AudienceBench

beehiiv vs Kit for Paid Newsletters (2026)

beehiiv vs Kit for paid newsletters: which plans can charge, 0% take + Stripe vs Kit's 3.5% + 30¢, tiers, trials, payouts, and moving paid subscribers.

By AudienceBench Editorial · Published · Pricing & docs checked

If you want readers to pay for your newsletter, beehiiv and Kit handle it in different ways. Kit lets you charge on every plan, including Free, and takes a flat 3.5% + 30¢ per transaction, with card processing included. beehiiv requires a paid plan (Lite or higher), takes 0% of subscription revenue, and you pay Stripe’s processing fee (beehiiv quotes 2.9% + $0.30).

This comparison covers only the paid-newsletter side: plan gates, fees, tiers, reader trials, payouts, and what happens to paying subscribers if you switch platforms. For free plans, automations, and general pricing, see our broader Kit vs beehiiv for solo newsletter writers comparison. Everything below comes from each vendor’s official pricing pages and help docs (and Stripe’s pricing pages), checked on October 13, 2026. Prices are in USD and change often.

How we researched this: We haven’t run a paid newsletter on either platform. Every price, fee, and plan limit below comes from beehiiv’s and Kit’s official pricing pages, feature pages, and help centers, plus Stripe’s public pricing and payout docs, all re-checked on October 13, 2026. The cost examples are our own arithmetic from those published rates, not quotes.

About our links: beehiiv links on this page are affiliate links (/go/beehiiv). Kit links go through /go/kit, which currently forwards straight to Kit’s homepage; we don’t earn a commission from Kit. Our recommendations would be the same either way.

The short answer

  • Choose Kit Free if you want to test a paid tier without paying a monthly plan fee. Kit’s paid newsletters work on its Free plan (up to 10,000 subscribers), and the 3.5% + 30¢ fee is the only charge Kit lists for selling.
  • Choose beehiiv (Lite or Pro) if you’re building a publication-style paid newsletter with a website, metered paywalls, free or paid trial offers, and more currencies, or if your paid revenue is large enough that beehiiv’s 0% take outweighs its plan price.
  • If you’ll need automations to turn free readers into paid ones, you’re comparing Kit Creator with beehiiv Lite. Kit Creator is cheaper at small list sizes; at 10,000 subscribers and up, the two cost about the same, and beehiiv’s lower per-payment fee starts to tip the totals its way in our examples.
  • Think about switching costs before you launch. Both vendors’ docs say paid subscribers on Kit’s built-in Stripe Express setup can’t simply be moved to another platform. Kit’s own docs say the same for paid subscribers moving into Kit from beehiiv or Substack.

Try beehiiv free · Try Kit free

At a glance: paid newsletters on beehiiv vs Kit

beehiivKit
Plans that can charge readersLite, Pro, Enterprise (not Free)All plans, including Free
Platform cut of subscription revenue0%Kit says its own share is 0.6%; total fee is 3.5% + 30¢ per transaction, including card processing
Card processingPaid separately to Stripe (beehiiv quotes 2.9% + $0.30)Included in Kit’s 3.5% + 30¢ (USD)
Stripe setupConnect a Stripe account (separate from the Stripe Express account beehiiv uses for Ad Network / paid recommendations)Kit-managed Stripe Express account, created in Kit even if you already have Stripe
Paid tiersLite: 1 tier; Pro and Enterprise: unlimitedMultiple subscription products, each with one or more pricing plans
Billing intervalsMonthly, quarterly, annual, one-time, pay-what-you-want (from $1)Monthly, quarterly, yearly
Reader trials and discountsFree-trial and discount offers (paid plans); paid trials on Pro and Enterprise; coupons and promo codes on Lite and upDiscounts on recurring products for a set number of months; trials not documented in the help articles we checked (see below)
CurrenciesUSD, AUD, BRL, CAD, EUR, GBP, INR, MXN, NZDUSD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, NZD (one currency per product)
PayoutsThrough your Stripe account on Stripe’s scheduleWeekly on Fridays; first payout 7–14 days after first sale
Importing paid subscribersStripe-based import on paid plans (not from Kit’s Stripe Express)No convenient way to migrate paid subscriptions from beehiiv or Substack; readers re-subscribe

Sources: beehiiv pricing (plan cards, feature table, FAQ), beehiiv help articles on paid tiers, Stripe setup, offers, and importing paid subscribers; Kit pricing, Kit paid newsletter page, and Kit help articles on selling digital products, creating a paid newsletter, currencies and fees, and setting up payments. All checked October 13, 2026.

