Beehiiv Takes 20% of GMV

The 20% take means Beehiiv is no longer just selling software, it is taxing the flow of newsletter growth itself. In Boosts, one creator pays to acquire a subscriber, another creator surfaces that offer after signup, and Beehiiv keeps 20 cents of every dollar that moves through that marketplace. That gives Beehiiv transaction revenue on top of subscription fees, and turns list growth from a product feature into a monetized network.

• Boosts works like a built in subscriber marketplace. A newsletter sets a bounty for a new subscriber, another newsletter places that offer in its signup flow, and Beehiiv takes 20% of the spend. That is different from SaaS pricing, where revenue rises only when a creator upgrades plans.
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• This is why Beehiiv can mix two revenue engines. As of June 2025, about $20M of annualized revenue came from software and about $10M came from Ads and Boosts. The more creators reinvest earnings into paid acquisition, the more Beehiiv earns without needing to raise seat prices or send volume.
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• Compared with peers, Beehiiv sits between Kit and Substack. Kit primarily monetizes through SaaS ARR and excludes ad network transaction revenue from its headline ARR, while Substack takes 10% of paid subscription GMV. Beehiiv instead keeps SaaS pricing low and adds a higher take rate on the parts of the workflow where money is already moving.
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The next phase is a denser internal economy where Beehiiv captures more of each creator dollar, from audience acquisition to brand ads to paid subscriptions. If Boosts keeps scaling, Beehiiv’s upside will look less like an email tool with add ons and more like a creator market infrastructure layer, where the most valuable asset is not the editor, but the money flowing between newsletters.