Original research · Find Substacks database
The State of Substack for PR
Data from Featured's Find Substacks database of 38,746 Substack publications. October 2026.
90.8%
Have Substack DMs open
4,000
Median free subscribers
481.9M
Combined free subscriber count
Reachability: nine in ten writers take direct messages
Substack direct messages are the primary route to a newsletter writer, and 35,198 publications (90.8%) have them open. Counting linked social accounts as a second channel, 37,314 publications (96.3%) can be reached by DM or at least one social account, leaving only 1,432 (3.7%) with neither. Reachability holds at the top of the market too: of the 9,481 publications with 10,000 or more subscribers, 89.4% have DMs open.
Reachability by channel
Share of all 38,746 publications; a publication can appear on more than one row.
Source: Featured, Find Substacks database (38,746 publications), analysis dated October 2026.
Figure 2. Publications by free subscriber tier (cumulative thresholds)
| Free subscribers | Publications | Share of database |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 or more | 35,654 | 92.0% |
| 5,000 or more | 16,156 | 41.7% |
| 10,000 or more | 9,481 | 24.5% |
| 25,000 or more | 3,904 | 10.1% |
| 50,000 or more | 1,784 | 4.6% |
| 100,000 or more | 733 | 1.9% |
| 250,000 or more | 195 | 0.5% |
| 500,000 or more | 50 | 0.1% |
| 1,000,000 or more | 10 | 0.0% |
Method and notes
Source
Two exports from Featured's Find Substacks database totaling 38,746 publications, each marked as a verified-audience publication. Fields include subscriber and follower counts, direct message availability, linked social accounts, monetization model, bestseller badge, paid subscriber band, podcast status, launch date, language, and topic tags.
Counting
Percentages are shares of all 38,746 publications unless a table or figure states a different base. Topic shares use the 18,899 topic-tagged publications as the base because 51.2% of records carry no tag, and publications with more than one tag count once under each tag. Subscriber figures are the rounded counts Substack displays publicly, so medians and sums are computed on rounded values.
Thresholds
Every publication with a recorded count has at least 1,000 free subscribers. Bestseller badges follow Substack's own tiers at 100, 1,000, and 10,000 paying subscribers. Paid subscriber bands are Substack's reported ranges, available only above its reporting threshold.
Dates
Launch year is the date the publication was created on Substack. The analysis was run in October 2026 and reflects the database at that time; counts change as publications are added.