Which plans let you charge readers

Kit: Kit’s pricing page lists “Sell digital products & subscriptions” as a Free-plan feature, and its comparison table shows “Run paid newsletters” on Free, Creator, and Pro. The paid newsletter page’s FAQ says it directly: you can set up paid newsletter subscriptions on any Kit plan, including the free plan. Kit’s help center adds that Commerce is available on every plan. The Free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers.

What Kit Free doesn’t include matters for paid newsletters, though:

  • No visual automations or email sequences on Free. Those start on Creator. Kit’s paid newsletter page highlights “automated upgrade journeys” built with visual automations, so automated upsell sequences need Creator or higher.
  • The “Built with Kit” badge stays on Free. Kit’s help says you can remove it on a paid plan.

beehiiv: beehiiv’s feature table lists Paid subscriptions on Lite, Pro, and Enterprise, with a dash for Free. Its paid-tier help article is scoped to “All Paid Plans.” The Free plan (up to 2,500 subscribers) can’t charge readers. Lite and Pro both come with a free trial for you as the publisher (no credit card required, per beehiiv’s FAQ); beehiiv’s pricing page doesn’t give the trial length.

Plan prices that matter if you’re charging (checked October 13, 2026):

SubscribersKit FreeKit Creator (yearly / monthly)Kit Pro (yearly / monthly)beehiiv Lite (yearly / monthly)beehiiv Pro (yearly / monthly)
1,000$0$33 / $39$66 / $79$49 / $59$95 / $109
2,500 (beehiiv) / 3,000 (Kit)$0$50 / $59$83 / $99$69 / $79$129 / $149
5,000$0$75 / $89$116 / $139$95 / $109$169 / $199
10,000$0$116 / $139$158 / $189$119 / $139$199 / $239
25,000Not available$166 / $199$233 / $279$169 / $199$299 / $349

Yearly prices are the effective monthly rate on annual billing. Kit’s slider jumps from 1,000 to 3,000 subscribers while beehiiv’s goes to 2,500, so that row isn’t an exact match. Kit Pro’s yearly column shows Kit’s standard rate; on October 13 Kit was also advertising an extra 25% off the first year of annual Pro ($50/mo at 1,000 subscribers, $593 billed for the first year), renewing at the standard rate after that. More detail: Kit pricing explained and beehiiv pricing explained.

Source: Kit pricing and beehiiv pricing subscriber sliders (monthly and yearly), checked October 13, 2026.

Fees: beehiiv’s 0% take vs Kit’s 3.5% + 30¢

beehiiv

beehiiv’s pricing FAQ answers “Do you take a cut of my paid subscriptions or product sales?” with: No. beehiiv takes 0% of paid subscription and digital product revenue, and you keep what you earn “minus Stripe’s standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.” Its paid subscriptions feature page says the same.

If you’re already paying beehiiv, note that beehiiv says existing accounts move to its new plan prices at their first renewal on or after November 1, 2026. Details and what to check: beehiiv’s November 2026 price change for existing customers.

Stripe’s own pricing page lists 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards, plus 1.5% for international cards, 1% if currency conversion is required, and 0.5% for manually entered cards. beehiiv’s FAQ only quotes the base rate, so if many of your readers pay with foreign cards, expect a higher effective rate.

