Substack is a newsletter platform: free to start, emails and payments built in, and 10% of your paid subscription revenue goes to Substack. WordPress is a website builder that comes in two forms: WordPress.com, the hosted service (free plan with ads, paid plans from $4 a month billed yearly), and self-hosted WordPress.org (free software on hosting you pay for). Choose Substack if the newsletter is the product and you want to start writing today. Choose WordPress if you want a full website, real SEO control or anything beyond subscriptions.
On money, WordPress.com can be cheaper: it also sells paid newsletter subscriptions, and its fee drops from 10% on the free plan to 4% on Premium ($8 a month billed yearly) and 0% on Commerce. Above about $1,600 a year in paid revenue, Premium costs less than Substack's cut. The calculator below shows the numbers for your revenue.
Key takeaways
- Substack is free and keeps 10% of paid subscriptions; WordPress.com charges 10% (Free), 8% (Personal), 4% (Premium), 2% (Business) or 0% (Commerce), plus Stripe fees on both.
- WordPress.com plans cost $4, $8, $25 and $45 a month billed yearly ($9, $18, $40, $70 monthly), as of October 2026.
- WordPress.com Premium beats Substack's 10% once paid revenue passes $1,600 a year; Commerce beats it above $5,400.
- WordPress runs 39.6% of all websites (W3Techs, October 2026); self-hosted WordPress gives full SEO and design control, Substack very little.
- There's no official Substack plugin for WordPress: embed Substack's sign-up form, show posts via its RSS feed, or migrate with WordPress.com's Substack importer.
Substack vs WordPress at a glance
| Substack | WordPress.com | WordPress.org (self-hosted) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Newsletter platform with a web archive and app | Hosted WordPress websites | Free WordPress software you install on your own hosting |
| Price | Free | Free plan with ads; paid from $4/mo billed yearly | Software free; you pay hosting and a domain |
| Cut of paid subscriptions | 10% | 10% to 0%, by plan | None from WordPress; depends on your newsletter plugin or tool |
| Email newsletter | Built in | Built in: subscribers get new posts by email | Via a plugin or an email tool |
| Custom domain | $50 one-time, www or other subdomain only | Paid plans (free for the first year on annual plans) | Yes |
| Design | Substack layouts | Themes; more control on paid plans | Any theme, any code |
| SEO control | Basic | Good on paid plans | Full |
| Built-in audience | Substack app, Notes, Recommendations | WordPress.com Reader | None |
| Maintenance | None | None | Updates, backups and security are on you |
What's the difference between Substack and WordPress?
Substack is built around one object: the newsletter post. Everything (the editor, the subscriber list, payments, the app) exists to get that post into inboxes and turn readers into paying subscribers. You trade control for simplicity. You can't install plugins, add pages beyond the basics, change URL structures or put your publication in a subfolder of another site.
WordPress is built around the website. It can be a blog, a magazine, a store, a membership site or a company site, and the newsletter is one feature among many. That flexibility is why it powers 39.6% of all websites and 58.4% of sites with a known CMS (W3Techs, October 2026). The cost is setup time and, on self-hosted WordPress, maintenance.
What each costs in October 2026
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | Fee on paid subscriptions | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Substack | Free | Free | 10% | $50 one-time for a custom domain |
| WordPress.com Free | $0 | $0 | 10% | WordPress.com ads, no custom domain |
| WordPress.com Personal | $4/mo | $9/mo | 8% | No ads, custom domain, plugins and premium themes |
| WordPress.com Premium | $8/mo | $18/mo | 4% | More storage, premium stats, payment buttons |
| WordPress.com Business | $25/mo | $40/mo | 2% | 50 GB storage, priority support |
| WordPress.com Commerce | $45/mo | $70/mo | 0% | WooCommerce store features |
| WordPress.org | Hosting + domain | Hosting + domain | 0% from WordPress | Plugins may charge their own fees |
Sources: WordPress.com pricing and paid newsletters, Substack help center, checked October 19, 2026. Stripe's card fees (2.9% + $0.30 per US payment) apply on all of them; Substack also passes on Stripe's 0.7% Billing fee. A WordPress.com free domain for the first year comes only with annual plans, and if a paid plan expires, the fee goes back to 10%.
For self-hosted WordPress, budget for hosting and a domain, plus any premium theme or plugin you choose. Prices vary too much by host to quote one number; our guide to starting a WordPress blog walks through the setup.
Substack vs WordPress.com: which costs less at your revenue?
Interactive calculator
Substack vs WordPress.com, yearly cost of a paid newsletter
WordPress.com saves you per year (negative means Substack is cheaper)
$624
- Substack's 10% per year
- $1,200
- WordPress.com plan per year
- $96
- WordPress.com fee on payments
- 4%
- WordPress.com total per year
- $576
Two caveats the calculator can't capture. Substack's fee pays for a reader network; Substack says over half of its new subscribers come from it (about page), and WordPress.com has nothing comparable. And WordPress.com's email newsletter is simpler than Substack's: no Notes, no Recommendations, no app built for discovery.
