How do I unsubscribe from a Substack newsletter?

Last reviewed: October 20, 2026 · Markdown version

Scroll to the bottom of any email from that newsletter, click Unsubscribe, and in the window that opens choose "Unsubscribe from all". That is the first route on Substack's own help page, which calls it "The easiest way to unsubscribe from a free publication" (How do I unsubscribe from a free subscription?, Substack Help, read 20 October 2026). Substack differs from most mailing lists in two ways worth knowing before you start. One Substack account holds every newsletter you read there, so you can leave several from one screen. And money is handled apart from email: cancelling a paid subscription does not, on its own, stop the newsletter arriving.

From your Substack settings

When there is no email to hand, or you would rather see everything at once, the same help page gives the account route:

Go to www.substack.com/settings, or select your profile icon and choose "Settings".
"Under Subscriptions, click on the publication you'd like to unsubscribe from."
"On the next page, head to the Notifications section. Click on "Unsubscribe"."

That Subscriptions list also tells you which Substacks you are on at all. Substack's page on it says you can "View all the Substacks you're subscribed to under Subscriptions", and that on a computer your Library at substack.com/library shows "your free and paid subscriptions" (How do I see a list of all my subscriptions on Substack?, read 20 October 2026).

In the Substack app

The iPhone and Android apps use the same three taps for a free subscription: "Tap your profile picture to see the library of publications you subscribe to", select the publication, then "Tap the three dots on the top right corner of the screen and select "Unsubscribe"" (iOS app and Android app help pages, both read 20 October 2026). Both pages send you to a web browser for anything involving a paid plan.

Keeping part of a newsletter

Some writers split a publication into sections, and you get all of them unless you say otherwise: "When you subscribe to a publication that has sections, you'll automatically be subscribed to every section." Each one has its own switch in your settings, under that publication, and "A gray toggle indicates that notifications will be off for that section" (How do I subscribe to or unsubscribe from a section on Substack?, read 20 October 2026). If what you mind is a daily round-up rather than the weekly essay you signed up for, switching off one section is a smaller step than leaving.

Paid subscriptions: cancel, then unsubscribe

A paid plan is cancelled on the web, from the publication's Manage subscription page, under Account actions. Substack is clear about what follows: "You'll keep paid access until the end of the billing period you've paid for and you won't be charged again." Then the part that catches people out: "After that date you become a free subscriber and still get the publication's free posts. To stop all emails, unsubscribe from the free subscription." If you paid through the Substack iPhone app, the page says "you'll need to cancel through the Apple App Store" (How do I cancel my paid subscription on Substack?, read 20 October 2026). So stopping both the charge and the mail is two steps, in that order.

When it is every Substack at once

For a clean break there is one switch. Substack's free-subscription page says that to leave "every Substack publication you're subscribed to and also stop receiving Substack emails, you can do this in your Danger Zone section of your Settings page". Read its note before you use it: disabling all emails means "you will not receive email newsletters, see posts in the Substack app, or see the publication under your Subscriptions" (the How do I unsubscribe from a free subscription? page above). It removes the reading as well as the mail.

Following is a separate thing from subscribing. Substack's page on it says "You won't get emails from profiles you follow" (How does following work on Substack?, read 20 October 2026). If the mail keeps coming, the cause is a subscription on that Subscriptions list, not someone you follow.

From Gmail's side

Gmail's own Unsubscribe button and its Manage subscriptions screen work on any sender Google offers them for, and Google gives no Substack-specific behaviour on those pages. One detail from Google's unsubscribe page fits Substack well: after you leave, "instead of the sender’s name, you may find a unique identifier for a mailing list or list ID" (Unsubscribe from an email, read 20 October 2026). Leaving from Substack's settings instead lets you check the publication's name on your Subscriptions list, which is the clearer record. Both routes are on unsubscribing in Gmail.