30+ Comprehensive Substack Data Points 2025 | Newsletter Growth and Income Trends

home / Best Course Platforms /Kajabi Review

30+ Comprehensive Substack Data Points 2025 | Newsletter Growth and Income Trends

We earn a commission from partner links on this site. This doesn’t affect our opinions or evaluations.

Daniel Nic

February 19, 2025

Established in 2017, Substack aims to bridge the gap between writers and their readers directly. The platform empowers content creators to distribute newsletters that readers can enjoy for free or access through monthly subscription payments.

Through this approach, Substack has emerged as the dominant newsletter subscription service in the creator economy, drawing numerous distinguished journalists, bloggers, and influential thinkers.

Within just five years, Substack secured over one million paying subscribers and attracts millions of monthly readers. The enterprise has accumulated more than $80 million in funding and reached a valuation of $650 million.

Substack continuously enhances its platform features while expanding its user base. For those curious about Substack or newsletter publishing ventures, we present these 30+ essential Substack statistics worth knowing in 2025.

Substack Statistics Highlights

As of November 2021, Substack boasted over 1,000,000 users with active paid subscriptions.
The platform’s top ten writers collectively earned $20 million during 2021.
Substack has successfully raised over $82 million in total funding to date.
The most recent funding round valued Substack at $650 million.
Substack.com attracted more than 30 million monthly visitors in April 2022.

Substack Subscriber Statistics

Premium content continues driving millions of new users to join Substack, enabling the platform to achieve remarkable growth rates and consistently break records in the subscription economy. Users can publish both free articles and premium paid content.

Consider these revealing Substack user statistics:

Substack engages millions of monthly readers, appealing to diverse audiences through thousands of writers covering virtually every subject imaginable.
By late 2021, paid subscribers on the platform had soared beyond 1,000,000.
Between December 2020 and November 2021, Substack experienced tremendous annual growth, with paid subscribers quadrupling from 250,000 to 1,000,000.
Between July 2018 and November 2021, the paid subscriber count multiplied by nearly 90 times.

Learn About Our Review Process

Selling Online Courses Guide has thoroughly evaluated and tested more than 35 course platforms throughout the past 9 years
Every platform undergoes extensive hands-on testing and in-depth analysis before earning our recommendation
Through our comprehensive scoring system, we evaluate every platform against rigorous criteria to identify the absolute best options
Our team actively monitors platform changes and regularly updates reviews to ensure you always have the latest information
With over three decades of combined expertise in online education, our team brings deep industry knowledge to every review
We maintain complete editorial independence at Selling Online Courses Guide
Our success depends entirely on providing you with trustworthy recommendations that deliver real value

A mere 5% to 10% of the total Substack user base opts for paid newsletter subscriptions.
During April 2022, Substack.com attracted 30.6 million unique website visitors.

Most Popular Substack Newsletters

When starting as a fresh content creator, researching leading accounts proves invaluable. However, Substack maintains ambiguity regarding specific subscriber numbers and refrains from publishing exact figures.

To gather approximate data, you must visit individual creator profiles. There, you’ll encounter broad subscriber ranges described as “In the Hundreds” or “In the Thousands.”

The platform features 27 distinct categories covering various subjects. These encompass politics, business, culture, technology, climate, humor, history, and many others.
Achieving “top writer” status typically requires thousands of subscribers, though this threshold varies depending on each category’s competitive landscape.
The Dispatch stands as presumably the highest-revenue generating Substack account. They implement a $10 monthly subscription fee and have amassed tens of thousands of loyal subscribers.
Throughout 2021, the combined earnings of Substack’s ten most successful writers reached an impressive $20 million.
During the period spanning September 2020 through October 2021, the leading ten newsletter publishers nearly tripled their Substack-generated income.

Letters from an American ranks as the highest-performing paid newsletter within the politics category.

Position	Name	Subscriber Count	Monthly Price
1	Letters from an American	Tens of Thousands	$5
2	The Dispatch	Tens of Thousands	$10
3	TK News by Matt Taibbi	Tens of Thousands	$5
4	Bulwark+	Tens of Thousands	$10
5	Glenn Greenwald	Tens of Thousands	$5

Top five paid newsletters in the politics category as of May 2022

Based on Financial Times analysis, Glenn Greenwald generated earnings between $1 million and $2 million through his Substack publication during 2021.
Lenny’s Newsletter holds the position of leading paid business writer, while The Ankler secures the second-highest popularity ranking among Substack newsletters in the business category.

Position	Name	Subscriber Count	Monthly Price
1	Lenny’s Newsletter	Thousands	$15
2	The Ankler	Thousands	$17
3	Noahpinion	Thousands	$10
4	Category Pirate	Thousands	$20
5	BIG by Matt Stroller	Thousands	$8

Top five paid business writers as of May 2022

As of January 2021, Lenny’s Newsletter maintained 3,200 paying subscribers, generating an estimated monthly revenue of $43,200 after accounting for Substack’s service fees.
Within the Crypto category, prominent Bitcoin advocate Anthony Pompliano holds the third position. He delivers both written articles and audio content, with industry estimates indicating annual earnings exceeding $240,000.

Substack Revenue and Financials

Despite reaching the significant milestone of one million paying subscribers, Substack has yet to achieve profitability.

