Substack statistics cover more than subscriber totals. The platform reports publication performance, post engagement, paid retention, revenue, referrals, app distribution, and audience activity through several dashboards and product surfaces. The figures and rules below describe the measurement periods and definitions stated by Substack and the listed app stores.
Contents
- Publication and traffic metrics
- Subscribers, retention, and revenue
- Posts and engagement
- Plans, fees, and payment rules
- Discovery, referrals, and collaboration
- Apps, markets, and audience activity
Publication and traffic metrics
Substack gives creators four main creator-facing areas for checking publication performance: Home, Posts, Stats, and the subscriber dashboard views inside Stats. The Home page overview presents three headline figures: gross annualized revenue, paid subscribers, and total subscribers. That makes the overview a quick snapshot of audience scale and paid business performance, while the other areas provide more detail.
The Home page can surface seven sections: Announcements, Overview, Latest Post, Drafts, Recent Posts, Subscriber Notes, and Resources. These sections combine operational information with recent publishing and community activity.
The Traffic section covers the past 30 days of views. Its Total traffic metric sums visits across platforms over the selected time period. Because the metric combines platforms, it should be read as a cross-platform visit total rather than as a count for one device or channel.
The growth chart compares subscriber spikes against posts and side-by-side sources. For paid publications, the Growth chart tracks three data series: visitors, subscriptions, and revenue. Together, these views connect publishing activity with audience movement and paid outcomes.
Reader sharing performance is displayed only from January 2022 onward. Substack publications can also have hidden statistics toggles in Settings under Privacy, so the availability of a visible metric can depend on the publication’s settings.
Subscribers, retention, and revenue
The subscriber dashboard breaks the audience into three visible groups by default: all subscribers, all followers, and paid subscribers. “All followers” can represent the combined unique followers of public admins plus subscribers who are followers by default. These groups are not interchangeable: a follower may not be a subscriber, while a paid subscriber is a narrower group within the publication’s paying audience.
The dashboard’s gross annualized revenue is calculated over 12 months. Paid-subscriber charts can include comps, gifts, and free trials alongside paid subscribers. Those additional categories matter when interpreting a chart, because the displayed paid-audience context may include subscription arrangements that are not ordinary recurring purchases.
Substack’s Retention tab shows paid subscriber retention after 30 days, 6 months, and 12 months. The paid growth rate is measured as the percentage change in total paid subscribers from 30 days ago. If payments have just been enabled, retention dashboards can take 30 days to appear after the first paid subscriber.
The following table summarizes the principal time windows used in these subscriber and traffic measurements.
| Metric or dashboard | Measurement window or point | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic section | Past 30 days | Views |
| Paid growth rate | Compared with 30 days ago | Percentage change in total paid subscribers |
| Retention | 30 days, 6 months, and 12 months | Paid subscriber retention |
| Gross annualized revenue | 12 months | Annualized revenue calculation |
| Reader sharing performance | January 2022 onward | Displayed sharing history |
These windows should remain attached to the figures when comparing reports. A 30-day growth rate, a 12-month annualized revenue figure, and a 12-month retention point answer different questions.
Posts and engagement
Substack post statistics show four engagement metrics in the reach and engagement areas: recipients, delivery rate, open rate, and click-through rate. The Reach tab can also show traffic sources for readers and subscribers. This separates the size of the delivered audience from the behavior of readers who received or found a post.
Recipients are counted as people rather than notification instances when a subscriber receives both email and app notifications. In that situation, the subscriber is counted once in recipients. Open rate also avoids counting repeated views as separate opens: a reader who views the same post five times is counted once for open rate.
Engagement click-through rate has a narrower scope. Substack post statistics count subscribers for this measure, not non-subscribed readers. A click-through figure therefore should not be treated as the click behavior of every person who may have viewed a public post.
Post Growth statistics can show the estimated revenue increase from new paid subscriptions driven by a post. They can also show counts for both paid subscribers and free subscribers generated by that post. Because the revenue figure is described as estimated, it is distinct from a confirmed cash-revenue total.
The post-level measurements answer different questions:
- Recipients describe the audience counted as receiving the post.
- Delivery rate describes delivery performance.
