month. Enterprise is priced by quote.
| Plan | Billed yearly (per month) | Billed monthly | Subscriber limit | Team seats | Publications |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Up to 2,500 | 1 | 1 |
| Lite | $49 | $59 | Up to 100,000 | 2 | 3 |
| Pro | $95 | $109 | Up to 250,000 | 10 | 10 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Unlimited | Custom |
Prices are for a list of up to 1,000 subscribers, in US dollars, read on October 24, 2026.
So how much is beehiiv for you, and which of the four beehiiv plans is the cheapest one that fits? If one welcome email and a 2,500-subscriber cap are enough, Free is. If you want automations, a custom domain, paid subscriptions or ads, Lite is the floor. Pro makes sense when you need more than two seats, more than three publications, unlimited automations or no beehiiv branding.
Want to know how the product itself holds up before you pay? We wrote up what we found when we tested beehiiv’s free plan and Pro trial, from the phone check at signup to the first welcome email.
How We Checked beehiiv’s Prices
We used two sources: the billing page inside our own beehiiv account, and beehiiv’s public pricing page. Each number in this guide comes from one of them, and the date is next to it.
On October 20, 2026, we signed up for beehiiv with a work account and no credit card, as part of the same seven-task test we run on every newsletter platform. We read the Settings → Billing & plan page and copied it word for word. That is where our free plan numbers come from.
On October 24, 2026, we read the public pricing page in a US English browser. We moved the subscriber slider through every tier, with both yearly and monthly billing, and copied the price shown at each step. We also opened every section of the feature comparison table. All prices on that page were in US dollars.
Why bother with both? Because they don’t always say the same thing. The app showed us what our account had. The pricing page shows what each plan includes. When the two differ, we say so.
We did not pay for Lite or Pro. Paid-plan details here come from beehiiv’s own pages, not from our use of them. Third-party price lists are not used, because many of them still show the plans from before October 2026.
The October 2026 Plan Change: Launch, Scale and Max Became Free, Lite and Pro
beehiiv renamed and repriced its plans on October 1, 2026: Launch became Free, Scale became Lite, Max became Pro, and Enterprise kept its name, according to the announcement by cofounder and CEO Tyler Denk. He calls it only the second time beehiiv has changed its plans and pricing in its near five-year history.
| Old plan name | New plan name | What the new plan covers |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | Free | Up to 2,500 subscribers |
| Scale | Lite | Up to 100,000 subscribers |
| Max | Pro | Up to 250,000 subscribers |
| Enterprise | Enterprise | Custom limits |
Reading an older review that mentions the “beehiiv Launch plan,” the “beehiiv Scale plan” or the “beehiiv Max plan”? It is describing Free, Lite or Pro under the old names. The old prices don’t carry over, though. Pro now goes up to 250,000 subscribers, where self-serve plans used to stop at 100,000 and push larger lists to Enterprise.
When existing customers pay the new prices
New customers have paid the new prices since October 1, 2026. Existing customers keep their current price until their first renewal on or after November 1, 2026 (beehiiv announcement). The FAQ on that page splits it by billing period:
- Monthly customers get at least 30 days’ notice before their first bill at the new price.
- Annual customers keep their current price through the end of the current annual term.
- The plan moves over automatically, and content and workflows carry over.
- A discount already on the account carries over to the new plan.
There is one catch for growing lists. Some accounts had grown past the tier they were billed for, and beehiiv says it moved those accounts to the tier that matches their current subscriber count. The new tier is also billed from the first renewal on or after November 1. If that bumps you up a tier, the announcement points to removing disengaged subscribers as one way back down.
The Free Plan: 2,500 Subscribers, 1 Seat, 1 Publication
The beehiiv free plan costs $0 for up to 2,500 subscribers, with 1 team seat, 1 publication and unlimited email sends. Our own account’s billing page said exactly that: “Free Plan — 2,500 subs @ $0/month,” with “1 team seat · 1 publication · Unlimited email sends · 30 days of analytics.”
