beehiiv vs Ghost (2026): Prices, Growth Tools, Design and Which to Choose

beehiiv and Ghost are the two platforms most newsletter writers end up choosing between once they decide they don't want to give Substack 10%. Both take 0% of your paid subscriptions. Both send your newsletter, host your archive and handle memberships. They're still built for different people.

beehiiv is a growth machine: referrals, paid recommendations and an ad network, with a website attached. Ghost is a publishing platform you own: a real website with your own design, members and newsletters built in, and open-source software you can move anywhere. This comparison covers prices, fees, growth tools, design and migration, and says plainly where each one wins.

Prices are in US dollars and were checked on each platform's pricing page in October 2026.

The short answer

• Choose beehiiv if growth and sponsorships are the plan, you want to start free, and a tidy newsletter site is all the website you need.
• Choose Ghost if you want a publication that looks like your brand, ranks in search, takes nothing from your revenue on any paid plan, and doesn't lock you into one company.

beehiiv vs Ghost at a glance

Pricing and fees

beehiiv has four plans. Free covers up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, a website and the recommendation network, but no paid subscriptions, ads or automations. Lite adds those and costs $59 a month ($49 yearly) at 1,000 subscribers, rising to $139 ($119 yearly) at 10,000. Pro adds removal of beehiiv branding, webhooks and advanced analytics, at $109 a month ($95 yearly) at 1,000 and $239 ($199 yearly) at 10,000. Prices went up for new customers on 1 October 2026; existing customers move to the new rates at their first renewal after 1 November.

Ghost(Pro) charges by the number of members, free and paid. Starter is the cheapest plan but has no paid subscriptions and only runs Ghost's official themes. Publisher, which most newsletters need, is $35 a month ($29 yearly) for up to 1,000 members and $105 a month ($88 yearly) at 10,000, with paid subscriptions, custom themes and three staff users. Business is $239 a month ($199 yearly). You can also run the same software on your own server, from about $3 a month (see our cheap Ghost hosting guide), with a Mailgun account for sending.

Neither takes a cut of your subscriptions. On both, Stripe charges its card fees (2.9% + $0.30 per payment in the US).

Here's what that means for three typical newsletters, on monthly billing, before Stripe's fees:

beehiiv wins for a free newsletter: it costs nothing until 2,500 subscribers. Once you charge, Ghost is cheaper at every size in this table. The other side of the ledger is ad income: beehiiv's ad network can pay for the plan on its own, and Ghost has nothing like it.

Growth tools: where beehiiv wins

This is beehiiv's strongest ground, and it's not close.

• Referral program. Readers get a link to share and unlock rewards you choose. Ghost has nothing built in.
• Boosts. You can pay other newsletters to recommend you, or earn money recommending them. Ghost's recommendations are free and manual.
• Ad network. beehiiv matches you with sponsors and pays per click or per view, from Lite up. On Ghost you find and sell sponsors yourself.
• Testing and data. Polls, A/B tests on subject lines, and detailed growth analytics.
• More in one place. Podcasts, community and digital products are included on every plan.

If you plan to grow through referrals and earn mostly from sponsors, beehiiv is built for exactly that.

Memberships and ownership: where Ghost wins

• Memberships first. Ghost's free and paid tiers, offers, member-only and paid-only posts, and members-only comments are the core of the product, not an add-on.
• No branding to remove. Your site and emails carry your brand on every plan. On beehiiv that needs Pro.
• Your platform, not just your list. Ghost is open source. You can export everything and move your whole site, members included, to another host. On beehiiv you can export your list and posts, but the platform stays behind.
• The social web. Since Ghost 6, people can follow your publication from Mastodon and other ActivityPub apps, and you can follow and reply to others from Ghost Admin.
• Integrations. Zapier, webhooks and a full Admin API on Publisher and up.

Website and design

beehiiv's website builder is good for a newsletter site: a homepage, an archive, signup forms and pages, assembled from blocks and templates. It's quick, and many beehiiv sites end up looking alike, because they're built from the same parts.

Ghost is a full content management system. Your site can have a custom homepage, landing pages, tag and author pages, a pricing page, any layout you like, and full control over SEO, from meta tags to structured data. That matters if you want search traffic and a publication that stands apart from the rest.

The catch is that Ghost's design lives in themes, and changing a theme usually means editing code. That's the problem Ectobuilder solves: you build a Ghost theme visually from more than 400 ready-made sections, edit text and pictures right on the page, and publish to Ghost in one click. You can also ask Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini to build it for you through Ectobuilder's MCP connector. If you like the clean, reading-first look of a newsletter site, start from the Newsletter theme, or see how to make Ghost look like Substack.

Want a Ghost site that doesn't look like everyone else's? Ectobuilder lets you design your Ghost theme visually, from a simple newsletter homepage to a full magazine, without touching theme code.

Try it free

The catch with each

beehiiv's catch is cost and control as you grow. Prices climb with every subscriber band, the October 2026 increase hit mid-sized lists hardest, and the best features sit on paid plans. Your site and audience live on one company's platform, on its terms.

Ghost's catch is that growth is up to you. There's no referral program, no ad network and no network of readers waiting to find you. You pay from day one on Ghost(Pro), and a custom design takes either a paid theme, code, or a tool like Ectobuilder.

Moving from beehiiv to Ghost

Ghost has a beehiiv migrator built into its admin, under Settings → Import/Export. You paste in a beehiiv API key, choose posts, subscribers or both, check the counts, and import.

Paid subscribers are harder. Ghost's own guide notes that the Stripe account attached to a beehiiv site can't be connected to another platform. So paid subscriptions have to be copied to a new Stripe account first: Ghost(Pro) customers can ask Ghost's migrations team, and self-hosters can use Ghost's open-source Stripe migration tool. You'll also want redirects for beehiiv's /p/ and /t/ addresses if you used a custom domain.

Our step-by-step guide covers all of it, including Kit: How to migrate from Kit or beehiiv to Ghost.

Other beehiiv alternatives

If neither fits, the other options people weigh against beehiiv are Kit (best for selling products with automations), Substack (free, with discovery, for a 10% cut), Buttondown (simple and cheap) and MailerLite (low-cost email marketing). We compare them in Kit alternatives, beehiiv vs Substack and our guide to the best newsletter platforms. Coming from Substack? See Ghost vs Substack and our Substack alternatives.

Which should you choose?

• Starting a free newsletter and want to pay nothing: beehiiv.
• Planning to earn mostly from sponsors: beehiiv.
• Growing mainly through referrals: beehiiv.
• Charging for subscriptions: Ghost usually costs less, at every list size.
• Want search traffic, your own design and a site that feels like a publication: Ghost.
• Want to own the platform, not just export the list: Ghost.

Build your Ghost theme without code. Pick a theme from the Ectobuilder gallery or start from scratch, change it by clicking, and publish it to your Ghost site. Start free and only pay if you're happy with it.

Start free

FAQ

Sources

• beehiiv pricing
• PPC Land on beehiiv's October 2026 price changes
• EmailToolTester: beehiiv pricing by list size
• Ghost(Pro) pricing
• Ghost: migrating from beehiiv
• Ghost 6.0 release notes