The Numbers Don’t Show a Substack Collapse

The Subscription Model Has Just Gotten Started

Last week I read a thought-provoking piece that has gone viral on Substack recently. In it, the author - Scott Carney, argued that Substack “will collapse” and will no longer be a viable option for writers looking to generate significant income. While I enjoyed reading the piece and resonated with parts of it, I wanted to write a counter argument. A piece that analyzes the empirical evidence rather than being focussed on anecdotal experiences, however compelling those are.

The thesis behind the collapse of Substack is relatively simple. The subscription model is one that is hard to sustain long-term, both financially and due to limited mental bandwidth that each reader has.

This argument initially feels very compelling both to authors and to readers.

To authors, it validates their experience of working extremely hard for what they feel are minimal returns. After all, if I see the value in what I am writing, why don’t others? This is something that I relate to personally. For months, I have produced (what I feel is) high quality content and the conversion rate to paid members is relatively low. Why is that the case?

For readers, it equally validates their feelings. Subscriptions are expensive and in a world where it feels like everyone is trying to sell you never-ending subscriptions, it feels comforting to hear that someone else is validating you.

The overwhelming sentiment that one leaves that article feeling is that Substack is a product doomed to fail unless it massively changes its business model to one that is more sustainable.

The article’s reception has been incredible, with over 3,500 likes, over 1000 comments and nearly 800 restacks.

My original feeling was one of understanding. “Finally someone understands my struggle.” I’ve written over a dozen articles and published all but one for free. The articles often take me 20-30 hours of research, writing and editing.

But then, I thought about whether or not this article was accurate or not. I recently looked at Substack as a business, and my conclusion was actually entirely different than the author’s conclusion. And so, I decided to do some more research. My conclusions follow.

In order to properly analyze a situation, let’s look at the general numbers, not anecdotal experiences.

The Actual Numbers:

For those new to Substack, you’re not alone. Substack is one of the fastest growing social media companies in the world. Substack’s unique visitor count has more than doubled in the last three years including a huge jump between September of 2024 and September of 2025.¹

While unique visitors do not inherently translate to subscribers, we can assume that the numbers are closely correlated. The next question that automatically follows is whether or not these new users are also spending money paying for subscriptions or whether these users are “low quality” users who only read but don’t pay.

If that was your assumption, Substack’s own reported numbers disagree with you. Substack first announced 1 million paid subscriptions in November of 2021. In February of 2023, less than a year and a half later, that number doubled. Slightly over a year and a half later, Substack doubled again and hit 4 million paid subscriptions. March 2025 was the last time they announced a paid subscription milestone at 5 million. That doesn't mean that Substack has not grown paid subscriptions, just that they haven’t announced any milestones yet.

Now as Substack hasn’t yet announced a milestone, many have speculated that they are between 5-6 million paid subscriptions and that growth has stagnated. However, the absence of an announcement hardly means that the platform has stopped growing. Without an official announcement, neither continued rapid growth nor stagnation can be claimed. It might be noted that between February 2023 and November 2024 (or a period of 21 months) no announcement was made on paid subscriptions. The last announcement was less than 18 months ago.

So what does the public evidence show about Substack’s growth.

Actually, Substack is growing remarkably quickly. Similarweb reported that among the top 50 most popular English news websites in the world, only two had double-digit growth as of June 2026. Yahoo Finance was the eighth most popular news website in the world and boasted 11% year-over-year growth. And Substack.

Substack grew 41% year-over-year.

Just to emphasize that point. No other company grew by more than 11%. Substack grew by over 40%. In fact, out of the top fifty websites, only five grew. 44 websites actually lost users and one stayed flat.

I find it extremely difficult to imagine that Substack’s paid subscriber growth halted while the website grew simultaneously at over 40% in a year.

And this wasn’t a one off event, in July of 2025 “Substack was the only site to see double-digit year-on-year growth in visits and was up 46.9% to 125.2 million in July.”

Year after year Substack has posted the most impressive growth numbers out of any major media company, by far.

So why is there a feeling among many prominent writers that Substack’s growth story is over? That the once rapidly growing company has passed its peak. Probably for a number of reasons.

1. Writers’ Experience: It’s hard to argue with someone’s personal story. If the amount of paid subscribers on your account is going down, the entire platform feels like it is contracting. If the bridge you are on feels rickety, no amount of promises from engineers will make you stay on it.

