How we make this list: we compare pricing pages, product documentation and public user reviews. Ratings come from G2, Capterra or Trustpilot, with the date we checked them.
Key takeaways
- Substack is the default exit: free to publish, an exportable email list from the first post, paid subscriptions at a 10 percent platform cut.
- Ghost is the ownership pick for writers whose subscriptions are the business: no revenue cut, Ghost(Pro) hosting from $18 a month billed annually.
- Beehiiv is the growth machine, free up to 2,500 subscribers with an ad network and 0 percent take on paid subscriptions from its Scale tier.
- WordPress.com is the cheapest owned home, from $4 a month billed annually, with a free tier that carries platform ads.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|
 Substack | Email first publishing with paid subscriptions | Free | Yes |
 Ghost | Membership publications you fully own | $18 per month | No |
 Beehiiv | Newsletter growth and ad revenue | Free | Yes |
 WordPress.com | An owned blog at the lowest price | $4 per month | Yes |
 Hashnode | Developer blogging with a community | Free | Yes |
 Mirror | Web3 native publishing | Free | Yes |
 Vocal | Earning per read without subscriptions | Free | Yes |
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The best Medium alternatives in 2026
#1Substack
Best for: Email first publishing with paid subscriptions4.3/5 on
G2 (17 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit substack.com
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Substack is where Medium writers go to own the relationship. Every subscriber is an email address you can export and take elsewhere, paid tiers need no separate tooling, and the recommendation engine between publications is the closest thing to Medium's feed that pays you directly. The 10 percent cut is the rent now, charged on earnings instead of attention.
Do the maths at your scale. A publication earning $1,000 a month hands Substack $100 plus processing, which buys hosting, payments, delivery and discovery with zero fixed cost. At $10,000 a month the same percentage argues for Ghost. Substack knows this, which is why its free start is so easy: it profits when the argument changes.
What we like- Free to publish with unlimited subscribers, and the email list is exportable, which is the whole point of leaving Medium, paid subscriptions built in, with a recommendations network that genuinely sends writers readers, custom domain for a one time $50 fee, Notes and the app give posts a social surface Medium migrants miss
Watch out for- Substack keeps 10 percent of paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe's processing fees on top, design and site control are limited: this is a newsletter product, not a website, discovery favours writers who arrive with an audience or work the network actively
#2Ghost
Best for: Membership publications you fully own4.0/5 on
G2 (40 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit ghost.org
Starting price$18 per month
Free planNo
Ghost is the professional's answer: the publication as a business asset. Writers who outgrew Substack's percentage, or who want a real website around the newsletter, land here and keep every dollar after Stripe's fees. Its editor and membership tooling were built for exactly the job Medium's Partner Program rents out.
The barrier is the start. There is no free plan to dabble in, no feed to borrow readers from, and a bill from month one. Ghost suits the writer with an audience to bring, from Medium, from social, from a book. A writer with twelve readers should borrow discovery somewhere first and migrate when the list justifies the rent.
What we like- Publishing, newsletter and paid memberships in one open source platform, with a 0 percent platform cut on your revenue, Ghost(Pro) hosting from $18 a month billed annually in October 2026 readings, real website control: themes, SEO tooling and your domain from the start, self hosting is free if you run your own server
Watch out for- No free tier on the hosted product, and paid subscriptions sit on higher member based tiers, no built in discovery network, so growth from zero is slower than Substack or Medium, prices rise with member count: a 10,000 member publication was listed at $105 a month on Publisher
#3Beehiiv
Best for: Newsletter growth and ad revenue4.5/5 on
G2 (40 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit beehiiv.com
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Beehiiv treats a newsletter as a media business rather than a writing hobby. Its ad network sells sponsorships into your sends, its boost and recommendation systems trade subscribers with other publications, and analytics read like a growth team's dashboard. Medium writers who felt the Partner Program's opacity usually enjoy the legibility.
Watch the subscriber priced ladder. Beehiiv is free while small and reasonable while growing, but the bill scales with the list whether or not the list pays you. Pair it with paid subscriptions or sponsors early, so the growth it engineers funds the tiers it charges for.
What we like- Free Launch plan up to 2,500 subscribers, with a website builder included on every plan, a built in ad network and recommendation tools aimed squarely at growth, paid subscriptions carry a 0 percent platform take from the Scale tier, pricing by list size is published, with paid plans reported from $49 a month billed annually
Watch out for- The free plan cannot charge subscriptions, so monetisation waits for a paid tier, costs climb with subscribers, reaching a reported $139 a month at 10,000 on entry paid levels, a newsletter first tool: long form blogging and site depth trail Ghost and WordPress
#4WordPress.com
Best for: An owned blog at the lowest price4.4/5 on
G2 (2,717 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit wordpress.com
Starting price$4 per month
Free planYes
WordPress.com is the answer when the writing is the marketing rather than the product. A consultant, a freelancer or a company founder publishing to be found on Google gets an owned asset at $4 a month, no revenue cut, and twenty years of publishing infrastructure. Nothing else here is as cheap to own outright.
Accept the assembly. WordPress will not package your paid membership, run your recommendation engine or find you readers; it publishes what you write and lets search do the rest. Writers who earn from subscriptions should take Substack or Ghost. Writers who earn from being found should take WordPress and write for queries.
