Beehiiv has raised its prices. New customers have paid the new rates since 1 October 2026, and existing customers switch over at their first renewal on or after 1 November 2026. The plans have new names too: Scale is now Lite, and Max is now Pro.

The rise isn't spread evenly. A 1,000-subscriber newsletter on the cheapest paid plan pays $6 a month more. A 100,000-subscriber newsletter on Pro pays $195 a month more, which works out at an extra $2,340 a year.

Full disclosure: this is the EmailOctopus blog, so we're not exactly neutral. That's why every number here comes from Beehiiv's own pricing page, then and now, so you can check our working.

What Beehiiv costs now

On annual billing, Lite costs 13% to 38% more than Scale did, and Pro costs up to 48% more than Max. The biggest jumps land on the biggest lists.

Here's the before and after. Old prices are from Beehiiv's pricing page in March 2026, new prices from the same page today. All figures are US dollars per month, billed annually.

Subscribers	Scale (old)	Lite (new)	Change	Max (old)	Pro (new)	Change
1,000	$43	$49	+14%	$96	$95	-1%
2,500	$61	$69	+13%	$131	$129	-2%
5,000	$78	$95	+22%	$149	$169	+13%
10,000	$96	$119	+24%	$193	$199	+3%
25,000	$149	$169	+13%	$254	$299	+18%
50,000	$219	$249	+14%	$334	$399	+19%
75,000	$254	$329	+30%	$369	$499	+35%
100,000	$290	$399	+38%	$404	$599	+48%

To be fair to Beehiiv, Pro is a dollar or two cheaper than Max at 1,000 and 2,500 subscribers. It also now goes up to 250,000 subscribers before you need to talk to sales ($869 a month at the top tier). But Lite, the first paid plan most people move to, costs more at every single tier.

What that looks like in real money

1,000 subscribers on Lite: $588 a year, up from about $517. Pay monthly and it's $59 a month, or $708 a year.
10,000 subscribers on Lite: $1,428 a year, up from $1,152, so an extra $276 for the same list. Monthly billing is $139 a month.
50,000 subscribers on Pro: $4,788 a year, up from $4,008.
100,000 subscribers on Pro: $7,188 a year, up from $4,848. On monthly billing it's $699 a month, or $8,388 a year.

The smaller changes that are easy to miss

A few limits got tighter at the same time:

Lite includes 2 team seats. Scale had 3.
Pro includes 10 team seats. Max had unlimited.
The Free plan allows 1 publication. Launch allowed 3.
Webhooks used to come with Scale. They're now a Pro feature.
Custom pages on your Beehiiv website now have a limit on Lite.
Some accounts have been moved up a subscriber tier to match their current list size, which means a higher bill on top of the new prices. Beehiiv's announcement suggests removing subscribers if you'd like to drop back down.

The gap between monthly and annual billing has also widened. At 1,000 subscribers, Lite is $59 a month paid monthly against $49 paid annually, so the cheapest way to use Beehiiv now means committing for a year up front.

Why Beehiiv is raising prices

Beehiiv needs revenue to grow fast, and putting up prices for existing customers is one of the quickest ways to get it.

The official reason is investment. Beehiiv's announcement says the new prices let it keep improving the publishing flow, automations, growth and monetisation tools, and its sending infrastructure. CEO Tyler Denk also points to everything added over the last few years: an ad network, a website builder, podcasts, community spaces and digital products.

That's fair as far as it goes. The bit the announcement doesn't mention is who Beehiiv answers to.

A venture-backed business

Beehiiv has raised about $49.7 million since 2021. That includes a massive $33 million Series B in April 2024.

Raising money comes from venture capital, and that comes with expectations. Investors almost always want rapid growth and, eventually, a big exit to make their money back. A software business that is successful, but just ticks along nicely gives them neither. It needs to grow quickly.

You can see that pressure in Beehiiv's own targets. Tyler Denk, the founder of Beehiiv, has publicly said he expected revenue to nearly double to $50 million in 2026, and despite this, didn't expect to turn a profit until 2027. When you need revenue to double and you're still losing money, a price rise across your existing customer base is the obvious lever.

We don't think the people building Beehiiv are villains here. This is just how the VC model works. But it's worth knowing, because the same pressure that produced this price rise will still be there next year and another rise is quite possibly on the horizon.

Feature bloat, and who pays for it

If you only want to send a newsletter, part of your Beehiiv bill now pays for products you'll never open.

