How to delete your Substack account permanently

By Otabek Mamadaliev · Sources last reviewed 18 August 2026 · What this means

Writers: export your subscriber list first. It is the only genuinely portable asset you have built, and Substack lets you take it. On the subscriber dashboard click Export, then Download last export for a CSV you can import anywhere. Deleting without exporting throws away the audience, not just the archive.

If you have paid subscribers

You have taken money for something ongoing, so unwinding matters:

1. Announce it with enough notice for people to react.
2. Cancel paid subscriptions so nobody is billed for a publication that no longer exists.
3. Consider refunds for unused portions — Substack supports this and it protects your name.
4. Withdraw your Stripe balance and keep the records for tax.
5. Export subscribers and archive your posts.

Delete your publication

1. Go to your Writers Dashboard settings page.
2. Scroll to the Danger Zone.
3. Turn off paid subscriptions first — you cannot delete until you do.
4. Click Delete publication and confirm.

Deleting does not refund anybody. Substack states plainly that self-deletion issues no automatic refunds. If people have paid for months they will not receive, refund them yourself before deleting — otherwise you have taken money for something that no longer exists.

Delete your account

This is separate from deleting a publication.

1. Open your account Settings page.
2. Scroll to Delete account under the Danger Zone.
3. Confirm.

It deletes your data and cancels all your subscriptions, keeping only anonymised analytics and limited records required for regulatory, compliance and security purposes. Substack cannot restore an account or publication afterwards.

Posts already delivered by email sit in subscribers' inboxes forever. Deleting the publication removes the web archive, not the emails.

Stripe is a separate disconnection

If you ever took money, Stripe is the piece people forget. Turning off paid subscriptions is not the same as disconnecting the Stripe account, and Substack expects both before it will let a publication go.

1. Turn off paid subscriptions in publication settings.
2. Disconnect Stripe from the same settings area.
3. Withdraw the remaining balance to your bank and confirm it landed.
4. Download your Stripe payout and tax records — you will need them next tax year, and chasing them after the fact is far harder.

The Stripe account is yours, not Substack's. Disconnecting it from Substack does not close it, and closing your Substack does not close it either. If you want Stripe gone too, that is a separate deletion on Stripe's own site — and you should not do it until every payout has cleared and you have the records you need.

Readers: you may be paying more than one publication

This is the quiet cost of Substack's model. Each paid subscription is a separate recurring charge to a separate writer, and there is no single screen on the internet that shows you all of them if you subscribed with different email addresses over the years.

• Check substack.com/settings for the subscriptions attached to the account you are signed into.
• Then search your email for Substack receipts, because a subscription started under an old address will not appear there.
• Then check your card or bank statement for anything from Substack you cannot account for.

Deleting your reader account cancels the subscriptions attached to it, but it does not refund anything and it will not reach subscriptions sitting on an account you have forgotten the password to.

Writers: what you should take with you

A publication is three separate assets and deletion destroys them at different rates. Take all three before you touch the danger zone:

• The subscriber list. The only genuinely portable thing you own. Export it as CSV — an audience you can email is worth more than an archive nobody visits.
• The posts themselves. Substack offers an export of your content; run it and check the files open before you rely on it.
• The analytics. Not exportable in any useful form, so screenshot what you care about. Substack keeps anonymised analytics after deletion; you do not.

Custom domains are worth handling deliberately too. If your publication sits on a domain you own, point it somewhere else before deleting, so links in years of other people's posts do not resolve into nothing.