Buttondown vs Substack: Pricing, 10% Cut, Domains, Export

Overview

Buttondown and Substack both offer simple newsletter tools, but they charge in opposite ways. Buttondown bills a flat monthly fee by subscriber count: free up to 100 subscribers, $9/month up to 1,000 and $29/month up to 5,000. Substack is free to publish and keeps 10% of what your paying readers pay. The choice depends on whether you value independence or discoverability, and on how much revenue your newsletter earns.

The quick answer: a free newsletter that you want to start today costs nothing on Substack, while a newsletter with real paid revenue gets cheaper on Buttondown once you earn more than about $90 a month from subscribers. Developers and minimalists should lean Buttondown; writers wanting platform benefits might prefer Substack.

Key Differences

Target Audience

Buttondown is built for developers and technical writers. Its docs lead with a REST API and a command-line tool, and the product describes itself as the easiest way to start and grow a newsletter. The setup is a browser account, a username and a confirmation email; there is nothing to install.

Substack is built for general writers. Rich text editor, platform discovery features, app experience. More approachable for non-technical users.

Business Model

Buttondown charges a flat monthly fee that depends on subscribers: free up to 100, $9/month up to 1,000 and $29/month up to 5,000 (Buttondown pricing). Its pricing page says it charges for active subscribers, meaning the people actively receiving your emails. We did not find a revenue percentage on that page.

Substack is free to publish, and its going-paid page says writers keep 90% of their revenue minus credit card fees (Substack going paid). That is a 10% cut on top of card fees, and it applies only to paid subscription revenue: a free newsletter pays nothing.

What Each One Costs at Real Sizes

Because the two bills are shaped differently, compare them at your own numbers. Three simple cases, ignoring card processing fees on both sides:

• A free newsletter with 800 subscribers. Substack costs $0. Buttondown costs $9/month, because 800 is over the free 100 and inside the 1,000-subscriber Basic plan.
• 1,000 subscribers, 100 of whom pay $5/month ($500/month). Substack keeps 10%, or $50/month. Buttondown Basic is $9/month.
• 5,000 subscribers, 250 of whom pay $8/month ($2,000/month). Substack keeps $200/month. Buttondown Standard is $29/month.

The break-even is easy to remember. Substack's 10% passes Buttondown's $9 once your paid revenue exceeds $90 a month, and passes $29 once it exceeds $290 a month. Below that, Substack is cheaper or free; above it, a flat fee wins, and the gap widens every month your revenue grows. What Buttondown does not give you is a built-in audience, so the cheaper bill only helps if you already bring your readers.

Platform vs Independence

Substack offers network effects. Readers discover new newsletters through the app. The Substack brand can lend credibility. You are building within their ecosystem.

Buttondown is just infrastructure. No network effects, but complete independence. Your newsletter is fully yours.

Custom Domains

Substack charges a one-time $50 fee to use a custom domain, and you must already own the domain; Substack does not sell them. It recommends a subdomain such as www.yourdomain.com, which you point at Substack with a CNAME record, and the root domain can redirect to it. Verification can take up to 36 hours. One limit matters if you care about sender identity: emails are still sent from [yoursubdomain]@substack.com, so the custom domain changes where readers read, not who the email appears to come from (Substack custom domain guide).

Buttondown serves archives from buttondown.com/username by default. A custom archive domain such as newsletter.example.com is listed as available on the Standard plan ($29/month), and setup is a CNAME record pointing at custom-domains.buttondown.com (Buttondown hosting domain docs). Sending from your own domain is a separate, optional setup that the quickstart describes. In money terms, Substack's route costs $50 once, while Buttondown's costs the $20 difference between Basic and Standard every month, about $240 a year. In control terms, only Buttondown lets you send from an address on your own domain.

Export and Leaving

Your list is the asset, so check how easily it leaves. Substack lets you create a full export from Settings, a zip containing your posts, subscriber list and related statistics (export guide). You can also export the subscriber list as a CSV with all columns or only the visible ones, but Substack states it is not currently possible to export a file with subscriber names (email list export). That matters if you want to import into a tool that personalizes by name.

Buttondown exports subscribers from the subscribers tab as a CSV with each subscriber's ID, email address, notes, type, referrer, UTM fields, subscription and unsubscription dates, tags and metadata (subscriber exports). The same export is available through the API as a POST to /v1/exports with a format of csv and a choice of columns (creating an export), so a nightly backup can be a ten-line script rather than a manual click.

API and Automation

Buttondown documents a REST API designed, in its own words, so that if there is a primitive in Buttondown you get an interface to retrieve, create, modify and delete it (API introduction). Your key comes from the API requests page, API changes are listed in its changelog, and a command-line tool is documented too. If you want to publish from a script, a CI job or your own app, this is the stronger choice.

Substack now has an official Developer API, but its terms describe read access to public creator and publication information: name, subscriber count, bestseller status, profile and publication URLs (Developer API terms). Those terms do not describe creating or sending posts, so treat Substack as an editor you use, not a service you program against.

Pros and Cons

Who Should Choose What

Choose Buttondown if:

• You are a developer or technical writer who wants a REST API
• You want to send from your own domain
• You earn, or expect to earn, more than about $90 a month from paid subscribers
• Independence matters more than discovery
• You value minimal, focused tools

Choose Substack if:

• You want zero upfront costs and a free newsletter that never bills you
• Network effects benefit your niche
• You are happy to read at a custom domain but send from substack.com
• Platform discovery is valuable
• Simplicity outweighs technical features

For SaaS Startups

Both tools are publishing platforms, not lifecycle systems. A SaaS team can use either for a product newsletter, but onboarding sequences, failed-payment emails and win-back need billing events as triggers. If you run a SaaS, Sequenzy connects to Stripe, Paddle and Lemon Squeezy, says a failed payment starts dunning emails with a card-update page, and is free for 2,500 emails a month ($19/month for 15,000), so it can sit beside either newsletter tool.

The Bottom Line

Buttondown is the better choice for developers who value independence, an API and sending from their own domain. Its flat pricing ($9 up to 1,000 subscribers, $29 up to 5,000) gets cheaper than a percentage cut once paid revenue passes roughly $90 to $290 a month, depending on the plan.

Substack makes sense for writers starting out who want zero upfront costs and potential platform discovery. Just be aware the 10% adds up at scale, and that it is easier to move your list out if you keep a copy of the subscriber export from the beginning.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Substack really free?

Publishing is free, and Substack only takes its 10% when you charge readers: the going-paid page says writers keep 90% of their revenue minus credit card fees. A custom domain is the one optional cost, at a one-time $50.

Does Buttondown take a cut of paid subscriptions?

Its pricing page lists subscriber-based plans and no percentage of your revenue, so what you pay Buttondown is the $9 or $29 plan. Card processing fees are a separate cost on any platform, so check the payment processor's rates as well.

Can I move from Substack to Buttondown later?

Yes. Export your posts and list from Substack's Settings, keep in mind the list export has no subscriber names, and use the migration guides linked from Buttondown's quickstart.

Which one should I pick for a company blog?

If you want the newsletter to live on your own domain and be driven from your own code, pick Buttondown. For related comparisons see Beehiiv vs Substack, our newsletter tool guide, MailerLite alternatives and ConvertKit alternatives.