The pricing page calls Free “free forever, with no credit card required” (beehiiv pricing). After the October change it also includes Community, next to the website and podcast tools, per the announcement.
What does Free leave out? More than the headline suggests. Here is the Free column of the comparison table next to Lite for the items people ask about most:
| Feature | Free | Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome email | Yes | Yes |
| Live custom automations | Not included | 10 |
| “Signed up” automation trigger | Not included | Yes |
| Webhooks | Not included | 3 |
| Custom domains | Not included | Yes |
| Paid subscriptions | Not included | Yes |
| Ad Network | Not included | Yes |
| Referral program | Not included | Yes |
| A/B testing | Not included | Yes |
| Segments | 3 | 10 |
| Custom website pages | 1 | 5 |
| Sender addresses | 1 | 3 |
| Digital products | 1 | 3 |
| Analytics lookback | 30 days | 12 months |
| API rate limit | 30 requests per minute | 180 requests per minute |
Sources: beehiiv pricing for the plan rows, read October 24, 2026, and beehiiv’s rate limiting docs for the API row.
The welcome email row is the one to read twice. Free keeps a single welcome email. Custom automations, and the “Signed up” trigger that starts a welcome sequence, begin at Lite. When we set up a welcome automation in our test, it ran on the trigger “Signed up,” and we built it during the Pro trial, not on Free. For what a short welcome series can look like once you do pay, see our three-email welcome series and setup guide.
What happens past 2,500 subscribers
The Free plan has a hard ceiling. On the pricing page slider, the Free card shows up at the 1,000 and 2,500 tiers and drops out from 5,000 up. The FAQ says beehiiv counts “unique email addresses subscribed to your publication,” and that you can upgrade to the next plan at any time.
So the real question is timing. A list that grows past 2,500 means a paid plan at the 5,000 tier, which is $95/month on Lite billed yearly. Plan your budget before you get close, not after. If reaching that point is the goal, our list-building guide, from signup form to welcome email covers where the first few thousand subscribers come from.
Lite vs Pro: What Each Paid Plan Adds
Lite unlocks earning and automation: paid subscriptions with 0% platform fees, the Ad Network, automations, A/B testing and polls for up to 100,000 subscribers. Pro adds higher limits, branding removal and advanced tools for up to 250,000 subscribers, according to the plan announcement. At 1,000 subscribers, the gap between the two is $46/month on yearly billing.
| Feature | Lite | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Subscriber limit | 100,000 | 250,000 |
| Team seats | 2 | 10 |
| Publications | 3 | 10 |
| Guest authors | 3 | Unlimited |
| Analytics lookback | 12 months | Unlimited |
| Live custom automations | 10 | Unlimited |
| Webhooks | 3 | Unlimited |
| Segments | 10 | Unlimited |
| Custom website pages | 5 | Unlimited |
| Site redirects | 10 | Unlimited |
| Paid subscription tiers | 1 | Unlimited |
| Digital products | 3 | Unlimited |
| Remove beehiiv branding | Not included | Yes |
| AI usage | Elevated | 5x Lite |
| API rate limit | 180 requests per minute | 500 requests per minute |
| Support | Standard | Priority |
Sources: beehiiv pricing, read October 24, 2026; API limits from beehiiv’s rate limiting docs.
Several features are Pro-only on the comparison table. The ones that matter most to a growing newsletter:
- Dynamic content and RSS to Send.
- Click-triggered automations and A/B splits with advanced conditions.
- Newsletter Lists and audio newsletters.
- The Send API and the WordPress integration.
- Paid trials, group subscriptions and a sponsorship storefront.
- Webinars and coaching, custom checkout pages and order bumps for digital products.
- A custom robots.txt file and AI bot control on your beehiiv website.
Is the branding row worth $46 a month on its own? For most solo writers, no. During our test, the settings page said “Private branding — Not included in free trial … Unlock with Pro plan,” which is the switch that removes the “Powered by” badge. If a badge bothers you less than the price, Lite covers the earning and automation tools.