Newsletters and paid subscriptions
Substack does the newsletter best out of the box: every post can be emailed, paywalled post by post, sold monthly, yearly or as a founding member plan, and discovered in the app. Emails always come from yourname@substack.com, even with a custom domain. For what popular newsletters charge and what writers keep after fees, see how much a Substack subscription costs; for the setup, how to use Substack.
WordPress.com emails new posts to your subscribers automatically and lets you create paid tiers through Stripe; for a paid-only post, only subscribers on that tier get the email (WordPress.com support). It's a solid option if you want a website first and a newsletter second.
Self-hosted WordPress has no newsletter built in. You add one: a newsletter plugin, or a sign-up form connected to an email tool such as Kit, Mailchimp or beehiiv. More moving parts, but you choose the tool and its pricing.
SEO: WordPress wins
Self-hosted WordPress and WordPress.com's paid plans give you everything SEO needs: custom title tags and meta descriptions, any URL structure, redirects, XML sitemaps, schema markup, and plugins such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math. You can also run the blog in a subfolder of a company site.
Substack gives you an SEO title, description and editable URL per post, and little else. Its help center says sitemaps and Google Search Console verification "become available as your publication grows" (source), and without the $50 custom domain, your posts build substack.com's authority rather than yours.
If search traffic is the point, WordPress is the better base. Our ranking of the best CMS for SEO compares it with Webflow, Ghost and others, and if writing enough content is the bottleneck, Outrank's WordPress integration publishes researched SEO articles to your site every day, with internal links and images.
Is there a WordPress Substack plugin?
No official one: Substack doesn't publish a WordPress plugin. People searching for one usually want one of four things, and each has a simple answer.
- 1
Show a Substack sign-up form on WordPress
In Substack, go to Settings → Growth features and copy the embed code. Paste it into a Custom HTML block on any WordPress page or post. It works anywhere iframes are allowed. - 2
Show your latest Substack posts on WordPress
Every Substack has an RSS feed at yourname.substack.com/feed. Add WordPress's RSS block (or an RSS widget) and paste that URL. - 3
Move from Substack to WordPress.com
In WordPress.com, go to Tools → Import → Substack. It imports posts, images, podcasts and public comments, plus free and paid subscribers (WordPress.com support). - 4
Move from WordPress to Substack
In Substack, go to Settings → Import/Export → Import posts and paste your WordPress site's URL; then import your list under Subscribers → Add subscribers.
On self-hosted WordPress, WordPress's built-in RSS importer (Tools → Import → RSS) can pull in posts from Substack's feed, though feeds may only include recent posts.
Which should you choose?
- Choose Substack if you're a writer starting a newsletter, you want readers from Substack's network, and you'd rather not touch a website builder.
- Choose WordPress.com if you want a website with a newsletter attached and lower fees as revenue grows. Premium is the sweet spot for most paid newsletters above $1,600 a year.
- Choose self-hosted WordPress if you want full control, plugins, a store, or the blog inside your company site, and you're fine maintaining it.
Two other routes are worth a look. If you want a publication you own with 0% fees but without WordPress's complexity, read Ghost vs Substack. If what you need is a business blog on your own domain, free, Outrank Blogs hosts one without ads (free up to 10,000 visits a month) and collects subscribers for your email tool; it doesn't send newsletters. Here's how it stacks up against the WordPress.com free plan. For the broader newsletter-or-blog question, see Substack vs blog.
FAQ
Is Substack better than WordPress?
Substack is better for a newsletter-first writer: it's free, emails and payments are built in, and its network helps new readers find you. WordPress is better for a website, for SEO and for anything beyond subscriptions, and WordPress.com's paid plans charge lower fees than Substack's 10% once revenue grows.
Is Substack free? Is WordPress free?
Substack is free to use and keeps 10% of paid subscription revenue. WordPress.com has a free plan with ads and a wordpress.com address; paid plans start at $4 a month billed yearly. The self-hosted WordPress software is free, but you pay for hosting and a domain.
Can I use Substack with WordPress?
Yes. Embed Substack's sign-up form on your WordPress site with the code from Settings → Growth features, or display your Substack posts with an RSS block pointed at yourname.substack.com/feed. There's no official Substack plugin.
Which is better for SEO, Substack or WordPress?
WordPress. It gives you full control of titles, URLs, redirects, sitemaps and structured data, and it can run on your own domain or in a subfolder of your site. Substack offers basic per-post SEO fields, and its sitemaps and Search Console verification become available only as a publication grows.
Can I move from Substack to WordPress?
Yes. WordPress.com's importer (Tools → Import → Substack) brings over posts, images, podcasts, public comments and both free and paid subscribers. On self-hosted WordPress, import posts from Substack's export or RSS feed and your list into your email tool.