Beehiiv started as a newsletter tool. Today its homepage pitches newsletters, podcasts and community as one platform. Here's what now comes bundled into every plan, or sits on the paid tiers:

A website builder that generates pages from an AI prompt
Podcast hosting and distribution to Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Community spaces with feeds, channels and moderation tools
Digital products with built-in checkout
An ad network, a sponsorship storefront and paid recommendations
An AI agent, AI writing credits and an MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini
Webinars and coaching (Pro only)

Beehiiv is upfront that this is the strategy and it's not a bad deal if you'd use all of it. Someone paying separately for a podcast host, a community tool and a course platform could come out ahead.

That said, plenty of people simply want to write something good and get it into inboxes. For them, the bundle just adds to the bill. You can't drop podcasts or community to get a cheaper plan, so you fund their development either way. This price rise is part of that cost.

There's a quieter cost too. Every new product adds menus, settings and decisions. If email is one of twenty jobs on your list, a tool you can learn in an afternoon is worth a lot.

What Beehiiv users are saying

The main thread on r/beehiiv, Beehiiv price increases, passed 80 comments in its first day. Almost all were unhappy, and the price was only half of it. The bigger grievance was paying more for products people don't use, like community spaces, podcasts and the AI tools – the feature bloat we've spoken about. One local newsletter publisher said they just wanted "a reliable email provider who can provide a platform to, you know, send emails".

Outside of pricing, others have spotted tighter limits on seats, custom pages and webhooks arriving at the same time as the rise. As one customer put it: "I'm paying more for less and worse service." Several said they're already moving.

That comment came from a second thread, Why I think there's a bit of a disconnect, which explains the split better than anything else we read. Its argument is that "we never take a cut" is worth a lot if readers pay you, and almost nothing if your newsletter is free. For a list under 10,000 subscribers that relies on Beehiiv's tools to make money, especially outside the US, the author thinks the numbers no longer add up. Every reply agreed, and one suggested Beehiiv is moving towards bigger newsletters run as businesses.

Alternative 1: EmailOctopus

If you want to write a newsletter and send it to people, without paying for a media empire around it, this is us.

EmailOctopus Pro starts at $12 a month for 1,000 subscribers, billed yearly. At 10,000 subscribers it's $40 a month, against $119 on Beehiiv Lite. Our free plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month. Full details are on our pricing page.

What you get on Pro:

A drag-and-drop email builder, 100+ templates, or your own HTML
Automations with a visual builder (welcome series, follow-ups, tag-based journeys)
Unlimited landing pages and sign-up forms
Segmentation on custom fields and campaign activity
Unlimited users, with roles for admins, managers and analysts
Reports you can look back on forever
API access, plus Zapier and Make integrations
No EmailOctopus branding

There's no plan-switching as you grow, either. When your list gets bigger, we move you up a tier automatically. Nonprofits get 20% off for life.

We've also been bootstrapped since 2014. No investors to answer to means no pressure to double revenue by next year, which is a big part of why our prices look the way they do.

Where EmailOctopus isn't the right fit

We'd rather you pick the right tool than the wrong one, so here's the honest version. EmailOctopus doesn't have built-in paid subscriptions, an ad network, podcast hosting or community spaces. If those are core to how you make money, Beehiiv or Substack will suit you better.

Pro also includes a monthly sending allowance of 10 times your list size. That's 100,000 emails a month for a 10,000-subscriber list, or roughly two full sends a week. Beehiiv's sends are unlimited, so if you email your whole list daily, factor that in.

Alternative 2: Kit

Kit (or formerly ConvertKit) suits creators who sell things to their list, like a paid newsletter, an ebook or a course, and want proper automations to do it.

Its free Newsletter plan appears at first glance as generous: up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sending. However it doesn't include automation and joining Kit's own recommendation network is required on the free plan.

Kit prices their paid plans, like EmailOctopus and Beehiiv, by list size

The Creator plan costs $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers and $116 at 10,000, within a few dollars of Beehiiv Lite at that size. Pro, which adds deeper reporting and a referral system, starts at $66.

Selling through Kit also costs 3.5% + $0.30 per transaction, which is an all-in figure, card processing included. Sales are available on every plan, free included – while Beehiiv claims to take 0% you still pay Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30, so the difference between the two is small.