Stripe also has a separate product, Stripe Billing, which its pricing page lists at 0.7% of Billing volume on pay-as-you-go. Neither beehiiv’s pricing page nor its Stripe setup article says whether that fee applies to beehiiv paid subscriptions, and we couldn’t verify it either way. Check the fee breakdown in your own Stripe dashboard after your first few payments.

Kit

Kit’s pricing table lists 3.5% + 30¢ for digital products and subscriptions on all three plans, and says that figure is “inclusive of credit card processing fees, so Kit only takes 0.6% of the total fees.” Kit’s paid newsletter page puts it the other way around: standard card processing (typically 2.9% + $0.30) plus a 0.6% Kit platform fee.

Kit’s help center adds:

  • 3.5% + $0.30 is the cost of selling in USD, and “the only cost of selling through Kit.” There’s no monthly Commerce fee.
  • Fees differ slightly by currency: 3.5% + £0.20 (GBP), 3.5% + €0.25 (EUR), and 3.5% + $0.30 for CAD, AUD, and NZD.
  • Processing fees aren’t refunded if you refund a purchase.

What the fee difference means in practice

Both fees include the same 30¢ per payment, so the per-payment gap is 0.6% of the price:

Price per paymentKit (3.5% + 30¢)beehiiv (Stripe 2.9% + 30¢, domestic card)Difference
$5/month$0.48$0.45about 3¢
$8/month$0.58$0.53about 5¢
$10/month$0.65$0.596¢
$80/year$3.10$2.6248¢

On small amounts the gap is pennies. The bigger difference is that beehiiv adds a plan price (Lite at $49/mo billed yearly at 1,000 subscribers) while Kit Free adds nothing. At Kit’s 0.6% margin, you’d need roughly $8,200 a month in paid revenue before the fee savings cover beehiiv Lite’s yearly price at the 1,000-subscriber tier ($49 ÷ 0.006). Few lists that size bring in that much, so for a small paid newsletter, Kit Free is the cheaper way to charge.

Sources: beehiiv pricing FAQ, beehiiv paid subscriptions, Kit pricing, Kit paid newsletter, Kit help on fees and currencies, Stripe pricing, and Stripe Billing pricing, checked October 13, 2026.

Total monthly cost: four illustrative scenarios

These examples use $8/month subscriptions, yearly-billed plan prices, and domestic cards only. They exclude taxes, refunds, international-card surcharges, and any Stripe Billing fee. They’re our arithmetic, not vendor quotes.

ScenarioKit FreeKit Creatorbeehiiv Lite
1,000 subscribers, 30 paying ($240/mo)$17.40 (fees only)$50.40 ($33 + $17.40)$64.96 ($49 + $15.96 Stripe)
5,000 subscribers, 250 paying ($2,000/mo)$145$220 ($75 + $145)$228 ($95 + $133)
10,000 subscribers, 500 paying ($4,000/mo)$290$406 ($116 + $290)$385 ($119 + $266)
25,000 subscribers, 1,250 paying ($10,000/mo)Not available (Free caps at 10,000)$891 ($166 + $725)$834 ($169 + $665)

What the numbers say:

  • Up to 10,000 subscribers, Kit Free is the cheapest way to run a paid newsletter in every example, because it has no plan price. The trade-off is no automations and Kit branding.
  • If you need automations, Kit Creator is cheaper than beehiiv Lite at small sizes, roughly even around 5,000 subscribers in this example, and beehiiv Lite comes out ahead from 10,000 subscribers up because its plan price is nearly the same as Creator’s and its per-payment fee is lower.
  • Your own numbers depend mostly on how many readers pay and what you charge. Plug in your price and paid count: Kit’s fee is 3.5% × revenue + 30¢ × payments; beehiiv’s is your plan price + Stripe’s 2.9% × revenue + 30¢ × payments.

