How to See How Many Subscribers a Newsletter Has (& More Newsletter Stats)

Before you pitch a newsletter or pay to sponsor one, you want to know how many people it reaches. Whether you can find that out comes down to which platform it runs on.

LinkedIn shows a subscriber count on the newsletter page once you're signed in, which is why we hold one for about 97% of the LinkedIn newsletters in Reletter's database. Substack works the other way. Of the 7.6 million Substack publications we track, fewer than 44,000 publish a real figure. Around 96% publish nothing at all, and among the ones that do show something, five in six show a vague badge instead of a number.

TL;DR:

• LinkedIn shows an exact count on nearly every newsletter, but only if you're signed in to LinkedIn
• Substack usually shows a band like "thousands of subscribers", and often shows nothing
• beehiiv and Kit publish almost nothing, so you're working from estimates
• Comments and recommendations are your fallback when there's no figure
• Open rate tells you more than list size does, and you will rarely find one published

Six ways to see how many subscribers a newsletter has

1. Look it up on Reletter

Reletter is a searchable database of email newsletters across Substack, LinkedIn, Ghost, beehiiv and Kit. Search by name or topic, open a newsletter's page, and the subscriber count sits in the Audience section next to the writer's contact details.

LinkedIn coverage is close to complete, which is the one that saves the most time, since LinkedIn gives you no way to search newsletters yourself. On Substack we hold a figure for around 272,000 publications: a precise number for 43,500 of them, and for the rest the band the writer's badge gives away. beehiiv and Kit publish so little that we're mostly working from modeled estimates there, and we mark them as estimates rather than passing them off as counts.

2. Check the newsletter's media kit

Any newsletter taking sponsors usually publishes a media kit, and it almost always opens with the subscriber count. Look for a "Sponsor" or "Advertise" link in the footer of an issue.

Read it knowing the writer chose which figure to show you. Check whether it says total subscribers or active ones, and whether the open rate beside it covers the whole list or only the part still opening.

3. Read the public engagement signals

Substack shows likes and comments on every post. LinkedIn shows reactions and comments.

Resist converting those into a subscriber estimate. We don't publish a comments-to-subscribers ratio because we tried to build one and it didn't hold up. What comments give you is a floor on how many people are paying attention, which is often the more useful thing anyway. Compare within a niche, since a developer newsletter and a personal essay newsletter draw very different comment volumes at the same list size.

4. Check who recommends them

Open a Substack publication and look at the recommendations panel. It won't give you a number, but a newsletter carrying recommendations from several large publications is rarely a small one.

Reletter tracks those recommendation links across the database, so you can follow the graph without opening a tab per publication.

5. Estimate from website traffic

Most newsletters keep a public archive on their own domain, and SimilarWeb will estimate that domain's traffic. Use it to rank two newsletters against each other and nothing more, because the gap between site traffic and list size varies enormously depending on how much of the audience reads in the inbox.

It's the method we lean on least, and the one to reach for when a newsletter publishes nothing at all.

6. Ask the writer

If you're pitching rather than buying, ask. Writers who take sponsors will send a media kit back, and a fair few who don't will answer anyway.

Pro tip: if you're already emailing a pitch, don't lead with the question. It reads like you're sizing them up, which you are. Ask after they reply.

How to see how many subscribers a Substack newsletter has

Substack gives writers a choice. On a publication's homepage you'll see either a real figure, e.g. "Over 12,400 subscribers", or a badge naming a band: "hundreds of subscribers", "thousands of subscribers", "tens of thousands of subscribers".

Where a real number does appear, it's usually a large one. Our data has Letters from an American at 2.9 million and Robert Reich at 1.1 million, and The Pragmatic Engineer tells readers on its own site that it passes a million. You're looking at a self-selected set, because the writers who publish a figure are mostly the ones happy with it.

The bands are the problem. Nearly 200,000 of the Substack publications in our database sit in the "hundreds" band, which covers everything from 100 readers to 999. A newsletter advertising "thousands of subscribers" has somewhere between 1,000 and 9,999 of them. Quote a sponsorship rate off that badge and you're pricing against a range that spans an order of magnitude.

On paid subscribers you usually get nothing. Substack shows a paid badge on some publications and a handful of writers publish revenue voluntarily, but there's no dependable public figure. (If you find one, it's because the writer decided to tell you.)

