Auteur vs Stable
Stable is the flat plan: scanning is included in the plan price. Auteur is the other shape: the plan covers receiving, and you pay a flat fee only for each piece you ask us to open. Which shape suits you depends on how much of your mail you actually read. Our pricing comes by email with the next steps.
Read this first: this comparison was written by Auteur, and we sell the plans on this site. It is our honest homework, not neutral advice, and it is not an Auteur Rating review. The Rating never covers our own products. Everything we say about Stable comes from their official website, checked on August 25, 2026. Their pricing and policies can change, so please confirm current details on their pricing page. We deliberately do not quote their prices here.
Two different ways to charge for mail
Stable
A flat plan with scanning included
Stable charges a flat monthly price with a set number of mail pieces per plan. Opening and scanning are free within that allowance, mail beyond it is billed per piece, and team members log in with paid seats. It is the right shape for someone who opens nearly everything.
Auteur
Receiving in the plan, and a flat fee when you open something
Two products, each in two sizes: Virtual Mailing Address for personal mail, and Virtual Business Address, which also receives mail in your business or trade name, each for 30 or 60 pieces a month. The plan covers receiving, an envelope photo of every piece, junk filtered free and uncounted, shredding, and 30 days of storage. Opening and scanning is a flat fee per piece with no page fee, and Henry's summary and translation come with every scan. There are no paid seats. Pricing comes by email with the next steps.
Side by side
| Dimension | Stable | Auteur |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | Live today, with addresses in dozens of US cities. | Pre-launch, in nine US cities from Silicon Valley to New York and Austin. Ordering is free, nothing is charged until launch, and the pricing comes by email with the next steps. |
| What the plan price buys | Receiving, opening, and scanning for a set number of pieces per month. Junk is filtered and not counted. Extra pieces are billed per piece. | Receiving for 30 or 60 pieces a month, with an envelope photo of each, junk filtered and not counted, shredding, and storage. Opening and scanning is a separate flat fee per piece. Extra pieces are charged per piece. |
| Scanning | Free within the plan allowance, with physical limits on document size and bound items. | A flat fee per piece, only when you ask, with no page fee and the same physical limits: nothing larger than 8.5 by 14 inches, over 1,000 pages, or bound like a book or magazine. Anything we cannot scan still gets an exterior photo. |
| AI in the inbox | AI summaries are included. Their site describes summaries in English. | Henry summarizes and translates every letter you open in English, Korean, or Spanish, and tells you what to do next. |
| Recipients and users | Unlimited recipient names. Additional login seats are paid per user per month, with a cap on the entry plan. | Virtual Mailing Address: up to 2 individual names. Virtual Business Address: 1 business or trade name plus up to 6 individual names, and a second company takes its own plan. One account login, with no per-seat charge. |
| Forwarding | Listed as an add-on at the cost of postage, with discounted carrier rates passed on. Whether anything is added to postage is not spelled out on the pricing page. | Actual carrier postage and nothing else, stated on the pricing page. No handling fee, no margin on postage. |
| Check deposits | Offered as an add-on, electronic and mail-in, priced per check on volume-based plans for existing accounts. | A flat fee per check that covers the check scan too, electronic where your bank supports it or mailed to your bank with postage included. No percentage of the amount. |
| USPS Form 1583 | Completed digitally, without a notary. | We are building our onboarding to work the same way, from anywhere in the world. It is a launch requirement we hold ourselves to. |
| Where the fine print lives | In a fair use policy hosted in their help center. | On an indexed public page, published before launch, with a change log. |
Stable facts from their official website, checked on August 25, 2026.
Where Auteur comes out ahead
You pay for what you open. The plan covers receiving, and scanning is a flat fee only for the pieces you ask us to open, so you are not paying for scans you never use.
No paid seats. Their entry plan bills each additional login and caps how many you can add. We charge nothing per user.
Forwarding at cost, in writing. Actual carrier postage and nothing else, stated on our pricing page. Theirs is listed as the cost of postage, and the pricing page does not say whether anything is added to it.
A flat check deposit. One flat fee per check, check scan included, no percentage of the amount. Theirs is a volume-priced add-on for existing accounts.
Henry in three languages. Every letter you open is summarized and translated in English, Korean, or Spanish, with the deadline and next step. Their summaries are described in English.
The fine print in the open. Our fee schedule and fair use policy live on an indexed public page with a change log, published before launch. Theirs lives in a help center article.
The trade-off, honestly
With Stable, your month is the plan price, whether you open one letter or all of them. With Auteur, your month is the plan price plus a flat fee for each piece you open. So the question is simply how many pieces you open. The fewer you open, the more a pay-per-open plan works in your favor. Open nearly everything you receive, and a flat plan that includes scanning is likely the better fit, and we say so. Our exact pricing comes by email with the next steps when you order.
What does not change with your habits: Henry reads what you open in English, Korean, or Spanish; forwarding has no handling fee; check deposits are one flat fee per check; there are no paid seats; and the whole fee schedule, with its definitions, is on one public page.
Where each service sits
Stable is the premium flat plan: live today, in dozens of cities, with team seats, integrations, and a track record. Auteur charges like an aggregator, with receiving in the plan and a flat fee per scan, but is built like a modern inbox, opening in nine US cities.
And if what you actually need is scanning included at volume, or an office-grade business presence, our partner save office runs US virtual offices with scans included in the plan.
Who should pick which
Pick Stable if
- •You need a working mailbox today. Stable is live and we are still pre-launch.
- •You need an address in a city we do not cover yet.
- •You open nearly all of your mail, so a flat plan with scanning included is likely the better fit.
- •Your team needs many login seats, admin controls, and integrations right now.
Pick Auteur if
- •You receive more than you read, and want to pay for scans only when you ask for them.
- •You want mail in a business or trade name on a plan built around receiving, not scanning.
- •You read mail more comfortably in Korean or Spanish, since Henry translates every letter you open.
- •You want the forwarding fee to be zero, and every other fee defined on a public page before launch.
See the full picture for yourself
Our pricing and our fair use policy are published in full, and nothing is charged today.