Tiers, billing options, and reader trials

beehiiv

From beehiiv’s paid-tier help article (updated October 2, 2026) and pricing feature table:

  • Number of tiers: Lite allows 1 paid subscription tier; Pro and Enterprise are unlimited.
  • Billing per tier: monthly, quarterly, and/or annual recurring plans, plus one-time payment. Pay-what-you-want (lifetime access from $1.00) can’t be combined with other billing options on the same tier.
  • Group subscriptions are Pro and Enterprise only and require annual billing.
  • Metered paywalls and coupons + promo codes are on Lite and up.
  • Price changes apply to new subscribers only, per the help article’s FAQ.

Reader trials: beehiiv’s offers help article (updated June 25, 2026; scoped to “All Paid Plans”) documents three offer types: free trial, discount, and paid trial. Free trials can run 1, 2, 7, 14, 30, 60, or 90 days, can be redeemed without a credit card, and can send an automatic reminder email before or after the trial ends. The pricing feature table lists paid trials only on Pro and Enterprise. Group subscriptions aren’t eligible for trial offers.

Kit

From Kit’s help center:

  • Billing intervals: monthly, quarterly, or yearly. You can add more than one pricing plan to a product (for example, monthly and annual).
  • Tiers: Kit’s paid newsletter FAQ says you can create multiple subscription products with different pricing and access levels.
  • Discounts: for recurring products, you can set how many months a discount lasts, starting from the first purchase.
  • Cancellations: a reader who cancels keeps getting the paid newsletter until their next billing date. A reader marked unpaid after four payment retries is canceled from the product.

Reader trials: Kit’s paid newsletter page FAQ mentions offering “free trials,” but the Kit help articles we checked (creating a product, creating a paid newsletter, subscription FAQs) don’t document a free-trial setting. They only document discounts. We couldn’t verify how Kit free trials work, so confirm with Kit before you plan a trial-based launch.

Sources: beehiiv paid tiers and offers help articles and pricing feature table; Kit help on creating a paid newsletter, creating a product, and subscription product FAQs; Kit paid newsletter page. All checked October 13, 2026.

Stripe setup and payouts

beehiiv has you connect a Stripe account for paid subscriptions and digital products. Its Stripe help article (updated October 1, 2026) says this account is separate from the publication-specific Stripe Express account used for paid recommendations and the Ad Network. Once you connect, a new account appears in your Stripe dashboard, and paid-subscription revenue shows up there. beehiiv doesn’t publish its own payout schedule; payouts follow Stripe. Stripe’s docs say your first payout typically arrives 7–14 days after your first live payment, after which you can choose daily, weekly, monthly, or manual payouts.

Kit requires a Kit-managed Stripe Express account. You create it inside Kit even if you already have a Stripe account, and products stay in draft until payments are set up. Kit’s help says payouts go out weekly, on Fridays, with the first payout 7–14 days after your first successful sale. Kit lists 39 countries you can sell from (including the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and most of the EU) and collects VAT only, not US sales tax.

Sources: beehiiv Stripe setup, Stripe payouts docs, Kit help on setting up payments and selling digital products, checked October 13, 2026.

Moving paid subscribers between platforms

Switching platforms is where the two setups differ most, so it’s worth deciding before you take your first payment.

Into beehiiv: beehiiv’s import paid subscribers guide (updated October 5, 2026; paid plans) copies customers from your old Stripe account into your beehiiv-connected Stripe account (beehiiv says this can take up to 72 hours), then maps Stripe products to beehiiv tiers. Imported subscribers keep their legacy price and are placed on a temporary trial until their normal renewal date to prevent double billing. You cancel billing on the old platform yourself.

From Kit to beehiiv: beehiiv’s Kit migration guide (updated September 3, 2026) says that if your paid subscriptions run through Kit + Stripe Express, there’s no way to migrate them, because Kit doesn’t expose the customer, payment-method, or subscription data needed. beehiiv’s two suggested workarounds are asking readers to re-subscribe (optionally with a discount link) or giving them complimentary access until their current period ends. If your Kit setup used an external Standard Stripe account with full subscription data, beehiiv’s normal paid import applies. Full walkthrough: how to migrate from Kit to beehiiv.

