Newsletters & publishing · verified 2026-07

Best Medium 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.

Ghost

paid from $18/mo

Open-source publishing with memberships and a 0% platform fee

0% platform fee on member revenue — a flat SaaS fee instead of a cut of your earnings
Open source with full ownership: your domain, your theme, your member list, self-host escape hatch
Ghost 6.0 ships native cookie-free analytics and short-form Notes

Free tier: No free hosted tier (14-day trial). Self-hosting the open-source software is free if you can run Node + MySQL.

Try Ghost

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: Medium vs Substack Try Substack

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 Medium alternative?

The most common reasons in our testing: opaque, frequently rewritten payout algorithm — writers have seen 70-90% earnings swings after changes; you don't own the audience: no email list export, full platform dependency; earning requires putting stories behind Medium's paywall. 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 Medium alternative?

Among the alternatives we've verified, Substack has the lowest paid entry at $5/month billed annually. For free options, Substack offer genuinely usable free tiers.

›Is there a free Medium alternative?

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

›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.