Which Substack newsletters earned over $1M in subscriptions in 2025, and how were those figures calculated?
Executive summary
Substack’s CEO said more than 50 authors earned over $1 million in paid subscriptions in 2025, a claim reported widely but not fully verifiable from public data [1]. Independent analyses such as Press Gazette’s ranking use visible subscriber counts and listed prices to compute minimum gross subscription revenue for specific publications — a conservative method that shows only a handful of newsletters can be demonstrated to cross the $1m threshold using platform-visible metrics [2].
1. What Substack and the press actually said about seven‑figure earners
On June 3, 2025, Substack’s CEO publicly stated that over 50 authors on the platform now earn more than $1m a year from paid subscriptions alone, a milestone picked up in media reporting [1]. Press Gazette’s own analysis earlier in 2025 identified 52 newsletters making at least $500,000 and noted the platform’s rapid growth, but also warned that Substack does not publish per-newsletter revenue or paid-subscriber counts publicly, limiting external verification [2] [1].
2. Which newsletters can be shown — from public Substack metrics — to clear $1m in subscriptions
Press Gazette’s January 2025 snapshot identified four Substacks that, using only the platform metrics visible to any user and the newsletters’ public annual prices, were making at least £1m (about $1.2m) a year: Letters from an American, The Pragmatic Engineer, Lenny’s Newsletter and Citrini Research [2]. Earlier reporting from 2023 used the same conservative methodology to show at least five newsletters drew in $1m annually at that time, illustrating that both lists are minimum-revenue estimates, not exhaustive rosters [3].
3. How these $1m+ figures are calculated (the conservative, public method)
Researchers take the number of paid subscribers shown on a Substack overview and multiply that by the newsletter’s publicly listed annual price (or annualized monthly revenue) to produce gross annualized subscription revenue; that yields a minimum implied revenue because it counts only subscriptions visible or implied by the platform’s public leaderboard and official pricing [2] [4]. Press Gazette explicitly frames these as “minimum” figures because Substack does not disclose full per-title revenue or complete paid-subscriber details [2].
4. Adjustments, platform cuts and revenue that aren’t captured by this method
The public calculation yields gross subscription revenue; it does not automatically adjust for Substack’s platform cut (widely reported as 10%) or Stripe processing fees, which reduce take‑home pay, nor does it capture off-platform income such as sponsorships, events, book deals or investor funding that some publishers disclose separately [5] [6] [2]. Press Gazette and other analysts stress that many large publishers report additional income streams — for example, The Ankler has publicly said sponsorship and other channels push its revenues well beyond the subscription-only estimate — meaning platform-only calculations understate total business revenue for some publications [2].
5. Limits, caveats and competing narratives
Because Substack does not publish detailed per-newsletter revenue or complete paid-subscriber logs, any externally compiled list is necessarily conservative and incomplete: it either relies on what Substack shows publicly or on publisher self-disclosure [2] [4]. Substack’s CEO’s statement that 50+ authors earn $1m+ is credible and consistent with platform growth narratives, but it cannot be independently reconciled by outsiders using only public metrics; Press Gazette’s methodology therefore gives verifiable minimums while acknowledging a potentially larger universe of seven-figure creators reported by Substack itself [1] [2].
6. Bottom line — answer to the question
Publicly verifiable calculations (using Substack-visible paid‑subscriber counts and published subscription prices) identify a small set of newsletters that cross $1m in subscription revenue — Press Gazette named Letters from an American, The Pragmatic Engineer, Lenny’s Newsletter and Citrini Research as meeting that threshold in early 2025 — while Substack’s CEO said the true number of authors earning $1m+ via subscriptions exceeded 50 in 2025; both statements can be true concurrently because third-party tallies are deliberately conservative and exclude undisclosed or off-platform data [2] [1]. Exact lists of all seven‑figure earners cannot be compiled from public records alone without publisher confirmation or a Substack disclosure [2].