- Open rate describes counted opens, with repeated views by one reader counted once.
- Click-through rate describes subscriber engagement for the relevant statistic.
- Traffic sources describe where readers and subscribers came from.
- Growth statistics connect a post with estimated revenue and generated paid or free subscribers.
Keeping these definitions separate prevents a recipient count from being read as an open count, or a post’s estimated revenue increase from being read as total publication revenue.
Plans, fees, and payment rules
Substack subscription plans have four types: Free, Monthly, Annual, and Founding Member. A publication can enable paid subscriptions, and Substack takes 10% of each transaction. Stripe’s credit-card fee on Substack is 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.
Stripe’s recurring-billing fee is 0.7% for recurring payments as of July 2024. Creators who enabled payments before July 10, 2024 kept a 0.5% billing fee until June 30, 2025. These dates are important: the earlier fee arrangement is a legacy rule tied to both an enablement date and an end date, while the 0.7% figure is stated as applying as of July 2024.
Substack’s paid-subscription dispute flow includes three common plan types that can be disputed: monthly, annual, and founding member subscriptions. A dispute involving one of these plans belongs to the payment and subscription workflow rather than to ordinary post engagement measurement.
Boost can offer four types of special offers: free trials, discounts on paid subscriptions, gift subscriptions, and free months. These offers change the route by which a reader begins or receives access, so they should be distinguished from the four standard plan types.
The iOS payment rules add another geographic distinction. iOS in-app payments are currently available only for US-based subscribers. Substack says Apple’s in-app purchase option is not allowed outside the U.S. for the payment flow described on its iOS help page. Substack also says creators keep their full payout on standard web purchases completed through the app. Availability and payout treatment therefore depend on both the subscriber’s location and the purchase route.
Discovery, referrals, and collaboration
Substack leaderboards have two ranking views for each category: Rising and Top Bestseller. The leaderboards are organized by category tabs across the app, with examples including sports, business, fiction, and politics. Top Bestseller ranks publications by annual recurring revenue, or ARR. Rising and Top Bestseller are therefore different views, and the Top Bestseller ranking uses ARR as its stated basis.
Substack’s referral program rewards are based on the number of new free subscriptions a reader brings in. Paid publications can start subscriber referrals with default tiers of complimentary paid subscriptions. The reward basis and the complimentary tiers should be kept distinct: one describes the qualifying activity, while the other describes an available reward structure for paid publications.
Substack supports several ways to organize publication contributors. A guest author invitation can be sent by entering the guest creator’s Substack profile or email address. The publication-team contributor flow supports three roles beyond public listing: Byline, Contributor, and Admin.
Public admins can be listed on the About page as contributors. Contributor access excludes Settings and Stats access, while Admin access includes full Settings access. This creates a measurable permissions distinction inside the team structure: access to publication controls and analytics is not the same for every listed contributor.
Apps, markets, and audience activity
The Substack app claims 4.8 stars on Google Play, with 183K Google Play reviews and 5M+ downloads. Google Play rates the app for Teenagers. These are app-store figures, not counts of Substack publications, subscribers, or posts, and the download number is expressed with a plus sign as a lower-bound display.
The Substack iPad App Store listing shows version 2.79.0 in the listing snippet. The App Store listing shows at least 14 additional languages beyond English. The version and language figures describe the listing rather than the size or activity of the publication network.
The platform also has market-specific age rules. In Australia, users under 16 require age verification, while users over 16 can hold an account. This is a rule about account eligibility and verification, not a demographic estimate.
Substack’s Home feed shows notes and activity from people a user is subscribed to or follows. The app inbox filters include saved posts and audio posts. Notes are public and available for anyone in the Substack network to view, and any creator or reader on the platform can start a note.
Note replies have two audience settings: everyone or only paid subscribers. The setting changes who can reply, while the note itself remains a public network feature under the stated description. The mobile app supports live streams and live group chats, adding live interaction to the platform’s posts, notes, and inbox activity.
These app and community measures are different from publication analytics. A 4.8-star store rating is not an open rate; a count of 5M+ downloads is not a subscriber count; and a public note is not automatically a paid subscription. Reading each statistic with its source context and measurement definition is essential when evaluating Substack performance.