2. Readers’ Experience: A growing number of users are feeling that they are being priced out of the platform. Their favorite newsletters, once free, are now charging subscriptions. And with gas prices going up and inflation rising, many feel that disposable income is at an all time low. Even your favorite writer takes a backseat to groceries.

One of the top comments with over 100 likes in the original post simplified the whole story.

“Are we sure it isn’t just because people have less and less disposable income? Correlation is not causation.”

But again, although this claim clearly resonates with many readers, we have to look at whether this is right or not. And if we look at the amount of disposable income among U.S. households - who make up more than 50% of Substack users, the number has actually risen steadily since 2021, when Substack originally crossed 1 million paid subscriptions.²³

Note, the Y axis doesn’t start at 0 and therefore the growth looks significantly faster than what it actually is. The growth has been steady, but it hasn’t grown quite as fast as it looks.

With the total disposable income rising and the user base of Substack growing quickly, I think it is unlikely that the subscription model is collapsing.⁴

There is another important point that needs to be addressed. With the 40% growth of visitors to Substack, the amount of writers almost certainly increases as well. Competition would therefore be more intense while the platform grows. These two facts are not contradictory.

While it is possible that competition among writers is more intense than ever, that is entirely different from Substack’s business model collapsing.

While Mr. Carney’s personal experience certainly shows an anecdotal experience that some writers are certainly struggling, the opposite feels true in the finance niche. In the niche I spend most of my time in, I have seen accounts that have grown tremendously over the past 12 months. This shows that anecdotes can’t prove either argument to be true. What is valuable is understanding how these authors succeed.

Rebound Capital, one of the top finance Substack accounts (that I highly recommend) recently shared a screenshot in which he passed 25,000 subscribers -up from 5,000 a year ago with over 1,000 of those being paid.

In the article, Mr. Carney argued that “I can’t make a rational argument for why my own work here on Substack or on YouTube is more valuable than, say, HBO which drops whole seasons of new TV shows every week.”

Rebound Capital can. It provides high level actionable insights into companies in which its readers can invest. That could certainly be financially more valuable than any HBO series or Amazon Prime membership.

Substack writers have the ability to improve their readers lives, both financially and in quality of life. A Substack author focused on Yoga can build custom programs for their paid subscribers that replace $80/hour lessons with a $8 subscription per month.

My friend Ren is another excellent example. Ren writes about the AI future and recently shared publicly that in his first month on Substack he accumulated 4,606 subscribers, 423 of those being paid subscribers.⁵

Multibagger Ideas is a further example of a Substack success story in the past 12 months. He recently shared a screenshot of his growth over the last year in which he grew from 4,736 subscribers to over 37,000. His paid subscribers increased from only 43 to over 500.

All of these are anecdotal, but they represent the opposite end of the spectrum: Substack writers that successfully figured out a way to improve their readers lives. They get paid not from people who wish simply to support the authors, but for people who want to make money or improve their lives.

In my breakdown of Substack as a business, I wrote that “Substack is essentially a free library with expert authors on thousands of topics.” While it is true that not every page and post is free, an incredibly vast amount of content is available to the average user. In my three months on this platform, I have connected with directors from investment banks, PhD researchers and some of the leaders in the AI world.

I hope for the benefit of society that Substack’s subscription model is not collapsing, and with names like Demis Hassabis and Garry Kasparov on the platform, I doubt that it will.

For those readers struggling financially, I understand your frustration. While an increasing amount of paywalls exist today, there is also more free content than ever. Additionally, if you want to read paid content, reach out and ask the creator for a discounted plan. Many of the authors including me will be more than happy to accommodate you.

For struggling authors, keep writing. This month or last year might not have been the best, but I believe we are still early. When more users join Substack, the ones who have been here early, working hard will reap the rewards.

“Those who sow with tears will reap with joy”. Psalms 126:5

1. https://backlinko.com/substack-users

2. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/disposable-personal-income

3. I do want to note here that not every country has had its disposable income rise in the past few years. Greece, for example has seen its disposable income decrease in the first quarter of 2026.

https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1310760/disposable-income-in-decline/

4. Disposable income per capita is relatively flat in the past 12 months. That being said, it is up nearly 10% from the lows in 2022 and up more than 20% in the last decade. I chose to use total disposable income rather than per capita income because one user can have multiple subscriptions as is often the case.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0

5. Ren did migrate with a community from X, a migration that is hugely beneficial to Substack for obvious reasons.