How much does Ghost cost?

Ghost publishes 4 tiers, from Free for Self-Hosted up to $199/month for Business. The entry tier costs nothing.

What is the difference between Self-Hosted and Starter on Ghost?

Starter costs $15/month against Free, and adds up to 1,000 members, newsletter functionality, membership management, managed hosting.

Is the Business plan on Ghost worth it?

That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is all publisher features, custom domain, advanced customization. It costs $199/month against $15/month for Starter. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.

Which news & media tools can I use without paying?

4 of the 8 news & media tools listed alongside Ghost have a free tier: Buttondown, Beehiiv, Apple News, Artifact.

What am I actually paying for with Ghost?

The record lists 9 features across 3 areas: core, integrations, platform. In practice it is brought in for api development, api gateway, api testing.

Does Ghost charge per user?

The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 4 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.

Are these Ghost prices current?

They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.

What should I compare Ghost against before paying?

The closest news & media tools in this directory are Buttondown, Beehiiv, Apple News, Artifact. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Ghost covering price, platforms and features.

News & Media · pricing

Ghost pricing

Ghost publishes 4 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.

Entry price: Free, then $15/month
Model: Not recorded
Tiers: 4
Free tier: Yes

Ghost plans, side by side

Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.

Ghost pricing tiers
Plan	Price	Features listed	Step up from the tier below
Self-Hosted	Free	4	Entry tier
Starter	$15/month	4	+$15/month, 4 more features
Publisher	$29/month	4	+$14/month, 4 more features
Business	$199/month	4	+$170/month, 3 more features

What each tier adds

The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.

Self-Hosted

Free

The entry tier. It covers open-source ghost cms, full control over data, no payment fees, infrastructure costs separate.

Starter

$15/month

Over Self-Hosted, this tier adds:

Up to 1,000 members
Newsletter functionality
Membership management
Managed hosting

Publisher

$29/month

Over Starter, this tier adds:

Unlimited members
Continuous member scaling
Advanced analytics
Priority support

Business

$199/month

Over Publisher, this tier adds:

All Publisher features
Custom domain
Advanced customization

Where Ghost stops being free

Self-Hosted, Free

Open-source Ghost CMS
Full control over data
No payment fees
Infrastructure costs separate

Starter, $15/month

The first thing you pay for:

Up to 1,000 members
Newsletter functionality
Membership management
Managed hosting

What the product covers

The full Ghost feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.

Core

Content API
Membership
Analytics

Integrations

Webhooks
Zapier
Custom integrations

Platform

Node.js support
Cloud support
Self-hosted support

People bring Ghost in for api development, api gateway, api testing, api documentation, microservices. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Ghost are worth a look before you commit to a tier.

How that compares in News & Media

Too few news & media tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.

Ghost entry price against other News & Media tools
Tool	Entry price	Model	Rated	Head to head
Ghost (this page)	Free, then $15/month	-	-
Buttondown	Free, then $9/month	-	-	vs Ghost
Beehiiv	Free	subscription	-	vs Ghost
Apple News	Free	freemium	-	vs Ghost
Artifact	Free	free	-	vs Ghost
Brightspot	On request	quote	-	vs Ghost
Agility PR Solutions	On request	subscription	-	vs Ghost

Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Ghost badges page.

Before you pay for Ghost

Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.

What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 4 tiers between Free and $199/month, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.

Ghost runs on web, self-hosted, cloud-hosted, and is published by Ghost Foundation of London, United Kingdom. The full record is on the Ghost review, and the rest of the category is under best news & media tools.

Ghost pricing on the vendor's own site

Ghost pricing questions

How much does Ghost cost?: Ghost publishes 4 tiers, from Free for Self-Hosted up to $199/month for Business. The entry tier costs nothing.
Does Ghost have a free plan?: Yes. The Self-Hosted tier costs nothing and covers open-source ghost cms, full control over data, no payment fees. Paying starts at $15/month for Starter.
What is the difference between Self-Hosted and Starter on Ghost?: Starter costs $15/month against Free, and adds up to 1,000 members, newsletter functionality, membership management, managed hosting.
Is the Business plan on Ghost worth it?: That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is all publisher features, custom domain, advanced customization. It costs $199/month against $15/month for Starter. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.
Which news & media tools can I use without paying?: 4 of the 8 news & media tools listed alongside Ghost have a free tier: Buttondown, Beehiiv, Apple News, Artifact.
What am I actually paying for with Ghost?: The record lists 9 features across 3 areas: core, integrations, platform. In practice it is brought in for api development, api gateway, api testing.
Does Ghost charge per user?: The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 4 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
Are these Ghost prices current?: They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
What should I compare Ghost against before paying?: The closest news & media tools in this directory are Buttondown, Beehiiv, Apple News, Artifact. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Ghost covering price, platforms and features.