Ghost Pricing: Plans, Costs & What You’ll Actually Pay in 2026

Costs for publishing and email marketing platforms often look simple at first, but limits, subscriber tiers, and add-ons can change the total quickly. 

This pricing guide breaks down Ghost pricing by plan, outlining core features, member and email limits, and how expenses scale as your audience grows. 

It also clarifies what each tier includes, where extra costs may appear, and which plan structures fit different publication sizes and monetization models in 2026.

Ghost Pricing at a Glance

Ghost Plans & Costs Reviewed

Each tier is designed for a different stage. Solo blogger? Small team? Growing publication? Here’s how they stack up.

Free Trial Review

Ghost offers a 14-day free trial on all Ghost plans so you can test the waters before committing. During the trial, you can use the full dashboard, publish posts, build newsletters, manage members, and explore analytics without limits. You even have access to paid features like setting up membership tiers and paywalls, so you can experiment with monetization before committing.

Ghost doesn’t require credit card details to start, and the trial lets you see how email newsletters, subscriber management, and analytics actually work in practice. You can also configure member trial periods for your audience once you launch. 

For a creator or small team wondering if Ghost fits their workflow or publishing goals, this free trial gives a low-risk chance to explore all core features first.

Starter Plan

Starter is aimed at solo creators and small newsletters—$15/month, billed annually, gets you 1,000 members, a custom domain, and email newsletters. You get the basics: your own site, simple design tools, and a 5MB upload limit. It’s enough to get going if you’re just looking to create, publish and build an audience.

But there are real limits here. Recent updates stripped out paid subscriptions from Starter and locked you into one theme only. That’s a big step back. You also can’t add collaborators—just one user. Of course, after your subscriber number reaches a four-digit threshold, you are forced to upgrade to another plan. If you’re planning to make money from memberships or work with an editor, you’ll hit the ceiling fast. 

Publisher Plan

Publisher costs $29/month on annual billing and opens up paid subscriptions, custom themes, 8,000+ integrations, and proper analytics. You get three staff accounts, so you can actually work with a team. This is where Ghost starts making sense for monetization. You can set up membership tiers, lock content behind paywalls, and keep free stuff public.

The analytics here go deeper—email performance, subscriber behavior, where your signups come from. That’s useful if you’re trying to figure out what’s working. The integration list is massive too, so you can hook Ghost into automation tools, social platforms, whatever. Here’s the math that matters: 

Ghost doesn’t take a cut of your revenue, but Substack takes 10%. If you’re making $3,000/month from subscribers, you save $360/month just by not using Substack. Publisher pays for itself pretty fast.

Business Plan

Business is $199/month annually, built for teams scaling up—15 staff users, priority support, higher limits. This is for established publications or media companies that need more horsepower. Priority support means when something breaks, you’re not waiting around. You also get early access to new features before they roll out to everyone else.

The “higher limits” part isn’t spelled out clearly, but it’s built to handle serious traffic without sweating, supported by infrastructure like caching and a worldwide CDN. Ghost Business gives you everything in one package for $199. If you’ve got multiple people publishing daily and real revenue coming in, this tier makes sense.

Oh, they also have a Custom plan with all the custom limits and prices, which is automatically pushed to you after you reach 100,000 subscribers.

Ghost Self-Hosting: The “Free” Option Explained

Ghost is open-source, so yes—the Ghost CMS cost itself can be zero if you self-host, technically. In practice, self-hosting costs come down to your own time, setup, and infrastructure. You’ll need a server (VPS or cloud hosting), a domain, SSL, email delivery, and some DevOps comfort to keep everything updated and secure, including handling things like updates, monitoring, and brute force protection.

Having said that, hosting and email automation are where the ‘free’ aspect starts to falter. Hosting alone usually runs $5–$20/month for small sites, and email sending (via Mailgun, Amazon SES, etc.) adds another variable cost as your list grows. 

You’re also on the hook for backups, updates, security hardening, performance tuning, and maintaining infrastructure pieces like a self-hosted reverse proxy.

If you’re technical and want full control, self-hosting can be cheaper at a very small scale. For most creators, the Ghost Pro service is simply the “pay to not worry about it” option.

Ghost Hidden Fees & Extra Costs

Out of all publishing platforms, Ghost should be the one with the most transparent pricing options (if it wanted to stay true to its name, that is). However, some features require you to fork out extra if you want the full package.

Email Delivery Costs (If Self-Hosting) 

If you self-host Ghost, email isn’t included out of the box. You’ll need third-party services like Mailgun, SendGrid, or Sender to actually send newsletters and transactional emails. Most of these services are priced by volume, so your costs scale with how often you email and how large your list becomes. 

While early-stage newsletters might only pay a few dollars a month, frequent sends to a growing audience can quietly turn into a meaningful line item. This is one of the most overlooked costs of self-hosting: Ghost software may be free, but reliable email delivery infrastructure isn’t.