Into Kit (from beehiiv or Substack): Kit’s own migration guides (both dated September 12, 2026) say there’s no convenient method to migrate paid subscriptions with their payment details. Kit’s workaround is to cancel the paid subscriptions on the old platform and ask readers to re-subscribe in Kit, with advance notice. Kit’s help also documents a separate Kit + Stripe app that connects a Stripe account you already have and pulls in past purchasers and Stripe subscriptions, which Kit says lets people switch “without the risk of subscriber churn.” Kit’s docs don’t spell out how that route interacts with Kit’s Commerce fees or plan features, so ask Kit’s migrations team before you rely on it.

The practical takeaway: if you might move platforms later, beehiiv’s model (your own Stripe account, plus a Stripe-based importer) leaves you more options. Starting on Kit’s built-in Commerce means a future move would most likely require readers to re-subscribe.

Which should you pick?

Your situationBetter fit (based on documented features and pricing)
Testing whether anyone will pay, under 10,000 subscribersKit Free: no plan fee, 3.5% + 30¢ per payment
Small paid newsletter, no automations neededKit Free (beehiiv can’t charge on its Free plan)
Need automated free-to-paid upgrade sequences at under ~5,000 subscribersKit Creator (cheaper than beehiiv Lite in our examples)
10,000+ subscribers with meaningful paid revenuebeehiiv Lite: similar plan price to Kit Creator, lower per-payment fee
Want free or paid trial offers, metered paywalls, or several tiersbeehiiv (trial offers on paid plans; paid trials and unlimited tiers on Pro)
Charging in BRL, INR, or MXNbeehiiv (Kit supports six currencies, not these)
Many readers paying with foreign cardsCompare carefully: Kit’s 3.5% + 30¢ is all-in per its help; Stripe adds 1.5% for international cards on beehiiv’s setup
Selling courses or digital products alongside the newsletter, with email funnelsKit Creator
Want to keep the option of moving platforms laterbeehiiv (your own Stripe account; Stripe-based paid import)
Running a website-first publication with archive and paywalled postsbeehiiv

If you’re not charging yet, you don’t need to decide on paid features today. Both free plans let you build a list, and our beginner’s guide covers that choice. When you’re ready to set up payments, see how to set up paid subscriptions on beehiiv, and if you’re coming from Substack, migrating from Substack to beehiiv or beehiiv vs Substack.

Try beehiiv · Try Kit

FAQ

Can I run a paid newsletter on beehiiv’s free plan?

No. beehiiv’s feature table lists paid subscriptions on Lite, Pro, and Enterprise only (checked October 13, 2026).

Can I run a paid newsletter on Kit’s free plan?

Yes. Kit’s paid newsletter page and help center both say paid subscriptions work on every plan, including Free (up to 10,000 subscribers). You pay 3.5% + 30¢ per transaction in USD.

Does beehiiv really take 0%?

beehiiv’s pricing FAQ says it takes 0% of paid subscription and digital product revenue. Stripe’s processing fee still applies: beehiiv quotes 2.9% + $0.30, and Stripe’s pricing page adds surcharges for international cards and currency conversion.

Is Kit’s 3.5% + 30¢ on top of Stripe’s fee?

No. Kit says the fee includes card processing, and its own share is 0.6%.

How many paid tiers can I have?

On beehiiv: 1 on Lite, unlimited on Pro and Enterprise. On Kit: its paid newsletter FAQ says you can create multiple subscription products with different prices and access levels, and each product can have more than one pricing plan.

Can I offer readers a free trial?

On beehiiv, yes: free-trial offers of 1 to 90 days, optionally with no card required (paid plans). Paid trials are Pro and Enterprise only. On Kit, the paid newsletter page mentions free trials, but we couldn’t find a trial setting in Kit’s help docs. Confirm with Kit.

When do I get paid?

Kit pays out weekly on Fridays, with the first payout 7–14 days after your first sale. beehiiv payouts come through your Stripe account; Stripe says the first payout typically takes 7–14 days, then follows the daily, weekly, monthly, or manual schedule you choose.

Sources

All checked October 13, 2026.