Kit vs beehiiv for a Paid Newsletter

Kit, the platform that used to be called ConvertKit, and beehiiv both let you charge readers for a newsletter. They price that right in opposite ways. Kit takes 3.5% plus $0.30 per transaction and lets you sell on the free plan. beehiiv takes 0% of subscription revenue but only turns paid subscriptions on from its Lite plan upward. Which is cheaper depends entirely on how many paying readers you have and how big your free list is. Every figure below comes from the vendors' own pricing pages and help centre, read on October 20, 2026.

Kit charges a flat cut and asks for no plan at all

Kit's help centre states the fee once and does not hedge: "Selling in USD costs 3.5% + $0.30 per transaction. There's no monthly fee for Commerce and nothing to pay until you make a sale."

The same article answers the obvious follow-up. Asked whether other costs apply, it states "The 3.5% + $0.30 per transaction is the only cost of selling through Kit, and it applies only when you make a sale."

That rate is the whole stack, not a platform cut on top of a card fee. Kit's currencies article calls it "the industry standard of 3.5% + $0.30 processing fee per transaction", which places it beside Stripe rather than above it.

The fee moves with currency. Per that article: GBP is "3.5% + £0.20", EUR is "3.5% + 0.25€", and CAD, AUD and NZD are all "3.5% + $0.30". A US creator who sells a product priced in euros pays the EUR fee.

Two operational facts worth knowing before you launch. Stripe is required and, per the help centre, "Stripe is the only payment platform Kit supports." Payouts "go out weekly, on Fridays", with the first arriving 7 to 14 days after the first sale.

beehiiv takes nothing, but the free plan cannot sell

beehiiv's pricing FAQ is equally direct. Asked whether it takes a cut, it answers: "No. beehiiv takes 0% of your paid subscription and digital product revenue. You keep what you earn, minus Stripe's standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction."

The catch is placement. On the plan cards read October 20, 2026, "Paid subscriptions" and "0% take rate" appear in the Lite column under "Everything in Free plan, plus". They do not appear on the Free card.

Prices on that page are quoted against a subscriber count. The view we read said "Pricing for 1,000 subscribers" with yearly billing selected, and the cards showed Lite at $49/mo and Pro at $95/mo, each labelled "Yearly billing".

Plan ceilings are separate from price. The limits table gives subscribers as "Up to 2,500" on Free, "Up to 100,000" on Lite, "Up to 250,000" on Pro, and Custom on Enterprise. Team seats run 1, 2, 10, Custom.

One more row matters for a paid product. "Remove beehiiv branding" shows Yes on Pro and Enterprise only, so a Lite newsletter still carries the badge.

Kit's free tier is the biggest number on either page

Kit's Free plan article states it "gives you up to 10,000 email subscribers, unlimited forms and landing pages, and unlimited email broadcasts at no cost", and that it "costs $0 per month for as long as you stay under 10,000 subscribers".

beehiiv's Free plan stops at 2,500 subscribers and cannot take payments. So the free gap between the two platforms is 7,500 subscribers wide, and only one of those free tiers can charge a reader.

What Kit withholds from Free is automation, not commerce. The article lists visual automations and sequences among the features that "live on the Creator and Creator Pro plans", and says they stop running if you downgrade.

That is a real constraint on a paid newsletter, because the welcome flow is usually an automation. The sequence we would build is the one in how to build a welcome email sequence in a funnel builder.

Kit's paid tiers are priced per subscriber block

Kit's plan comparison article gives a "Starting price (up to 1,000 subscribers)" of "$39 / month" for Creator and "$79 / month" for Pro, with annual billing described as "2 months free" and a free trial.

It also states the obvious caveat in writing: "Pricing scales with your subscriber count." We could not read Kit's own pricing page on October 20, 2026, because kit.com/pricing returned a Cloudflare challenge to both of our readers.

So treat $39 and $79 as the 1,000-subscriber rungs the help centre publishes, not as the price at 10,000. The same article notes the Creator plan "is limited to two users" while Pro allows as many as you need.

