Kit lets you keep 10,000 subscribers on its free plan. beehiiv’s free plan stops at 2,500. That one difference, which most comparison posts bury in a pricing table, decides the beehiiv vs Kit question for a lot of founders before features even come up. If your list sits between those two numbers and you can live with one automation, Kit costs you nothing and beehiiv sends you a bill.
But price is the smaller half of the decision. The bigger half is what the newsletter is for. I checked both pricing pages and third-party trackers in October 2026, and every number below comes from those sources unless I say otherwise. beehiiv changed its plan names and prices on October 1, 2026, so older comparisons that mention its “Scale” or “Max” plans are out of date.
What each tool is built to do
Kit (the company renamed itself from ConvertKit in 2024) grew up as an email marketing tool for creators who sell things: courses, coaching, books, templates, workshops. Its center of gravity is the visual automation builder and the sequence. A subscriber joins through a form, gets tagged, receives a five-email welcome series, gets offered a product on day six, and gets moved into a different track if they buy. Kit’s pricing page groups its features under “grow your audience,” “automate your work” and “monetize your content,” and the automation section is the deepest of the three.
beehiiv grew up as a newsletter publishing platform built by people who worked on the Morning Brew newsletter. Its center of gravity is the publication itself. Every account gets a website built around the newsletter archive, a recommendation network, and on paid plans an ad network that pays you to run sponsor placements. It also has automations, but they are a feature of a media product rather than the core of it.
That is why I ask founders a question I call the Three-Job Test before they compare a single price. Is your newsletter a media product (the newsletter itself earns money through ads or paid subscriptions), a sales engine (it exists to sell your course, product or service), or a trust asset (it keeps your name in front of buyers, investors and hires, and the money comes later and elsewhere)?
Media products often fit beehiiv. Sales engines often fit Kit. Trust assets can go either way, and that is where the arithmetic decides it.
What does each one cost you?
Here is the side-by-side for October 2026. Kit’s prices come from EmailVendorSelection’s tracker (updated August 9, 2026), because Kit’s own pricing page loads its numbers through a slider. beehiiv’s prices come from its pricing page as checked on October 27, 2026.
| Kit | beehiiv | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Newsletter plan, up to 10,000 subscribers, 1 automation and 1 sequence, Kit branding | Free plan, up to 2,500 subscribers |
| Entry paid plan at 1,000 subscribers | Creator, $39/mo billed monthly | Lite, $49/mo billed yearly or $59 monthly |
| Upper plan at 1,000 subscribers | Pro, $79/mo billed monthly | Pro, $95/mo billed yearly or $109 monthly |
| Kit at 10,000 subscribers | Creator $139/mo, Pro $189/mo (monthly) | Check beehiiv’s slider at your tier |
| Annual discount | About 16% (two months free) | Built into the yearly price |
| Fee on paid newsletters and products | Transaction fee on sales; trackers list it near 3.5% + $0.30 per sale including processing | 0% platform fee; Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30 still applies |
| Ad network | Paid Recommendations network | Ad network on Lite and up |
Two caveats. Kit’s transaction fee figure comes from third-party trackers, so confirm it in Kit’s help center before you model revenue. And both companies change prices more often than you would expect, so treat this table as a snapshot.
Find your List-Size Crossover
Most people compare beehiiv vs Kit at one list size. That hides where the answer flips. I use a simple model I call the List-Size Crossover: map your expected list size over the next 18 months against the cheapest plan on each platform that gives you the features you need at that size. The crossover is the point where the cheaper platform changes.
Run it in three bands.
Under 2,500 subscribers. Both are free. beehiiv’s free plan includes its website and recommendation network, which is a real advantage if you are starting from zero and want a home page for the archive. Kit’s free plan limits you to one automation and one sequence. If all you need is a welcome email and a weekly send, either works, and beehiiv gives you more surface for growth.
Between 2,500 and 10,000 subscribers. This is Kit’s band. You can stay on the free Newsletter plan up to 10,000 if one automation and one sequence are enough, while beehiiv requires a paid plan once you pass 2,500. For a trust-asset newsletter, the kind a founder sends every other week to stay visible, that is often the whole decision. A free tool that reaches 10,000 people beats a paid one that reaches the same people.