What we like- Personal at $4 a month billed annually puts a real blog on your own domain for the price of a coffee, the deepest publishing ecosystem here, with themes, and plugins on higher tiers, search engines treat an owned WordPress site well, and content exports cleanly, a free plan exists for starting, though it carries platform ads and a subdomain
Watch out for- Monetisation is your own assembly job: ads, affiliates and products rather than a built in subscription engine on entry tiers, the tier ladder reserves attractive features for higher plans, less newsletter native than Substack or Beehiiv, with email tooling improving but secondary
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Hashnode is the specialist's free lunch. A developer writing about software gets a blog on their own domain, an audience of peers who comment and share, and none of Medium's paywall friction between a tutorial and its readers. Technical writers consistently rate its community as the real feature.
Its boundary is drawn in the same ink. Essays about management, design or life will sit unread, because the feed is a trade journal. Stay inside the trade and Hashnode is arguably better than Medium for reach. Wander outside it and you are publishing into an empty room with excellent Markdown support.
What we like- Free blogging on your own custom domain, a combination no rival here matches at zero cost, a built in community of developers who actually read technical writing, newsletter features and good Markdown tooling for code heavy posts, no platform cut, because the model is community rather than monetisation
Watch out for- The audience is developers: general interest writing finds no feed here, built in earning routes are thin compared with subscription platforms, a smaller company than the giants above, with the longevity questions that implies
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Mirror is the niche purist's platform. For writers covering crypto, DAOs and digital ownership, it publishes where the readers and the patrons are, and its collectible entries turned some essays into genuinely paid work. Outside that world it has almost no discovery to offer.
Judge it as a community venue, like Hashnode for developers. If your subject is the decentralised web, Mirror's defaults, permanence, collectibility, crypto native readers, align with your material. For everything else it is a beautiful room on the wrong street.
What we like- Free publishing with posts stored on decentralised infrastructure, built for crypto and web3 writers whose audience lives there, entries can be collected as NFTs, giving superfans a way to pay that subscriptions do not, clean reading experience with no platform ads
Watch out for- The audience is one industry, and a shrinking conversation compared with its peak years, monetisation depends on collector culture rather than predictable subscriptions, wallet based identity is friction for mainstream readers
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Vocal is for the writer who liked Medium's deal and wants it with the rate card visible. Publish, share, earn by the read, with a $9.99 a month Vocal Plus membership raising the per read rate and adding perks. It is honest piecework, and the arithmetic should be done before the hope: thousands of reads buy coffee, tens of thousands buy groceries.
That makes Vocal a sideline, not a home. Writers building an asset should still graduate to an owned list on Substack or Ghost. Writers who want a low effort outlet with a nonzero chance of payment per piece will find Vocal's terms clearer than the Partner Program's moving formula.
What we like- The closest model to Medium's here: publish free and earn per read, with rates differing for Vocal Plus members, topic communities give new writers a surface Medium's feed once provided, challenges and prompts supply subjects and occasional prizes, no need to sell subscriptions or manage a list
Watch out for- Per read earnings are modest, and serious income needs very large read volumes, you rent the audience exactly as on Medium: no exportable list, discovery depends on the platform's communities and external sharing
How we chose
We required each alternative to fix a stated Medium limitation: audience ownership, revenue control, discovery for a specific tribe, or ownership of the site itself. Medium is never an entry, by the rules of an alternatives list. Prices come from vendor pages read in October 2026; Ghost's hosted pricing rose during the year, and its current entry figure is used rather than the older single digit listings that still circulate. We did not claim hands-on testing.
Own the list, rent the discovery
The whole category reduces to one trade. Platforms with feeds, Medium, Vocal, Substack's network, Hashnode's community, lend you readers today and own the relationship tomorrow. Platforms without feeds, Ghost, WordPress, charge you rent in money instead and hand you the list, the domain and the archive.
The working pattern most successful writers settle into uses both. Publish the canonical version on the home you own, and syndicate or excerpt to the discovery platforms with a clear path back to your own list. The feed becomes a funnel rather than a landlord, and an algorithm change becomes weather rather than eviction.
Whichever home you choose, export on a schedule. Download your subscriber list and your full archive monthly and keep them somewhere boring. Platforms change terms, get acquired and occasionally close, and the writers who survive those events are the ones holding their own copies.
Frequently asked questions
Why do writers leave Medium?
Chiefly ownership and predictability. The Partner Program pays by a formula writers cannot control, the audience belongs to the platform, and the email list, the one asset that compounds, is not exportable in any useful form.
What is the best free Medium alternative?
Substack for most writers: free publishing, paid subscriptions when you want them, and an exportable list. Hashnode is better for developers, and Beehiiv's free plan suits newsletter writers up to 2,500 subscribers.
Which alternative takes no cut of subscription revenue?
Ghost and Beehiiv's paid tiers take 0 percent platform fees, leaving only payment processing. Substack takes 10 percent. WordPress.com takes no cut but also provides no subscription engine at entry levels.
Can I move my Medium audience with me?
Not directly, because Medium does not give you their email addresses. The practical route is a series of posts on Medium itself inviting readers to your new list, published while your Medium presence is still active.
Is Medium still worth using at all?
Yes, as distribution. Its feed still discovers new writers, and nothing stops you syndicating work there that lives canonically on your own site. The mistake is building only on Medium, not publishing there at all.
Sources we checked (0)
Is your product missing or out of date?
We review this list regularly. Vendors can request a listing, send updated pricing or ask about featured placement.
Shihab Mia · Founder, Rankite
Shihab has 5+ years in B2B and SaaS SEO. He writes Rankite's software buying guides from pricing pages, documentation and public user reviews. More about Shihab.