Where Kit isn't the right fit

Kit is no cheaper than Beehiiv in the middle of the range, and it gets noticeably pricier above 50,000 subscribers. It's also been through its own price rise: Creator started at $29 a month at 1,000 subscribers before going to $39. If you're leaving Beehiiv purely to save money and your list is big, Kit probably isn't the answer.

Alternative 3: Substack

Substack the most expensive platform once paid subscriptions take off.

There's no monthly fee, instead you pay when your readers pay you. Substack takes 10% of every paid subscription, then Stripe adds 2.9% + $0.30 per payment and a 0.7% recurring billing fee. On an $8 monthly subscription, that's about $1.39 of every payment, or roughly 17%.

Stripe charges you on Beehiiv too, so the real comparison is Substack's 10% against Beehiiv's flat fee:

At 1,000 subscribers, Beehiiv Lite is $49 a month, so Substack works out cheaper until you're earning about $490 a month in subscriptions.
At 10,000 subscribers, Lite is $119 a month, so Substack is cheaper until about $1,190 a month.
If your newsletter is free with no paid tier, Substack costs nothing. Beehiiv costs $119 a month at 10,000 subscribers.

What the 10% buys you is reach. Substack's recommendations put your newsletter in front of readers of other publications, and many readers already have the Substack app open. Chat, live video and podcast hosting are built in too.

Where Substack isn't the right fit

The 10% never goes away, and it grows with you. A newsletter making $5,000 a month hands Substack $500 of it, every month. Subscriptions bought through the iOS app also lose 15% to 30% to Apple. And you can only sell recurring subscriptions, so a one-off ebook or workshop needs another tool.

Substack also is as much a social network as a newsletter tool, too. You have very limited control over your design and website – and it's best suited to journalists, who simply want their content to be readable, rather than a brand who has guidelines to follow.

Side by side: what you'd pay at each list size

EmailOctopus is the cheapest paid option at every list size, at a quarter to a third of Beehiiv Lite's price up to 10,000 subscribers. All prices are US dollars per month, billed yearly, on each platform's main paid plan.

Subscribers	Beehiiv Lite	Beehiiv Pro	EmailOctopus Pro	Kit Creator	Substack
1,000	$49	$95	$12	$33	$0 + 10%
10,000	$119	$199	$40	$116	$0 + 10%
25,000	$169	$299	$85	$166	$0 + 10%
50,000	$249	$399	$160	~$316	$0 + 10%
100,000	$399	$599	$310	~$566	$0 + 10%

Kit's 50,000 and 100,000 figures use its nearest tiers (55,000 and 105,000). Substack's 10% applies only to paid subscription revenue. Free plans are left out: Beehiiv and EmailOctopus are free up to 2,500 subscribers, Kit up to 10,000, and Substack at any size.

At 10,000 subscribers, that's $1,428 a year on Beehiiv Lite against $480 on EmailOctopus Pro, a difference of $948.

Which one should you pick

If you mostly want to send a great newsletter at a fair price, switch to EmailOctopus. If you sell to your list, look at Kit. And if you're just starting, care little about visuals and want help being found, Substack makes sense. That said, if you use Beehiiv's ad network and extras every week, staying put might still be right.

Stay on Beehiiv if the ad network, paid subscriptions and the extra products are earning their keep. Pro users with under 2,500 subscribers will barely notice the price change, though teams bigger than 10 will lose seats.
Move to EmailOctopus if email is the job. You'll get the builder, automations, landing pages and segmentation for a fraction of the price, from a self-funded company with really do care.
Move to Kit if you sell a paid newsletter, ebooks or courses and want strong automations around them.
Move to Substack if you're starting from scratch, care most about discovery, and don't mind giving up 10% of what you earn.

How to switch without losing anyone

You've got some breathing room. Annual customers keep their current price until their term renews, and monthly customers get at least 30 days' notice before the new price kicks in, according to Beehiiv's announcement. Use that time.

Check your renewal date in Beehiiv's billing settings, so you know your deadline.
Export your subscriber list, including any tags or custom fields you rely on.
Import it into your new platform and set up your sending domain there (SPF and DKIM), so emails keep arriving in inboxes.
Swap your sign-up forms and rebuild your welcome email or automations.
Send your next issue from the new platform, check it looks right, then cancel Beehiiv before it renews.

If you're moving to EmailOctopus, start on the free plan and try it with your own list first. Our support team will help if you get stuck.

Beehiiv's 2026 price rise and the best alternatives