Auteur vs Stable
Stable is the flat plan: scanning is included and the base price is higher. Auteur is the other shape: a lower plan price and a flat fee for each piece you open. Which one costs less depends on how much of your mail you actually read, and we show the arithmetic.
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 We deliberately do not quote their prices here.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
A lower plan price, and $1.99 when you open something
Virtual Mailing Address, for personal mail, is $9.99 a month or $99.00 a year for 30 pieces and $14.99 a month or $149.04 a year for 60. Virtual Business Address, which also receives mail in your business or trade name, is $14.99 a month or $149.04 a year for 30 pieces and $19.99 a month or $198.96 a year for 60, all at the founding price. 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 $1.99 per piece with no page fee, and Henry's summary and translation come with every scan. There are no paid seats.
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 it locks the founding price. |
| 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 $1.50 each. |
| Scanning | Free within the plan allowance, with physical limits on document size and bound items. | $1.99 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 $2 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
A far lower plan price. Virtual Mailing Address 30 is $9.99 a month, and Virtual Business Address 30, with a business or trade name and up to 6 recipient names, is $14.99. You pay for scans only when you ask for one, so a month with a handful of opened letters stays close to that number.
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. $2 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 arithmetic, honestly
With Stable, your month is the plan price, whether you open one letter or all of them. With Auteur, your month is $9.99 to $19.99 plus $1.99 for each piece you open. So the question is simply how many pieces you open. Open a handful, and Auteur costs a fraction of a flat plan. Open a couple of dozen a month, and the two converge. Open nearly everything you receive, and a flat plan that includes scanning is the cheaper choice, and we say so.
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 a flat $2; 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 is priced like an aggregator, with a low plan price and a flat scan fee, but 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 costs you less.
- •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 a low, predictable plan price, with a business or trade name from $14.99.
- •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 stated as a number on the pricing page.
See the full picture for yourself
Our pricing and our fair use policy are published in full, and nothing is charged today.