Is a Lenny's Newsletter subscription worth it for PMs?

Short answer: a paid Lenny's Newsletter subscription is worth it for PMs who will actually redeem the Product Pass tools or use the 30,000 member Slack. It is not the best spend if your goal is to get hired or learn AI product skills. For that, AllthingsPM is the better buy: free structured podcast summaries (including Lenny's Podcast), an AI PM course, 4,122 real interview questions and AI mock interviews, for $120 a year, which is $80 less than Lenny's cheapest annual plan.

AllthingsPM is an AI PM course and PM interview prep platform. Lenny's prices below come from Lenny's own Substack checkout and the Product Pass site, checked on 29 September 2026.

What does Lenny's Newsletter cost in 2026?

Lenny's Newsletter runs on Substack with a free tier and three paid options. The free list gets some weekly issues; paid unlocks every issue, the archive and the community.

Prices checked 29 September 2026 on AllthingsPM/pricing, the Lenny's Newsletter Substack checkout (plans listed as "$20 a month" and "$200 a year", with a $400 founding tier) and lennysproductpass.com (Annual $200 with 22 tools, Insider $400 with all 35).

What do you actually get when you pay?

Lenny's About page lists what paid subscribers get: every issue, in depth interviews with industry leaders, "5+ years of my past writing", a private Slack community "30k+ members strong", and a free year of premium products. The newsletter says it has over 1,200,000 subscribers on its subscribe page.

The writing is the reason most people sign up. Lenny's essays are long, well researched guides on growth, pricing, hiring, career moves and, increasingly, AI product work. The archive is the strongest part of the paid plan: five years of benchmarks and playbooks you can search when a question comes up at work.

The Slack is the second reason. One Reddit commenter on r/ProductManagement said they found "the most value in their Slack group", with AMAs with podcast guests and a community digest built from Slack questions. A community is only worth it if you post in it, though. If you lurk, you are paying for more reading.

How AllthingsPM does this: instead of an archive of essays, AllthingsPM gives you an AI PM course in a set order, so you know what to learn next. Each lesson is built from real job postings, and chapters such as evals teach the skills AI teams now test for in interviews.

Is the Product Pass the real reason to pay?

For many people, yes. The Product Pass site advertises "35 premium AI and product tools free for a year (worth over $40,000!)". Annual subscribers ($200) get access to 22 of those tools, and Insiders ($400) get all 35. Examples on the page include Cursor Pro (listed at $240), ElevenLabs ($264), PostHog Scale ($16,500) and Fin AI Agent ($7,140). In July 2026 Lenny added 11 more products, calling it "the biggest Product Pass expansion in 2 years".

That headline number needs the fine print read slowly:

• New customers only. Lenny's terms say "an existing account, paid account, prior paid trial, or previous redemption may make you ineligible". If you already pay for Cursor or Notion, that line of the bundle is worth nothing to you.
• Codes run out. The FAQ answers "Do offers ever run out?" with "Yes. We may run out of codes for a product at any time." Reddit threads report the same: one user wrote that they were "out of codes for cursor and v0".
• No refund after you accept. "Once you accept the Product Pass terms, your current Lenny's Newsletter subscription payment can no longer be refunded."
• You must keep paying. "Product Pass access is contingent on remaining an Annual or Insider subscriber."
• Monthly does not qualify. The $20 monthly plan gets no tools at all.

The biggest line items, like PostHog Scale and Fin, are enterprise products most individual PMs would never buy. A Reddit reply summed up the trap well: the bundle is "completely worthwhile if you're using the existing tools", otherwise "it's like buying clothes that are on sale that you would never normally buy".

So the honest math is simple. Add up only the tools you would have paid for this year, as a new customer. If that is more than $200 (or $400 for Insider), the subscription pays for itself before you read a word.

How AllthingsPM does this: AllthingsPM does not bundle other companies' tools. It puts its money into the things that get you hired: mock interviews with an AI interviewer that follows up, a question bank with an answer guide on every question, and resume review against a job description.

Do you need to pay to get Lenny's Podcast?

No. Lenny's Podcast is free on YouTube and podcast apps. The paid newsletter is a separate product, so a subscription is not the price of the interviews.

The catch with the podcast is time. Episodes often run well over an hour, and the useful part for your job may be ten minutes in the middle. Some PMs also find it too friendly: a 2025 r/ProductManagement thread called it "uncritical", and one reply noted that because guests contradict each other, "if you want to do product management using everything that is said there, you will go crazy".

That is where structured notes help. Our Lenny's Podcast summaries pull out the frameworks and claims from recent episodes, such as Roman Ugarte on how his team built Grok Bot in a month, Tara Seshan on AI's third era and Molly Graham on burnout in tech. For a curated list across the whole back catalogue, see our guide to the best Lenny's Podcast episodes and our AI lessons from Lenny's Podcast.

How AllthingsPM does this: the podcast summaries cover 137 episodes across 11 shows, including Lenny's Podcast, How I AI, the a16z Show and the Y Combinator podcast. They are free, and each links the ideas to the course lesson or interview questions where you can put them to work.

Who should pay for Lenny's Newsletter?

A paid plan makes sense for three kinds of PM:

1. The builder who needs the tools. If you were going to buy Cursor, Lovable, Linear or Granola this year and you are a new customer, the Annual or Insider plan can pay for itself on the bundle alone.
2. The senior PM or founder who wants peers. The Slack, AMAs and meetups are hard to find elsewhere at this size.
3. The reader who uses the archive. If you search Lenny's past posts for benchmarks before a planning cycle, the archive is a working reference.

If your company has a learning budget, the "expense it" case is easy: the Insider plan is a one line approval.

