Ghost Pricing 2026: Ghost(Pro) Plans, Self-Hosting Costs, and What You Actually Pay

Ghost pricing runs from $15 to $199 a month on Ghost(Pro) billed yearly, or $18 to $239 billed monthly. The Ghost software is free and open source, so you can also self-host it for about $285 to $380 a year in servers and email, plus developer time. A business blog on yoursite.com/blog is the expensive case: Ghost(Pro) only supports it on the Business plan with a $50/month add-on and a reverse proxy you run yourself, which comes to about $3,300 to $4,400 a year.

Every price below was checked on the vendor's own page in November 2026. Anything we could not confirm first-party is not printed.

Ghost pricing at a glance

Notes on the Ghost(Pro) rows:

1. Prices are from ghost.org/pricing, checked November 2026, in USD. The page defaults to yearly billing, so the large number you see first is the yearly rate.
2. Prices rise with your member count. Members are anyone with a free or paid account on your site, and Ghost asks you to upgrade as the count grows.
3. Every Ghost(Pro) plan includes a free ghost.io subdomain, a custom domain via CNAME, and a free .link domain for the first year.

Ghost(Pro) plans: what each tier gets you

The tiers differ on themes, integrations and monetization more than on publishing. Here are the limits that matter:

Email sends are unlimited on every plan. All plans include backups, a CDN, SSL and weekly updates.

For comparison, Superblog includes subdirectory hosting on every paid plan, starting at $49 a month.

How price scales with members

Publisher and Business are priced by audience size. These figures come from the price data behind Ghost's own pricing slider:

Starter stops at 1,000 members. Above 100,000 members, Ghost asks you to contact its team.

Is Ghost free?

The Ghost software is free. It is open source under the MIT license, and you can install it on your own server without paying Ghost anything.

Ghost(Pro), the official hosted version, is paid. There is no free plan. The cheapest tier is Starter at $15 a month billed yearly.

So "free" applies to the code, not to a running site. Self-hosting still costs a server, an email provider for newsletters, a domain and someone's time.

Ghost charges 0% on member revenue

This is a real Ghost strength. Ghost(Pro) lists 0% transaction fees on Publisher, Business and Custom. You connect your own Stripe account and pay only Stripe's processing fees. Self-hosted Ghost takes no cut either.

Platforms that take a percentage of paid subscriptions cost more as revenue grows. Ghost does not. The catch is that Starter cannot take payments at all, so a paid newsletter starts at Publisher.

Self-hosted Ghost: the real cost

Ghost recommends one narrow stack for production: Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 or 26.04 LTS, Node.js 22, MySQL 8.0 or 8.4, NGINX, systemd, and a server with at least 1 GB of memory. Newsletters need a bulk email provider, and Ghost's docs say Mailgun is the only supported one.

These are the line items, priced from first-party pages in November 2026:

Ghost's own docs make the same point. Its hosting comparison lists self-hosted add-ons for CDN and firewall, newsletter delivery, analytics, backups and image editing that Ghost(Pro) includes. It also notes that self-hosting Ghost 6's web analytics needs the newer Docker install, and the social web features need it too once you pass the limits of Ghost's hosted ActivityPub service.

If you want Ghost without running a server, two third-party hosts publish clear prices:

1. Magic Pages: $14.50 a month, $145 a year, or $440 one-time. It includes 10,000 emails a month, then $5 per extra 10,000, with unlimited members and staff.
2. PikaPods: from $3.30 a month, billed hourly from prepaid credit. You bring your own Mailgun account for newsletters.

Three cost scenarios, summed

These budgets use the verified prices above. Hours are our assumption, stated so you can swap in your own. Each total shows the math.

Scenario 1: Creator on Ghost(Pro) Starter

One writer, a free newsletter under 1,000 members, the default theme.

• Starter: $180 (yearly) to $216 (monthly, $18 x 12)
• .com domain: $11.81 (or use the free .link domain for year one)

Total: $191.81 ($180 + $11.81) to $227.81 ($216 + $11.81) a year.

To charge for the newsletter, you need Publisher: $348 + $11.81 = $359.81 a year at 1,000 members.

Scenario 2: Business blog on yoursite.com/blog

A company blog that must live in a subdirectory to keep the main domain's authority. On Ghost(Pro), that means Business plus the subdirectory add-on, and a reverse proxy you configure on your own infrastructure. Ghost's help center lists eight rules that proxy must follow, including forwarding headers and dynamic DNS resolution.

• Business: $2,388 (yearly) to $2,868 (monthly, $239 x 12)
• Subdirectory add-on: $600 ($50 x 12)
• Reverse proxy setup and upkeep: 4 to 8 hours a year at $80 to $120/hr, so $320 to $960
• Proxy hosting: $0, assuming it runs on your existing host or CDN

Low end: $2,388 + $600 + $320 = $3,308.
High end: $2,868 + $600 + $960 = $4,428.

That is about $3,300 to $4,400 a year. Ghost itself says it only recommends this setup "for teams who are very comfortable with complex technical infrastructure." Above 10,000 members, Business rises to $266 a month billed yearly ($319 monthly) and up.

Scenario 3: Self-hosted with a developer

A self-hosted Ghost blog with a weekly newsletter to 1,000 members (about 4,000 emails a month, too many for Mailgun's 100-a-day free plan).