The limits are a better reason to move up. Lite’s 10 live automations and 3 webhooks are plenty for one newsletter with a welcome series and a few integrations. A team with several editors, several publications or a stack of connected tools will hit Lite’s caps first.
How the Price Scales With Your Subscriber Count
Your beehiiv cost rises with your list on both paid plans: Lite runs from $49/month at 1,000 subscribers to $399/month at 100,000, and Pro from $95/month to $869/month at 250,000 and up, all billed yearly, per the slider on beehiiv’s pricing page. Lite stops at 100,000 subscribers, so larger lists need Pro or Enterprise.
| Subscriber tier | Lite, yearly (per month) | Lite, monthly | Pro, yearly (per month) | Pro, monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 1,000 | $49 | $59 | $95 | $109 |
| Up to 2,500 | $69 | $79 | $129 | $149 |
| Up to 5,000 | $95 | $109 | $169 | $199 |
| Up to 10,000 | $119 | $139 | $199 | $239 |
| Up to 25,000 | $169 | $199 | $299 | $349 |
| Up to 50,000 | $249 | $299 | $399 | $469 |
| Up to 75,000 | $329 | $389 | $499 | $589 |
| Up to 100,000 | $399 | $469 | $599 | $699 |
| Up to 150,000 | Not offered | Not offered | $689 | $799 |
| Up to 200,000 | Not offered | Not offered | $779 | $899 |
| 250,000 and up | Not offered | Not offered | $869 | $999 |
Read October 24, 2026. Yearly prices are shown per month, the way the pricing page shows them; you pay the year up front, so Lite at 1,000 subscribers is $588 for the year.
How do the tiers work in practice? beehiiv’s announcement defines a subscriber tier as the upper limit you pay for: on Lite at the 10,000 tier, you pay for up to 10,000 subscribers. When your list passes the top of your tier, you move to the next one. The gaps are wide. Going from 2,500 to 2,501 subscribers on Lite moves you from $69 to $95 a month on yearly billing.
What does a typical first year look like? Say you start on Free and grow to 4,000 subscribers by month nine. You pay $0 until you pass 2,500. From there, Lite at the 5,000 tier costs $95/month billed yearly, or $109/month if you pay as you go. The cheapest path is to stay on Free while it fits and switch to yearly billing once you know you’ll stay.
One more thing to check before you budget. The slider shows list price only. If you have a discount from an earlier offer, it applies on top, and beehiiv says only one discount can be active at a time.
What the 14-Day Trial Unlocks and What It Leaves Out
beehiiv’s trial gave our new account 14 days of Pro features with no credit card, and the plan screen said the account would move to Free afterward. The plan screen we saw read: “Or start your 14-day trial — After your trial, you’ll be moved to our Free plan, good for up to 2,500 subscribers … No credit card required.”
The trial card listed what was in and what was out:
| During the 14-day trial | Status on the trial card |
|---|---|
| Automations, segments and A/B testing | Included |
| beehiiv AI | Included |
| Referral program | Included |
| Earn with ads, paid recommendations and subscriptions | Not included |
| Connect a custom domain | Not included |
| Invite your team | Not included |
Settings added one more gap: private branding was “Not included in free trial.” So the trial lets you test the writing, automation and growth tools. It does not let you test the money tools, your own domain or a second seat.
Does the trial commit you to paying? No. It needed no card, and the pricing page describes Lite and Pro as including “a free trial so you can use paid features before you subscribe.” The only way to keep trial features after day 14 is to pick a paid plan.
What surprised us was where the trial sat on the screen. The paid offer, “Upgrade now and save 10% forever,” came first with a “Get started” button. The no-card trial was the second card. If you want to try before you pay, look for that second card.
Here is a short plan for the 14 days:
- Write down the features you need after the trial and find each one in the Free and Lite columns of the comparison table.
