Free newsletters cost nothing. When you turn on paid subscriptions, we take 5% of the revenue, capped at $99 a month. There are no other plans, and no other fees.
| Publishing a free newsletter | Free |
| Sending posts to your readers | Free |
| Custom domain, bilingual settings, full editor | Free |
| Exporting your subscriber list to CSV | Free |
| Hosting your archive | Free |
| Enabling paid subscriptions | 5% of revenue, capped at $99/month |
| Payment processing (Paddle, as Merchant of Record — handles VAT, chargebacks, payouts) | ~5%, shown transparently on every payout |
This is the whole price list. If something isn't on it, we don't charge for it.
The other options charge differently. Use the calculator below to work out your real cost.
| Factsheet Six | Substack | Beehiiv | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Take rate on paid subs | 5%, capped at $99/mo | 10%, no cap | 0% |
| Monthly fee | None | None | $0–$99+ depending on list size |
| Free newsletter cost | $0, no limit | $0, no limit | $0 up to 2,500 subs |
| Subscriber list export | One-click CSV | Manual, friction | CSV |
| Where your readers' data lives | Canada | United States | United States |
Factsheet Six
$5
/ month
You keep $495
Substack
$50
/ month
You keep $450
Beehiiv
$43
/ month
You keep $457
Monthly subscription revenue: $500
Payment processing (~3% on every platform) is excluded — it's broadly the same wherever your readers pay.
Some newsletters earn a few hundred dollars a month. Some earn tens of thousands. The software costs about the same to run for either. Charging a percentage with no ceiling means a writer with a serious audience subsidises the ones who don't. We'd rather not be that kind of business.
At $99 a month — about what you'd pay a colleague for an hour of their time — we cover our costs even on the largest publications. So we stop there.
Then you don't pay anything. The free tier is the full product — nothing is held back, nothing expires.
Your subscriber list, post archive, and paid subscription records all export to standard formats whenever you want. No retention emails. No support gauntlet.
Not retroactively. If we ever raise the rate or the cap, writers who joined before the change keep the old terms.
Canada. Your readers' email addresses, payment records, and reading data live on Canadian servers, under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA and CASL). For European readers we operate under Canada's EU adequacy decision — your GDPR obligations are satisfied without separate paperwork. We are not subject to FISA courts or the United States CLOUD Act.
The cap doesn't kick in until you're earning around $24,000 a year from paid subscriptions. Until then we take 5% — half of what Substack takes — and you're better off here. After that, we take a flat $99 and you're substantially better off here. If you find a scenario where the math doesn't favour you, write to us.
The first hundred newsletters to enable paid subscriptions on Factsheet Six keep 3% instead of 5%, with the same $99 cap, for two years.
If you want a slot, start a newsletter and turn on paid subscriptions. We count them in the order they're enabled. There's no waitlist and no application.