• DigitalOcean Droplet: $72 (1 GiB) to $144 (2 GiB)
• Daily backups: $21.60 to $43.20
• Mailgun Basic: $180
• Domain: $11.81
• Developer time for setup, updates and fixes: 10 to 25 hours a year at $80 to $120/hr, so $800 to $3,000

Low end: $72 + $21.60 + $180 + $11.81 + $800 = $1,085.41.
High end: $144 + $43.20 + $180 + $11.81 + $3,000 = $3,379.01.

Servers, backups, email and the domain are only $285.41 to $379.01 of that. The rest is labor. If you can run the server yourself, self-hosting is the cheapest Ghost option in cash.

The pricing complaints

Ghost users raise the same issues on the official forum. Each one is visible in Ghost's own threads or pricing page.

1. Prices rise for new customers. In July 2025, Starter rose to $15 a month; one user in the forum thread says it was $9 when they started a trial. One customer wrote that "the starter plan price went up 67% and has fewer features with the loss of monetization." In a 2018 thread about an earlier jump, a Ghost staff member said: "We regularly raise prices as Ghost(Pro) matures as a platform and a product."
2. Grandfathering helps only the first site. Ghost staff confirmed that "existing customers are always grandfathered on pricing." That protects existing accounts. A customer adding a second site in November 2025 wrote that the new price "sure is not competitive with other options on the market."
3. Starter lost paid subscriptions. The current pricing page shows no paid subscriptions, tips or custom themes on Starter. Monetizing now starts at $29 a month.
4. Member growth raises the bill. Publisher costs $29 a month at 1,000 members and $274 a month at 100,000, billed yearly. Your price goes up as your list grows, even if you publish the same amount.
5. Subdirectory hosting is gated. yoursite.com/blog is a $50/month add-on on the $199/month Business plan, and you still run the proxy yourself.

When Ghost makes sense

Ghost is the right call for some teams. It fits when:

1. The newsletter is the product. Unlimited sends, multiple newsletters and member analytics are built in.
2. You sell memberships. Paid tiers with 0% platform fees are hard to beat once you are on Publisher.
3. You are fine on a subdomain or root domain. blog.yoursite.com works on every Ghost(Pro) plan, so Publisher at $348 a year covers most company blogs that do not need a subdirectory.
4. You can self-host. If someone on the team already runs Linux servers, self-hosted Ghost costs a few hundred dollars a year.

When to consider an alternative

Look elsewhere when the blog is an SEO channel for a company site and has to live on yoursite.com/blog. That is the one case where Ghost(Pro) jumps from $348 to about $3,000 a year before any proxy work. It also applies if nobody on the team wants to maintain a reverse proxy or a server.

Start with our Ghost alternative for business blogs page, then compare options in our roundup of Ghost alternatives. For a full verdict on the product itself, read our Ghost review.

A different approach: Superblog

Superblog is a fully managed blogging platform built for company blogs. Hosting, CDN, SSL and the SEO engine are in one price, and subdirectory hosting is included on every paid plan.

Here is Scenario 2 set against Superblog:

On yearly billing, Superblog Pro costs $530 against $3,308 to $4,428 for the Ghost(Pro) subdirectory setup. That saves $2,778 to $3,898 a year. Super at $1,070 saves $2,238 to $3,358. Both Superblog plans cover under 100,000 pageviews a month.

Pro includes scheduled posts and privacy-friendly analytics. Lead generation forms are built in, below posts, in the sidebar or as pop-ups. Super adds Zapier, webhooks for leads, custom form fields, spreadsheet import, MCP integration, API access and multilingual SEO. Pages are pre-built static files on a global CDN, so every page scores 90+ on Lighthouse.

Moving off Ghost takes your blog URL and a Content API key. The import brings your posts, slugs and tags. Images move to the Superblog CDN on a paid plan. Authors are not migrated, and members-only posts arrive as drafts. Ghost members do not come across, so export your member list as a CSV from Ghost first. The full steps are in our Ghost migration guide.

There is a 7-day free trial, no credit card required, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Subdirectory hosting turns on once you are on a paid plan.

Bottom line

Ghost(Pro) costs $180 to $2,388 a year on yearly billing for up to 10,000 members, and self-hosting costs about $285 to $380 a year in servers and email, plus your time. For a creator or a paid newsletter, that is fair value, especially with 0% fees on member revenue. For a company blog on yoursite.com/blog, Ghost(Pro) runs about $3,300 to $4,400 a year once the Business plan, the add-on and the proxy work are counted. If you only need a fast blog in a subdirectory that ranks, $49/month (Pro) covers it. For a broader three-way look, see Ghost vs WordPress vs Superblog.

FAQ

Is Ghost free?

The open source software is free. Ghost(Pro) hosting starts at $15/month billed yearly.

How much is Ghost(Pro)?

$15, $29 or $199 a month billed yearly (Starter, Publisher, Business), or $18, $35 or $239 billed monthly.

Does Ghost take a cut of subscription revenue?

No. Ghost charges 0% transaction fees; only Stripe's processing fees apply.

Can Ghost(Pro) host a blog on yoursite.com/blog?

Only on the Business plan, with a $50/month add-on and a reverse proxy you run.

How much does it cost to self-host Ghost?

About $285 to $380 a year for a server, backups, Mailgun and a domain, plus developer time.

Is Superblog cheaper than Ghost?

For a blog on yoursite.com/blog, yes: $530 a year on Pro against about $3,300 to $4,400 on Ghost(Pro).