Newsletters & publishing · verified 2026-07

Best Ghost alternatives

2alternatives we've actually put through a scorecard — with verified pricing, honest trade-offs and a direct head-to-head where we have one. No 20-item listicles of tools nobody's tried.

Substack

paid from $5/mo

Publish free, grow on the network, pay 10% when you earn

Zero upfront cost and zero setup — monetization is a toggle, payments fully handled
Built-in discovery network (Notes, recommendations, app feed) that actually acquires subscribers for you
Full multimedia suite free: podcasts, live video, chat and a desktop recording studio (2026)

Free tier: Completely free to publish at any scale. Substack takes 10% of paid-subscription revenue (plus ~3% Stripe fees).

Full scorecard: Ghost vs Substack Try Substack

Medium

paid from $4.17/mo

Write into a paying audience pool — no list-building required

Built-in distribution to 1M+ paying members — you can earn from day one with zero audience
Free to join the Partner Program since 2025 (the membership requirement was dropped)
The platform is profitable and stable, with Boost curation and a paid editor economy

Free tier: Free to publish and to join the Partner Program (application-based: 6+ stories, 3+ months active). Readers pay $5/mo for membership.

Try Medium

How we make money: some outbound links on this page may be affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you sign up — at no cost to you. Commissions never decide a round or a verdict; our scoring method is documented in the methodology.

Frequently asked

›Why look for a Ghost alternative?

The most common reasons in our testing: no free hosted tier, and the 2025 repricing moved paid memberships up to the $29 Publisher plan; hosted pricing scales steeply with member count; self-hosting needs real technical skill; no built-in discovery network and no official mobile app — you bring your own audience. Whether those matter depends entirely on your use case — each alternative below fixes some of them and trades away something else.

›What's the cheapest Ghost alternative?

Among the alternatives we've verified, Medium has the lowest paid entry at $4.17/month billed annually. For free options, Substack and Medium offer genuinely usable free tiers.

›Is there a free Ghost alternative?

Substack: Completely free to publish at any scale. Substack takes 10% of paid-subscription revenue (plus ~3% Stripe fees). · Medium: Free to publish and to join the Partner Program (application-based: 6+ stories, 3+ months active). Readers pay $5/mo for membership.

›How do you pick these alternatives?

We only list tools we've actually verified: every price checked against the vendor's own pricing page (stamped 2026-07), every claim sourced. That means fewer alternatives than the 20-item listicles — and none we haven't scored in a head-to-head. Our methodology and revenue model are public.