What Pays the Most on Substack?

Derek Thompson says facts about artificial intelligence pay the most on Substack: Benjamins, against dollars for other facts and dimes for analysis.

Peter Kafka says Thompson left The Atlantic a little more than a year ago, in the summer of 2025, and reads the paid list as somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 subscribers. Derek Thompson says that range is right. Peter Kafka says Thompson has written that the Substack at least equals his Atlantic pay so far. A salary stays flat across the year. The Substack line is one Derek Thompson wants to push up. When 12 months pass after a big article, 10 to 20 percent of subscribers drop, and a falling number makes him feel more harried and chase the next piece. He is more inclined to repeat a story that did well, such as the sports-billionaires piece, a signal he was insulated from at The Atlantic. He says the market clearly wants artificial-intelligence writing, so part of the job pulls him toward more of it than he might otherwise write. He calls the pressure of a line that can fall motivating, and not entirely a good thing. He also says artificial intelligence is the most important and the most interesting story in the world.