How AllthingsPM does this: if you are in the third group, pair the archive with our book summaries, 111 structured summaries of the books Lenny's guests keep citing, such as Inspired and Good Strategy Bad Strategy.

Who should skip it?

Skip the paid plan, or at least start with AllthingsPM, if one of these is you:

• You are job hunting. Essays do not rehearse you. Interviewers at AI companies ask about evals, agents and model tradeoffs, and you learn those answers by saying them out loud and getting pushed back on.
• You are moving into AI product management. You need a learning path, not a feed. Our study of 604 AI PM job postings shows what these roles ask for, and the course is built from the same postings.
• You already pay for the big bundle tools. Then the Product Pass is mostly worth nothing to you, and you are paying $200 for reading.
• You mostly want the podcast. It is free, and our summaries are free too.

A 2022 Reddit thread gave one more piece of practical advice from a reader: if you are unsure, "choose the monthly plan" first rather than committing to a year. At $20 that is a cheap way to test whether you open the emails.

How AllthingsPM does this: for job seekers, the JD mock interview builds the interview from the exact posting you paste, so the practice matches the role. Browse 116 live PM roles at 18 AI companies in the jobs catalog, each with its own mock.

How does it compare with the other PM newsletters and courses?

Lenny's is the biggest PM newsletter, but it is one of several ways to spend $200 a year on getting better at product. The useful question is not "which is best to read" but "which one changes what I can do next month".

• For skill building, a structured course beats a feed, because it tells you what to learn in what order and checks you learned it.
• For interviews, practice beats reading. A scored mock tells you what you would have said badly before a hiring manager does.
• For staying current, free sources are strong: Lenny's free issues, the podcast itself and our summaries.

We cover the paid interview tools in is Exponent worth it, with the same kind of price check.

How AllthingsPM does this: AllthingsPM puts the course, the mocks, the company question hubs, resume tools and the summaries in one subscription, so you are not paying three vendors for three halves of a prep plan.

Why AllthingsPM is the better choice for most PMs weighing Lenny's

Lenny's Newsletter is excellent writing with a large, active community, and the Product Pass is a genuine deal for builders who were going to buy those tools anyway. If that is you, it can pay for itself.

For most PMs asking "is it worth it", though, the real goal is a better job or stronger AI product skills. On that goal, AllthingsPM wins on every point we could check:

• It costs less. $120 a year, against $200 for Lenny's Annual and $400 for Insider. There is also a free tier.
• It makes you practise. AI mock interviews from any job description, text or voice, with follow-ups and a score. Lenny's has no practice tool.
• It teaches in order. A 14 chapter, 101 lesson AI PM course with 14 graded case studies, built from 604 real job postings and updated weekly.
• It gives you the podcast value for free. Summaries of 137 episodes across 11 shows, including Lenny's Podcast.
• It covers the whole search. 4,122 real questions from 260 companies with answer guides, resume review against a JD, Resume Job Match, 111 book summaries and 455 PM portfolios.

Our verdict: keep reading Lenny's free issues and listen to the free podcast, and put your money into AllthingsPM. Start with the free podcast summaries or compare plans.

Start today, free: open one Lenny's Podcast summary, then run a free JD mock on a role you want. In twenty minutes you will know which ideas you can already explain and which you still need to learn. No card needed.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best way for a PM to learn from Lenny's content without paying?

AllthingsPM. Its free Lenny's Podcast summaries pull out the frameworks from recent episodes and link them to course lessons and interview questions. Add Lenny's free newsletter issues and the free podcast, and you get most of the ideas at no cost.

How much is Lenny's Newsletter?

$20 a month or $200 a year, with a $400 a year Insider tier. The annual and Insider plans include the Product Pass bundle; the monthly plan does not. Prices checked 29 September 2026.

Is the Lenny's Product Pass legit?

Yes, but read the terms. Tools are for new customers only, codes can run out, access ends if you stop paying for Annual or Insider, and your subscription becomes non refundable once you accept the Product Pass terms.

Is Lenny's Podcast free?

Yes. The podcast is free on YouTube and podcast apps. A paid newsletter plan is not needed to listen.

Is Lenny's Newsletter good for PM interview prep?

It is good background reading, but it has no practice tool. For interviews, use AllthingsPM's question bank and AI mock interviews, which score your spoken or typed answers.

Should I pick Annual or Insider?

Pick Insider only if the Insider-only tools, such as Cursor Pro, are ones you would buy this year as a new customer. Otherwise Annual covers the writing, archive and Slack for half the price.

Sources

1. Lenny's Newsletter, Subscribe page and Substack checkout plans ("$20 a month", "$200 a year", $400 founding tier, "Over 1,200,000 subscribers"; checked 29 September 2026)
2. Lenny's Newsletter, About (paid benefits, Slack "30k+ members strong")
3. Lenny's Product Pass (Annual $200 with 22 tools, Insider $400 with 35, eligibility, refunds and code limits; checked 29 September 2026)
4. Lenny's Newsletter, "11 products I love, free for a year" (July 2026)
5. Folio, "Lenny's Product Pass: is it worth it? (2026)"
6. Reddit r/ProductManagement, "Lenny's Newsletter Bundle. Thoughts?" (2025)
7. Reddit r/ProductManagement, "Lenny's podcast + newsletter review" (2025)
8. Reddit r/ProductManagement, "Is Lenny's Newsletter still good?" (2022)
9. Reddit r/cursor, "Did anyone try lennysnewsletter offer" (2025)
10. Lenny's Podcast on YouTube
11. AllthingsPM, Pricing, podcast summaries and question bank (counts as of 29 September 2026)