Side-by-side
Ghost vs Substack
Pricing, founders, indie status and curated alternatives compared from our directory — all data points sourced from each tool's public site or press materials.
Substack
Publish a paid newsletter with the Substack social layer.
Newsletters & EmailFreemium · 10% of paid subscriptions
At a glanceGhostSubstack
- Pricing
- $9/mo
- 10% of paid subscriptions
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- Freemium
- Founded
- 2013
- 2017
- Location
- Singapore (registered as non-profit)
- San Francisco, USA
- Bootstrapped
- —
- —
- Open source
- Yes
- —
- Category
- —
- Newsletters & Email
- Indie alternatives
- 0
- 5
- Founders
- John O'Nolan
- Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, Jairaj Sethi
Key differences
Funding
Ghost is bootstrapped / open source; Substack is venture-backed.
Open source
Ghost is open source; Substack is closed source.
Founded
Ghost (2013) is 4 years older than Substack (2017).
Indie alternatives
Ghost has 0 curated indie alternatives in our directory; Substack has 5.
Differences are derived directly from the data on each tool's page. Empty fields mean we haven't verified a value yet — never that one tool lacks the capability.
More comparisons
Discussion
0 comments from people who picked one over the other.
Log in to share which you picked and why.
No comments yet. Be the first to share your experience.