How to see how many subscribers a LinkedIn newsletter has

LinkedIn shows an exact count on the newsletter page, under the title, and the figures there run enormous. In the Loop was on 11.4 million subscribers when we last checked in July 2026, with Gates Notes on 6.4 million.

The catch is that you have to be signed in to see it. Open the same newsletter page logged out and LinkedIn shows you the description, the publishing frequency and a "Join to Subscribe" button, with no number anywhere.

Finding the newsletter in the first place is harder still, because LinkedIn won't let you search newsletters as a category. You can search posts and people, and that's it. Searching by topic in Reletter and filtering to LinkedIn is the way around it, and it's why a fair number of people end up using us for LinkedIn specifically.

Treat those large numbers carefully. A LinkedIn subscriber count includes everyone who ever tapped subscribe on a feed prompt, however long ago and whether or not they've opened an issue since.

How to see how many subscribers a beehiiv newsletter has

beehiiv doesn't publish subscriber counts, so there's no page to read the figure off. We carry a modeled estimate for about a quarter of the beehiiv publications we track, which is enough to tell a large one from a small one.

The recommendation widget is the signal to work with. beehiiv leans hard on cross-recommendation for growth, so a publication that keeps appearing in those slots has usually earned the placement with size. Sponsorship pages are common on beehiiv too, since the platform pushes its ad network, so check for an "Advertise" link before you assume the number is private.

How to see how many subscribers a Kit newsletter has

Kit publishes the least of the five platforms. Its creator profiles tell you what someone writes about, not how many people read it, so a media kit or a direct question are the routes worth taking.

Of those two, the direct question is usually faster. Kit skews towards creators running a business off their list, so the ones taking sponsors tend to answer.

How to see how many subscribers a Ghost newsletter has

Ghost publications live on their own domains, whether self-hosted or on Ghost's own hosting, so there's no standard subscriber display to look for. What exists is Ghost's public Explore directory, where publications that opt in show a member count.

That's where our Ghost figures come from. As of July 2026 the directory lists Tangle at 823,000 subscribers, The Lever at 251,000 and Promethean Action at 184,000. The catch is the opt-in, since most Ghost newsletters never join.

What the subscriber number doesn't tell you

Imagine you're choosing between two newsletters for a placement. One has 50,000 subscribers and opens at 12%. The other has 8,000 and opens at 55%. On the subscriber counts, the first looks six times bigger. On people who actually open the email, it's 6,000 against 4,400, so the real gap is closer to a third. (Both open rates are invented for the example, because almost nobody publishes theirs, which is rather the point.)

The count didn't lie to you. It just answered a much cruder question than the one you were asking.

A count also says nothing about whether the newsletter is still running. Of the 7.8 million newsletters in Reletter's database, roughly 500,000 have published an issue in the last 60 days. A newsletter that stopped keeps whatever subscriber figure it had on the day the writer walked away.

Take the Substack publications advertising a "thousands of subscribers" badge. As of July 2026, 15,800 of them have published nothing in 60 days, against 13,700 that are still going. More than half of that badge population has stopped, and the badge looks identical either way.

Nothing public will give you an open rate. Everything else is inference from the page, e.g. how often issues go out, or whether the comments come from the same few names each week.

Size can also work against you when you're pitching. Large newsletters get pitched constantly and tend to route inbound through a form or an agency, so a smaller one in a narrow field is often the better target simply because the writer still reads their own inbox.

Use the count for what it's good at, which is telling you roughly what tier a newsletter sits in and whether a quoted sponsorship price is defensible.

Final thoughts

Newsletter subscriber counts are public on LinkedIn and banded on Substack. Everywhere else they're mostly unpublished, so if you see a precise figure quoted for every newsletter on a platform that doesn't publish them, it's a model rather than a measurement.

So get an approximate number fast, then spend the time you saved on what the number can't show you. Read a couple of recent issues. See whether the writer replies to their own comments, because a writer who answers readers will probably answer you.

Reletter is a newsletter database covering Substack, LinkedIn, Ghost, beehiiv and Kit. You get subscriber data where it exists, contact details for the writer, and a note of which figures are measured and which are modeled. Want to size up a newsletter without opening a dozen tabs?

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