Creators are utilizing Substack’s live video co-hosting features to grow their audiences — and their subscriber counts.
It’s been one month since Substack enabled video posts — previously a desktop-only function — on its mobile app, and two months since the platform expanded live video to all creators, with the ability for creators to team up and pool viewers as one of the features.
It’s early days, but so far seven creators have told Digiday that they are pleased with the results.
Dan Harris, who operates a meditation-focused newsletter on Substack with over 185,000 subscribers, said that he saw a spike in both paid and free subscriptions after co-hosting livestreams with creators Sharon McMahon and Van Jones, who have over 339,000 subscribers and 24,000 subscribers respectively, to discuss the U.S. presidential inauguration in January. (Co-streamers on Substack typically have overlapping interest areas, such as politics, and go live together to talk about significant news or tentpole events.)
Although he said it was difficult to quantify the specific number of new subscriptions that came in through the livestreams, Harris has so far received 19,000 new subscribers via Substack’s official Recommendations tool, which allows creators to direct users to other Substack creators whose work they enjoy, although he did not specify how many were free and how many were paid. He attributes the spike partially to his livestreams with other Substack creators.
As of 2025, one in three of creators’ live videos on Substack are co-hosted with another Substack creator, according to a Substack spokesperson, with the typical Substack live video running for 45 minutes. The spokesperson did not disclose how many of the platform’s users have used live video overall, but said that 82 percent of Substack’s 250 highest-earning creators had published audio and video to their Substacks, which the spokesperson said “could theoretically include live video recordings,” in February 2025.
Meanwhile, Gabe Fleisher, who writes the political Substack newsletter Wake Up To Politics, which has over 55,000 subscribers and charges paid subscribers $8 per month, said that his subscriber count had spiked after going live with other creators such as Chris Cillizza, with whom he co-hosted one of Substack’s first co-streams — a 20-minute discussion of the September 2024 U.S. presidential debate — in September 2024. The majority of the new subscribers he’s gained through co-streaming are free, rather than paid, but Fleisher said that the bump encouraged him to experiment more with both live video and co-streaming on Substack.
“When you do lives with other people, then that just helps both writers, because it’s being pushed to both audiences and they can subscribe,” he said. “And, on the app, they do things to push the video — if you’re on the Substack Notes feed, even if you don’t follow someone, you might be more likely to see a live video.”
Fleisher is not the only Substack creator who believes the platform’s algorithms are elevating video. Creator Carla Lalli Music, for example, told Digiday that she has repeatedly seen live video posts from creators such as Jim Acosta — a prominent news and politics Substacker with over 276,000 followers — cross her Notes feed, although she doesn’t follow the former newscaster on the platform.
“There’s algorithmic things happening, and they’re pushing video,” she said.
A Substack spokesperson declined to confirm or deny whether the platform’s algorithm prioritizes video posts.
“Unlike ad-driven platforms, Substack’s North Star is paid subscriptions. We only make money when publishers do, so our algorithm prioritizes matching readers with creators they might subscribe to, surfacing all types of content within the feed, including text, video, and photo,” the spokesperson said. “For those who are interested in consuming and discovering video content only, they can visit the Media Tab in the Substack app.”
Platforms have a history of promoting specific types of content or features they want to become popular — like live videos — in their algorithms, to varying degrees of success. But live video has generally had only niche success in comparison to pre-recorded video on creator platforms, with the bulk of livestreaming activity taking place on dedicated platforms such as Twitch — whose popularity demonstrates how live content can work when there is a strong, engaged audience culture.
Niche or not, Substack creators are enjoying the initial bump in free or paid subscribers that comes with going live enough to encourage them to experiment with more live video.
Substack’s expansion into live video reflects its ongoing goal to evolve from a newsletter company into a full-service creator platform built around the subscription business model.
“A lot of people thought that Substack started as a newsletter platform — but, really, what it’s always been about is this model,” said Substack head of partnerships Hanne Winarsky. “Whether that’s written content, whether that’s audio content and now video content, what it really is is this independent distribution pipe that you own all the way.”
An active audience
Substack creators such as Acosta, Harris, and food creator Caroline Chambers told Digiday that they were satisfied that a “relatively high proportion” of their subscriber bases tuned into their livestreams on the platform.
Acosta — a former television journalist at CNN who quit his job to start a Substack in Jan. 2024 — said his livestreams on Substack typically reach between 6,000 and 13,000 viewers, a significant chunk of his 10,000-strong paid subscriber base. Harris, who said that he has between 8,000 and 9,000 paid subscribers, averages over 600 viewers on his regular livestreams. And Chambers, who declined to share her specific subscriber count but announced that she had reached 20,000 paid subscribers in July 2024, said that her live broadcasts usually boast an average viewership of between 1,500 and 2,000, which she said outperformed her live broadcasts on Instagram.
“On Instagram, you only really get 500 [live viewers] who will actively stick around — I’m hovering around 500 or 600, with 300,000 [followers],” said Chambers, who told Digiday that her Substack live video viewership has numbered in the thousands since her first broadcast on the platform. “So it is a testament to how much more invested in my writing they are. On Instagram, you follow a bazillion people, but on Substack, you’re only following a few people.”
Creators’ approaches to live video on Substack reflect how many still view their Substack livestreams as a subscription driver for their core newsletter product. Some, such as Harris, make a portion of their live videos available only to paid subscribers. Others, like Alex Kirshner and Richard Johnson, the co-hosts of the college football podcast Split Zone Duo, allow only their paid subscribers to access the recordings of completed live broadcasts. In both cases, live video is not the creators’ primary focus, but rather an extra add-on intended to create more value for newsletter subscribers.
And as Substack prioritizes the subscription model, the company is not afraid to push its creators toward rival platforms if it feels this activity could help its bottom line. At the moment, Substack’s creator back end features a consistent reminder to upload completed broadcasts to YouTube, according to four creators who spoke to Digiday for this story — a risky proposition, given the chance for creators to jump ship to YouTube if they experience success on the platform. Live video push notwithstanding, Substack views itself as an enhancement of creators’ YouTube presences, not a replacement.
“We’re trying to say, ‘use those audiences to essentially capture the superfans on Substack.’” Winarsky said. “Share where you’re going to share with your broadest audience, and then give those people that really want to come have a direct relationship with you — that want everything — a permanent home here.”
