Free Newsletter Plans and the Caps That End Them

A free newsletter plan is defined by two numbers, and most people only read one of them. The subscriber cap is the number on the marketing page. The monthly send allowance is the number that usually stops you first, and it is generally further down.

The distinction matters because the two limits behave differently. A subscriber cap is a slow wall you approach over months and can see coming. A send ceiling is a cliff you fall off in the third week of a month, usually on the day you decide to send an extra edition. Work out which one binds for your schedule before you choose a platform, not after.

The free tiers as they stand in September 2026

Read from each vendor's pricing page on 19 September 2026.

• Kit — up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited broadcasts. No send ceiling at all. Automations, sequences, A/B testing, branding removal and integrations are withheld.
• beehiiv — up to 2,500 active subscribers, unlimited sends. Newsletter, website, podcast hosting, analytics and API access included; the Send API is not.
• Buttondown — the first 100 subscribers. Billing above that counts active subscribers only.
• MailerLite — 250 active subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, since 16 June 2026.
• Substack — no subscriber cap and no send ceiling for a free newsletter. The cost arrives only if you charge readers, at 10% of gross subscription revenue.
• Ghost — no hosted free tier at all. Self-hosting the open-source software costs only the server it runs on; the managed service begins at $18 a month on annual billing.

Those six sit in a different order depending on which number you care about, which is exactly the point. On subscriber ceiling, Kit wins by a factor of four. On capability at no cost, beehiiv does. On pure longevity for a free newsletter with no intention of charging, Substack is the only one with no ceiling of any kind.

Which limit binds first

Take a newsletter of 240 subscribers, sending weekly. That is roughly 1,040 emails a month.

On MailerLite's current free plan the subscriber cap at 250 is ten addresses away and the send allowance at 2,500 has more than half of it spare. The subscriber number binds. On the same platform's previous free plan — 500 subscribers, 12,000 emails — neither limit was close, which is precisely why the change was significant.

Now take a newsletter of 200 subscribers sending daily. That is around 6,000 emails a month, against the same 2,500 allowance. Here the subscriber cap is irrelevant and the send ceiling ends the free plan in the second week. Same platform, same free tier, and the binding constraint is entirely determined by how often you write.

This is the arithmetic nobody does before signing up, and it takes thirty seconds: multiply your subscriber count by your sends per month and compare it against the allowance. If your platform publishes no send allowance — Kit and beehiiv both offer unlimited sends on free — the subscriber cap is the only limit and you can plan around it directly.

What happens when you cross the line

This is where free plans differ most, and where the documentation is worth reading before you need it.

MailerLite is the most explicit and among the most considerate. Cross the subscriber cap and campaigns pause, automations pause, and subscriber intake pauses across manual entry, the API and integrations. Cross the send allowance and campaign and automation sending pauses until you upgrade or the month resets. Nothing is deleted, and MailerLite states that you are not charged unless you choose to upgrade manually.

That last clause is the one to check on any platform. There are two ways for a service to handle a cap: pause you, or move you up a tier and bill you. The first costs you sends and leaves the decision with you. The second costs you money you did not agree to spend, and you find out when the invoice arrives. Neither is dishonest if it is disclosed, but they are very different experiences and only one of them can happen while you are on holiday.

The cut that reset the category

MailerLite's June 2026 change is the most consequential free-plan move of the year, and it is instructive beyond MailerLite.

The old plan was 500 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails. The new plan, from 16 June 2026, is 250 subscribers and 2,500 monthly emails. Half the list, a fifth of the sends. In exchange, the free tier gained access to more of the professional feature set — two user seats, three automations, three forms, a landing page, a five-page website, a digital product, the HTML editor and pop-ups.

Read charitably, that is a repositioning rather than a cut: the free plan became a better demonstration of the product and a worse place to live. Read practically, anyone running a 400-subscriber newsletter on the old terms woke up needing a paid plan.

The lesson is not about MailerLite. It is that a free tier is a marketing decision, revisited whenever the marketing changes, and it is the one part of a platform's pricing with no contractual weight behind it at all. Paid tiers get grandfathered. Free tiers get rewritten.

How to use a free plan without being caught by it

Four habits, all of them cheap.

1. Know both numbers. Write down your platform's subscriber cap and send allowance on the day you sign up, and check them against your actual monthly send volume every quarter.
2. Export monthly. A CSV of your list costs nothing to produce and turns a platform change from an emergency into an inconvenience. How to do it properly is in moving a newsletter list without losing half of it.
3. Know the paid rung above you. Not the headline entry price — the price at your actual list size. Free plans end, and the useful question is what the next step costs rather than whether there is one.
4. Prefer active-subscriber metering. If a platform bills on total contacts, your free ceiling includes everyone who ever left. If it bills on active subscribers, it does not. That distinction is worked through in what the meter actually counts.

The honest summary

There is no free newsletter plan that scales indefinitely, with one exception, and the exception charges you a percentage of revenue instead of a monthly fee. Everything else is a runway with a published length.

Choose the runway that matches your schedule rather than the longest one advertised: a 10,000-subscriber ceiling is worth nothing if you need a welcome sequence on day one, and 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends and a full toolkit will outlast it for most people. The full ranking, with what each platform charges once the free plan ends, is on the best newsletter platforms rate card.