Themes & Custom Design

Ghost ships with solid free themes, but many publications opt for premium designs to stand out or better match their brand. Paid Ghost themes typically range from $30 to $200+, depending on complexity, layout options, and ongoing support. 

On top of that, custom design work—tweaking layouts, adding unique components, or building a bespoke theme—can add developer costs if you don’t have in-house expertise. While none of this is mandatory, design is part of how your publication looks and feels to readers, and for serious projects, that “optional” spend often becomes a real, recurring investment.

Stripe Fees

No matter how appealing the 0% platform fee sounds, there’s, of course, small print that most new users overlook. All paid subscriptions still run through Stripe, which charges standard processing fees (typically around 2.9% + a fixed fee per transaction, depending on region). 

On small volumes, Stripe’s cut is barely noticeable, but once you’re processing thousands per month, it becomes a meaningful cost to factor into your margins. The upside is transparency: unlike platforms that take an additional platform cut, Stripe is a straightforward payment processor fee rather than a business model tax.

Ghost’s 0% Platform Fee: What It Really Means

Unlike most newsletter hosting platforms, Ghost doesn’t take a cut of your revenue. That’s the appeal of Ghost. Substack, the most popular choice for writers, for instance, skims 10% off the top, while Ghost lets you keep what your members pay (minus, of course, Stripe fees, usually around 2.9% + €0.30 per transaction). 

Here’s the simple math: say you’re earning $1,000/month from paid members. Substack takes $100. On Ghost, that $100 stays with you. Even on the $29/month Publisher plan, you’re still up $70. At $3,000/month in revenue, Substack’s cut jumps to $300—enough to cover Ghost(Pro) and then some.

If you’re not monetizing, the 0% transaction fee doesn’t matter. But once paid subscriptions are part of your model, Ghost’s pricing structure is built to scale in your favor. A rather fair ghost, this one.

Ghost Monthly Pricing by Subscriber Count

Ghost vs Competitors: Which Costs Less?

Ghost vs Sender

Looking at Ghost and Sender, the key difference comes down to purpose. Ghost is built primarily as a publishing and membership platform, ideal for creators, bloggers, and media brands who want to run a content-driven site with paid subscriptions. 

Sender, on the other hand, is centered on email marketing performance and offers marketing automation, segmentation, and campaign tools designed to help businesses promote products and nurture leads.

For independent publishers and content-focused brands wanting their website, blog, and email under one roof, Ghost offers a streamlined ecosystem that reduces the need for extra tools. Businesses whose priority is promotional email campaigns, sales funnels, and list growth should definitely go with Sender.

Ghost vs Beehiiv

Putting Ghost beside Beehiiv, the split is mainly about ownership vs. built-in growth — with pricing reflecting that.

Ghost gives you a full publishing setup: a Ghost website, blog, newsletters, and paid memberships in one place. There’s no ongoing free hosted tier; plans start at a relatively low monthly cost and rise with subscriber count, but you keep all subscription revenue with no platform cut. It’s structured for people building a long-term brand hub, not just an email list.

Beehiiv is newsletter-first. It offers a free plan for smaller lists, which lowers the barrier to entry, and paid tiers (starting in the mid-monthly range) unlock monetization tools, referral systems, and ad features aimed at accelerating audience and revenue growth.

If your priority is a branded content platform with full control and memberships at the core, Ghost is the stronger foundation. If fast newsletter growth plus built-in monetization levers matter more — especially starting free — Beehiiv is the more growth-optimized option.

Ghost vs Substack

Of course, if you’re a content creator who’s looking for a new home for his texts, Ghost vs Substack is one of the most common discussions. Sort of like debating between Spotify and Soundcloud if you’re an independent musician. 

That said, Ghost is a strong fit for creators and teams who want to own the entire experience—website, branding, memberships, and newsletters—while keeping flexibility over design, SEO, and custom integrations. Substack leans into simplicity: it’s quick to start, handles the basics out of the box, and puts you inside an ecosystem where discovery and network effects can help you grow. Of course, for that 10% cut each month.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to how much control you need. If your goal is to build a durable media brand with a standalone site and deeper customization, Ghost tends to be the more scalable foundation. If you’d rather publish with minimal setup and focus almost entirely on writing and audience growth within a ready-made platform—Substack is the obvious choice.

Is Ghost Worth the Price?

After all is said and done, Ghost is best suited for creators, publishers, and small media teams who care about owning their platform and revenue. It’s a particularly strong Substack alternative for paid newsletters, membership sites, and content-driven businesses that want a clean CMS with built-in subscriptions and email—without platform fees eating into their income.

That said, Ghost isn’t for everyone. Teams that need deep CRM pipelines, complex marketing automation, or sales-focused workflows may find platforms like Sender or ActiveCampaign a better fit. Likewise, creators who want a fully hands-off, social-first growth engine may prefer Substack or Beehiiv’s built-in discovery.

I’ve found Ghost shines in control, performance, and long-term cost efficiency. But if you don’t plan to monetize or customize much, its pricing can feel unnecessary compared to simpler, all-in-one creator platforms.

Ghost Pricing FAQs