Pro's extras are analytics, not commerce: engagement scoring from 1 to 5 stars, Facebook audience sync and a referral system. None of them changes the 3.5% fee.

Run the numbers on 100 paying readers at $10 a month

The arithmetic below is ours and uses only the published figures above. Assume 1,000 total subscribers, 100 of them paying $10 per month, so $1,000 gross per month and 100 separate transactions.

• Kit on the Free plan: 3.5% of $1,000 is $35, plus $0.30 × 100 = $30. Total fees $65, platform cost $0, so $65 a month and no automations.
• Kit on Creator at the published 1,000-subscriber rate: $65 in fees plus $39 plan = $104 a month.
• beehiiv on Lite at the 1,000-subscriber yearly rate: Stripe 2.9% of $1,000 is $29, plus $0.30 × 100 = $30, so $59 in fees plus $49 plan = $108 a month.
• beehiiv on Free: not possible. Paid subscriptions sit on the Lite card, not the Free card.

At this size the two paid options land within $4 of each other, which is noise. The real difference is that Kit can run the same paid newsletter for $65 a month with no plan at all, as long as you accept no automation.

The ordering flips as revenue grows, because one fee is a percentage of revenue and the other is a flat plan price. At $10,000 gross per month over 1,000 transactions, Kit's cut is $650 while beehiiv's Stripe cost is $590.

Add the plan and Kit Creator is $689 against beehiiv Lite at $639, on the rates above. That $50 monthly gap only widens, which is the compounding effect we flag in annual vs monthly billing for funnel builders.

Check the same rows you would check on any platform

A take rate is just another line in a pricing page, and it hides in the same places as the others. The habits in how to read an email automation pricing page apply here without change.

Two rows decide the bill: the subscriber ceiling and the per-transaction cut. Both platforms meter the list, not the sends, which is the counting problem in what funnel builder contact limits actually count.

If a course sits behind the paywall too, the percentages differ again. See Teachable vs Thinkific fees and Kajabi vs Kartra for courses.

If the newsletter is the back end of a funnel, price the sender beside a builder using how to read a funnel builder pricing page and ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp plans.

Frequently asked questions

Does beehiiv really take 0% of paid subscriptions?

That is what its pricing FAQ states, read October 20, 2026: "beehiiv takes 0% of your paid subscription and digital product revenue." You still pay Stripe, which the same answer gives as 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

What does Kit charge on a paid newsletter?

3.5% + $0.30 per transaction in USD, per Kit's help centre. The article calls it "the only cost of selling through Kit" and says Commerce "is available on every plan, including the Free plan", with no monthly fee for Commerce itself.

Can I sell a paid newsletter on a free plan?

On Kit, yes. Its Free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers and Commerce works on it, though visual automations and sequences do not. On beehiiv, no: paid subscriptions appear on the Lite card, above the 2,500-subscriber Free plan.

Which is cheaper at 1,000 paying readers?

beehiiv, on our arithmetic. At $10,000 gross over 1,000 transactions, Kit's 3.5% + $0.30 comes to $650 and Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 to $590. Add the published 1,000-subscriber plan rates and Kit is $689 against beehiiv's $639.

Is ConvertKit the same company as Kit?

Yes. The product is now called Kit, and its own help centre uses that name throughout, including in articles whose URLs still say convertkit. Price and fee pages we read on October 20, 2026 all sit on kit.com and help.kit.com.

Why no price straight from Kit's pricing page?

We could not read it. kit.com/pricing returned HTTP 403 to one reader and a Cloudflare interstitial to a headless browser on October 20, 2026. The $39 and $79 figures come instead from Kit's own plan comparison help article.

Bottom line

If you are starting and your list is small, Kit's free tier is the cheaper place to charge money: 10,000 subscribers, no plan fee, and 3.5% plus $0.30 only when a reader pays. You give up automations to get it.

If the newsletter already earns four figures a month, beehiiv's 0% take rate wins on arithmetic, because a flat plan beats a percentage as revenue climbs. Confirm the current rates yourself: both vendors change these pages without notice.