Substack Evolved Into Media Network

Substack is no longer just selling software, it is shaping the market for audience growth, monetization, and prestige distribution itself. That matters because once a platform starts advancing certain writers, building discovery feeds, and adding its own ad products, top publishers like The Free Press are not simply renting checkout and email rails, they are operating inside a system that also decides who gets promoted, how readers discover content, and whether a 10% cut still feels worth paying.

• The tension is clearest at scale. The Free Press reached about $20M in annualized revenue and 170K paid subscribers by September 2025, which implies roughly $2M a year flowing to Substack before payment fees. That makes Substack a meaningful cost center for any large publisher with enough brand power to move elsewhere.
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• Substack has moved up the stack from newsletter tool to media network. Its app and web product now center on a social feed with Notes, chat threads, live video, and other discovery features, while its creator strategy has included advances and editorial programs designed to recruit and retain prestige writers.
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• Beehiiv and Kit are attacking that model from the opposite direction. Beehiiv reached $30M annualized revenue by June 2025, with about a third from ads and creator cross promotion, while Kit reached $43M ARR in 2024 by selling software plus monetization tools, integrations, and workflow automation instead of taking a cut of subscription GMV.
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The next phase is a fight over whether the winning newsletter platform looks more like a media network or a creator operating system. If Substack can make discovery and monetization strong enough, its take rate can hold. If large publishers keep maturing into full businesses, more of them will choose lower fixed cost platforms that let them own more of the stack.