While Substack maintains privacy regarding revenue and financial details, we have compiled these statistics through various secondary information sources.

Substack collects a 10% commission from all subscription payments received by content creators.
Though official revenue figures remain unpublished, Substack reportedly informed investors of generating $9 million in revenue during 2021.
Since its 2017 founding, Substack has completed four funding rounds involving 15 investors. The cumulative funding raised totals $82.4 million.
The influential venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) spearheaded both Series A and B funding rounds, which collectively raised $80.3 million.
Substack participated in Y Combinator’s startup incubator program, which provided the initial $120,000 pre-seed investment.

Funding Round and Date	Lead Investor	Funding Amount
Pre-Seed; Jan 4, 2018	Y Combinator	$120,000
Seed; Apr 30, 2018	No Lead	$2 million
Series A; Jul 16, 2019	Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)	$15.3 million
Series B; Mar 31, 2021	Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)	$65 million

Substack funding rounds

Substack Website and App Statistics

This segment examines several remarkable website and application metrics for Substack.

Substack currently holds position as the 952nd most frequented website within the United States and ranks 2,072nd worldwide, drawing more than 30 million visitors monthly.
Visitors spend an average of two minutes and one second per session on the platform, significantly outperforming the typical website engagement duration of just 45 seconds.

Source: Similarweb

American visitors constitute 46.57% of all traffic, followed by United Kingdom (5.9%) and Canadian (5.77%) visitors claiming second and third positions respectively.
Visitor demographics reveal a gender distribution of 62.6% male and 37.4% female users.
The 25-34 age bracket represents 31.74% of website visitors, while the 35-44 age group follows as the second largest demographic at 19.23%.
Substack offers an iOS application titled Substack Reader. During April 2022, this mobile application achieved approximately 50,000 downloads from Apple’s App Store.
The iOS application maintains an impressive 4.9/5 star average rating based on 4.3k user reviews.

As of May 2022, Substack has not released an Android application. While various third-party applications offer alternative solutions, none have received particularly favorable ratings.

Miscellaneous Substack Statistics

Below are additional Substack statistics and noteworthy company information.

Substack compensates employees with average annual salaries of $117,372—equivalent to $56 hourly.
The company has dramatically expanded its workforce from 75 team members in 2020 to over 316 employees by 2022.
Stripe serves as Substack’s payment processing partner, charging a transaction fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.
Content creators typically receive their earnings deposited into bank accounts within a 48-hour timeframe.
During 2019, Substack introduced a $3,000 grant program alongside one-day writing workshops to attract additional content creators.
Substack generated significant media attention in 2020 by offering advance payments reaching $400,000 to prominent journalists from prestigious publications including the New York Times, New York Magazine, and The Intercept. This exclusive signing strategy successfully drew these writers’ substantial audiences, many of whom converted to paid subscribers.
Substack’s Twitter presence has accumulated over 77k followers.
Paid newsletter publishing extends beyond Substack, with thousands of writers managing independent subscription newsletters. For example, Ben Thompson maintained 26,000 paid subscribers in 2020 and generated $3.2 million through newsletter subscription revenue.

Substack has fundamentally transformed the digital publishing landscape, enabling countless writers to earn substantial incomes while pursuing their passion.

Throughout recent years, Substack has demonstrated remarkable growth trajectories that show no signs of diminishing anytime soon.

As the platform continues its expansion and evolution, we will regularly update this resource with the latest Substack statistics.

I trust you’ve found these statistics informative and valuable. If you’re interested in exploring additional creator economy metrics, consider reviewing our Patreon Statistics and Clubhouse Statistics articles.

Feel free to contribute additional insights by leaving a comment below.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many users does Substack have?

As of November 2021, Substack had more than one million subscriptions. The total number of readers isn’t publicly available, but it’s estimated to be in the millions.

How many writers are on Substack?

There are tens of thousands of writers spanning 27 categories. Almost every topic and niche has many writers.

How much do writers make on Substack?

The top Substack writers make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. In 2021, the top ten Substack writers made a combined earnings of $20 million.

What are the most popular newsletters on Substack?

The Dispatch, Letters from an American, and Bulwark+ are the most popular Substack newsletters. Together, they’re estimated to generate millions of dollars from subscriptions.

How much does Substack cost?

Setting up a Substack and starting to write is free. You’ll only be charged when you earn paid subscribers. Substack charges creators a 10% fee on all earnings. In addition to Substack’s fees, the payment processor, Stripe, charges a 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee.

How much money does Substack make?

The official Substack revenue numbers aren’t publicly available. However, a New York Times report claimed that the platform earned $9 million in revenue in 2021.

How much is Substack worth?

Substack is currently valued at $650 million. This valuation came after Substack’s Series B funding round, in which the company raised $65 million.

Sources

About The Author

Daniel Nic

Daniel NicFounder, SellingOnliceCoursesGuide.comis an entrepreneur and digital education specialist who founded sellingonlinecoursesguide.com, a platform dedicated to helping creators and educators successfully navigate the online course marketplace. Through his website, he shares insights and strategies for developing, marketing, and monetizing online educational content. His work focuses on empowering course creators to build sustainable online businesses while effectively sharing their knowledge with students worldwide.