- Build the automations you would actually run, so you know whether 10 on Lite is enough.
- Send yourself a test email from the post editor before you send anything to readers.
- Decide on a plan before day 14, so the switch to Free doesn’t catch your welcome sequence by surprise.
Fees on Paid Subscriptions and Ad Earnings
beehiiv takes 0% of paid subscription and digital product revenue; you keep what you earn minus Stripe’s standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, according to the beehiiv pricing FAQ. Paid subscriptions and the Ad Network both start at Lite, so the plan fee is the cost of earning.
How does that compare with a platform that takes a share instead? Substack is free to publish on, but it keeps 10% of each subscription payment, and Stripe adds its card fee plus a 0.7% Billing fee for recurring payments, per Substack’s cost page. Here is one $8 monthly payment on each, using only the fee rates the two pages publish:
| One $8/month payment | beehiiv (Lite or Pro) | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| Platform share | $0.00 (0%) | $0.80 (10%) |
| Stripe card fee (2.9% + $0.30) | $0.53 | $0.53 |
| Stripe Billing fee (0.7%) | Not part of beehiiv’s quoted fee | $0.06 |
| What the writer keeps | about $7.47 | about $6.61 |
| Plan fee | $49/month and up | $0 |
The trade-off is plain. On beehiiv you pay a fixed plan fee and keep more of each payment. On Substack you pay nothing up front and give up 10% of revenue. The math tips toward beehiiv once 10% of your monthly paid revenue is more than your Lite bill: at the 1,000 tier, that is about $490 a month in paid revenue against Lite’s $49. For every Substack fee in detail, read what Substack charges and what a paid writer keeps.
How the Ad Network pays
The Ad Network is open to “anyone on the Lite plan or above who is actively sending on beehiiv,” per the Ad Network FAQ. Offers pay by CPM or CPC. beehiiv’s own examples: a $5 CPM earns $5 for every 1,000 unique opens, and a $2 CPC with 100 verified clicks earns $200.
The payout rules are specific:
- Clicks and opens count for 72 hours after your send.
- A performance report arrives about 96 hours after the send.
- Payouts go out on the 20th of each month for the prior month’s earnings.
- You need a Stripe Express account to run ads and get paid.
- You can reserve up to 5 offers at a time and run up to 3 ads in one post.
The pricing page cards label ad monetization “Avg. $39/mo.” Read that as beehiiv’s own average across publishers, not a promise for your list. Notice that it sits below the $49/month Lite price at 1,000 subscribers, so a small list should not count on ads alone to pay for the plan. Our guide to six ways newsletters make money covers how ads, paid tiers and products stack together.
beehiiv vs Kit vs MailerLite vs Substack at the Same List Size
At 1,000 subscribers, beehiiv’s Free plan and Kit’s free plan both cost $0, MailerLite needs a paid plan because its free plan stops at 250 subscribers, and Substack charges nothing until readers pay. On paid plans billed yearly, beehiiv Lite is $49/month, Kit Creator is $33/month and MailerLite Comfort is $17.10/month, per each company’s pricing page on October 24, 2026.
| At this list size | beehiiv | Kit | MailerLite | Substack |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan subscriber cap | 2,500 | 10,000 | 250 | No cap, free to publish |
| Entry paid plan | Lite | Creator | Comfort | No paid plan |
| 1,000 subscribers, billed yearly | $49/month | $33/month | $17.10/month | $0 |
| 1,000 subscribers, billed monthly | $59/month | $39/month | $19/month | $0 |
| 10,000 subscribers, billed yearly | $119/month | $116/month | $80.10/month | $0 |
| 10,000 subscribers, billed monthly | $139/month | $139/month | $89/month | $0 |
Sources: beehiiv pricing, Kit pricing, MailerLite pricing and Substack’s cost page, all read October 24, 2026. MailerLite’s Comfort plan at 1,000 subscribers includes 10,000 emails a month; beehiiv lists unlimited sends on every plan, and Kit lists unlimited email broadcasts.