Above 10,000, or any size where you need real automation. Now both cost money and the comparison turns on features. Kit Creator at 10,000 subscribers runs $139 a month billed monthly. beehiiv’s price at the same size is on its slider and moves with tier. Here the question is whether you value Kit’s automation depth or beehiiv’s ad network and website more, and the price difference matters less than which one fits the job.
Do the paid-subscription math too. Say you charge $8 a month and 300 people pay. That is $2,400 a month in gross revenue. On beehiiv you pay 0% to the platform plus Stripe’s 2.9% and $0.30 per charge, which works out to about $160 a month. On Kit, if the tracker figure of about 3.5% plus $0.30 including processing holds, you pay about $174 a month. Fourteen dollars is not a reason to switch platforms. A sequence that converts readers into buyers of a $400 product might be.
Where the experience differs day to day
The writing experience is closer than the marketing suggests. Both have block editors, templates, image libraries and A/B testing on upper plans. Kit’s editor is plainer and loads fast. beehiiv’s feels more like a publishing tool, with a stronger focus on how the web version of each post looks, because that web version is part of your site.
Automation is the clearest gap. Kit’s visual builder lets you branch on tags, purchases, link clicks and form sources, and its sequences are mature. If your business runs on a funnel, you will feel the difference in the first week. beehiiv’s automations handle welcome series and basic triggers well, but founders who build multi-step funnels tend to hit the edges sooner.
Growth tooling runs the other direction. beehiiv’s recommendation network, referral program (on paid plans) and built-in website give a new publication more ways to find readers. Kit has a recommendations network on Creator and a referral system on Pro, and it is catching up, but beehiiv’s growth features are the core of the product rather than an add-on.
Search and AI visibility is a quieter difference that matters for trust-asset newsletters. Your archive is a set of public pages that Google and AI answer engines can read. beehiiv’s website builder makes those pages feel like a real site. Kit gives you a newsletter feed and website as well, with a customizable domain. On either platform, put the archive on a domain you own, write post titles the way people search, and you will collect search traffic and citations over time.
How to switch without losing readers
Many founders reading a beehiiv vs Kit comparison are not choosing for the first time. They started on one, outgrew it, and want to know what a move costs. The list itself is the easy part. Both platforms export subscribers as a CSV, and both import from each other. Kit offers free migration support on paid plans for lists above 5,000, and beehiiv runs its own migration help for publications moving over.
What does not move cleanly is everything you built around the list. Tags in Kit do not map one to one onto beehiiv’s segments. Sequences have to be rebuilt by hand. Landing pages and forms need new embed codes on your site. Paid subscribers are the trickiest piece, because their billing runs through Stripe, and you need to connect the same Stripe account on the new platform so cards keep charging without readers re-entering anything. Test that with two or three friendly subscribers before you move everyone.
Deliverability is the risk nobody mentions. A new sending platform starts with no history for your list, so inbox providers watch the first few sends closely. Warm up by sending your next two issues to your most engaged readers first (people who opened in the last 60 days), then widen to the full list. Clean out subscribers who have not opened in six months before the move, not after. A smaller, engaged list lands in more inboxes than a larger, stale one.
Plan for a quiet week. Pick a moment between product launches, tell readers in the last issue on the old platform that the next one will come from a new sender, and ask them to reply so their mail client marks you as a known contact. That one sentence saves more opens than any technical setting.
Which should you pick?
Pick Kit if your newsletter sells something you make, if you need branching automations, or if your list will sit between 2,500 and 10,000 for the next year and you want to pay nothing. Pick beehiiv if the newsletter is the product, if you want ad revenue without hunting for sponsors, or if you are starting from zero and want a website and a recommendation network on day one.
For a founder or executive building a trust asset, I lean Kit for the free headroom and beehiiv for the archive site, and the tiebreaker is often whether you plan to sell a course or product in the next 18 months. If yes, Kit. If no, beehiiv.
Whichever you choose, the platform matters less than the publishing habit. A newsletter that goes out every other Tuesday for two years on the “wrong” tool beats a perfectly configured one that stalls after issue six. Pick the platform that removes the most friction from your next ten sends, commit to a schedule you can keep, and revisit the decision when your list crosses one of the bands above.
So which job is your newsletter doing: earning money on its own, selling the thing you make, or keeping your name in front of the people who decide your next deal?