Why is beehiiv the priciest entry plan here? Partly because beehiiv bundles more into each plan: its FAQ says the website, podcast, community and digital products tools come with every plan, and Lite adds the Ad Network and paid subscriptions. If you only need to send a newsletter with a welcome sequence, MailerLite or Kit costs less at 1,000 subscribers. If you want ads and paid subscriptions in the same tool, beehiiv’s 0% share starts to pay back.
Our own test lines up with the free columns. In our accounts, beehiiv’s billing page showed the 2,500-subscriber Free plan, Kit’s app only showed the trial of its Creator plan, and MailerLite’s plan page showed “Up to 250 subscribers. 2,500 emails.” For the full test of all three, see our side-by-side test of beehiiv, Kit and MailerLite.
Comparing costs one tool at a time? Our guides to what Kit’s free plan includes and what Creator costs and to MailerLite’s free plan limits and paid tiers go tier by tier. If you sell courses or digital products more than you publish, our roundup of email tools for selling to your audience weighs the tools by that job instead.
Discounts: Annual Billing and the Save-10%-Forever Offer
The biggest discount on a beehiiv subscription is yearly billing. The pricing FAQ says it “saves up to 20% compared with paying month to month,” and the announcement says paying annually “now gets you up to two months free” (beehiiv pricing; beehiiv announcement).
What do the slider prices actually give you? We worked it out tier by tier from the yearly and monthly prices in the table. The savings ran from about 13% to about 17%, depending on plan and tier. Lite at 1,000 subscribers saves the most in percentage terms: $588 a year instead of $708, or $120 back, which is about two months of the monthly price.
| Plan and tier | Yearly total | Twelve monthly payments | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite, 1,000 subscribers | $588 | $708 | $120 |
| Lite, 10,000 subscribers | $1,428 | $1,668 | $240 |
| Pro, 1,000 subscribers | $1,140 | $1,308 | $168 |
| Pro, 10,000 subscribers | $2,388 | $2,868 | $480 |
The in-app “save 10% forever” offer
Inside the app, our new account saw a different offer. The plan screen’s first card read “Upgrade now and save 10% forever,” with a “Get started” button, placed before the no-card trial. We did not take it, so we can’t tell you how it combines with yearly billing.
What we can tell you is beehiiv’s rule on stacking. The announcement says discounts can’t be combined: if you redeem a new offer later, “like a Black Friday deal,” it replaces your existing discount. If a payment fails and the plan is canceled, the discount is removed. So before you take any new offer, compare it with the one you already have.
Is there a beehiiv promo code that beats these? The two offers beehiiv shows directly are yearly billing and the in-app upgrade offer. Treat any code from a third-party site with care, and check the final price on the checkout screen before you pay.
Which beehiiv Plan Should You Pick?
Pick Free if your list will stay under 2,500 subscribers for a while and one welcome email is enough. Pick Lite once you need a welcome sequence, your own domain, paid subscriptions or ads. Pick Pro when you need more than 2 seats, more than 3 publications, unlimited automations or no beehiiv branding. At 1,000 subscribers on yearly billing, that is $0, $49/month or $95/month (beehiiv pricing).
Would we start a new newsletter on Free? Yes. The Free plan our account landed on needed no card and covered 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, which is room for most first newsletters. The paid plans earn their price once you need what Free leaves out, not before.
Before you pick, run through this list:
- Count your subscribers today and estimate them six months out. Find both numbers in the tier table.
- List the three features you can’t live without and check each one in the Free, Lite and Pro columns, not in the trial.
- If you plan to charge readers, compare Lite’s plan fee with 10% of your expected paid revenue.
- If you are an existing customer, find your renewal date. New prices start at the first renewal on or after November 1, 2026.
- Choose yearly billing only once you are sure you’ll stay; it saves about 13% to 17% on the tiers we checked.