Ghost vs Medium: Full Comparison for Writers

The Core Difference: Who Controls the Money

Medium collects $5/month from readers and distributes a portion to writers based on “member reading time.” You don’t set your price. You don’t choose your audience. You don’t control how much you earn. The algorithm decides.

Ghost connects you directly to your readers via Stripe. You set your price. You keep 100% of subscription revenue minus Stripe’s ~2.9% processing fee. Ghost takes 0%.

The average monetized Medium post earns $1.20. 92% of Medium Partner Program writers earn less than $100 per month. One documented case: 7,642 views produced $9.65.

On Ghost, a writer with 200 paying subscribers at $5/month earns $970/month after Stripe fees. Same writer on Medium, with the same readership, earns whatever the algorithm assigns — likely under $100.

Monetization

Medium

• Revenue comes from a shared pool funded by $5/month reader memberships
• Earnings based on “member reading time” — only paying Medium members count
• Writers cannot set their own prices
• No membership tiers, no direct subscriber relationships
• Medium has a $5/month and $15/month (“Friend of Medium”) reader tier — but these are Medium’s tiers, not yours
• $10 minimum payout threshold (added August 2024)

Ghost

• Direct Stripe integration — you own the payment relationship
• 0% platform fee (only Stripe’s ~2.9%)
• Custom pricing: $5/month, $15/month, $50/year — whatever you want
• Multiple membership tiers with different content access
• Free, paid, and premium tiers configurable without code
• One-time payments and tips (Ghost 6.0, August 2025)
• Revenue dashboard: MRR, churn, customer lifetime value

Ghost gives you pricing power. Medium gives you none.

Audience Ownership

Medium

Your Medium followers are Medium accounts. You can’t email them directly. You can’t export them. If you leave Medium, those followers stay behind. Medium has an email notification system, but it’s not a newsletter — you can’t send standalone emails, segment your audience, or communicate outside of a published post.

Ghost

Your subscribers are in a database you own. Export them as CSV anytime. Email them directly through Ghost’s built-in newsletter system. If Ghost ceased to exist tomorrow, you’d still have every email address.

Ghost’s newsletter features include:

• Multiple newsletters per site with independent subscriptions
• Segmentation by free, paid, specific tier, or custom label
• Email-only content (send without publishing to the web)
• Open rate, click rate, and per-link analytics
• Custom email design and sending domain

Design and Branding

Medium

Every Medium publication uses the same template. Same fonts. Same layout. Same header structure. You can choose a logo and accent color. That’s it.

There’s no design customization on Medium. No custom fonts. No brand colors. No unique homepage layout. For writers building a brand, every post exists inside Medium’s frame, not your own.

Ghost

Ghost’s theme system gives you complete visual control. Custom layouts, typography, color schemes, dark mode, reading progress bars, photo galleries — all configurable through your theme.

Our Nio theme demonstrates the gap from Medium’s uniform design: 5 hero alignment options, dropdown navigation, photo galleries, and a design that’s entirely yours.

See Nio live demo →

SEO

Medium

• No custom meta titles or descriptions
• No canonical URL control — Medium claims canonical on all content
• No structured data customization
• No sitemap control
• All SEO value accrues to medium.com, not your personal domain
• Medium’s paywall drives up bounce rates from organic search

Medium has a domain authority of 95 (top 5% globally), which means your content can rank — but the ranking belongs to Medium, not you. If you leave, the rankings stay.

Ghost

• Custom meta titles and descriptions per post
• Canonical URLs (auto-set, overridable per post)
• Schema.org structured data on every page
• Auto-generated XML sitemap
• Clean semantic HTML with optimized permalinks
• Redirect management and noindex controls

For writers producing evergreen content — guides, tutorials, reference articles — Ghost’s SEO tools drive compounding organic traffic. A well-optimized Ghost post on your own domain builds your authority permanently.

Content Editor

Medium

Medium’s editor is genuinely excellent for writing. Clean, distraction-free, focused on the text. This is arguably Medium’s strongest feature — the writing experience is smooth.

But there’s no way to extend it. No embeddable cards, no custom HTML, no code blocks with syntax highlighting, no table of contents, no email-specific content blocks.

Ghost (Koenig)

Ghost’s editor is also clean and writing-focused, with additional functionality:

• Dynamic cards for images, video, audio, bookmarks, code blocks, HTML, and callouts
• Built-in Unsplash image search
• Email content cards (content visible only in the email version)
• Scheduling to specific date and time
• Multiple author support

Both editors are designed for writers. Ghost’s adds functionality for publishers.

Platform Stats

Medium (as of early 2026)

• ~100 million monthly visitors (declining — down 4.11% Dec 2025)
• ~700,000 paying members (out of 63-100 million registered users)
• 92% of Partner Program writers earn under $100/month
• Top traffic source: organic search (60.89% of desktop visits)
• Traffic has been declining since late 2025

Ghost

• Growing ~15% annually
• Open-source with 3 million+ total installations
• Publishers earned $9.2 million in combined subscription revenue in 2024
• Average free-to-paid conversion rate: 6.3%

Feature Comparison

Feature	Ghost	Medium
Revenue model	0% fee, direct Stripe	Pool-based algorithmic payouts
Pricing control	Custom tiers, your pricing	None — Medium sets the price
Newsletter	Built-in, segmented, multiple	Notification system only
Design	Full theme system	Uniform template
SEO control	Full (meta, canonical, schema)	None
Custom domain	Included free	Requires membership, unstable history
Audience ownership	Full export, your Stripe	Followers are Medium accounts
API	Full REST API	None
Self-hosting	Yes (MIT license)	No
Discovery	ActivityPub federation	100M monthly visitors

Pricing

Medium

Free to publish. To earn from the Partner Program, your account must meet eligibility requirements (follower count and publishing history). Medium membership costs readers $5/month or $50/year. Writers earn from the pool.

Ghost(Pro) (as of February 2026)

Plan	Monthly (annual billing)	Members	Staff
Starter	$15/mo	1,000	1
Publisher	$29/mo	1,000	3
Business	$199/mo	10,000	15

All plans: unlimited email sends, SSL, CDN, backups, free custom domain.

Self-Hosted Ghost

Open source under MIT license. Run on a VPS from $6-12/month with zero platform fees.

Who Already Left Medium

• FreeCodeCamp (583,000+ followers): Left in 2019 after Medium pressured them to paywall free education content. Moved to self-hosted Ghost.
• Signal v. Noise / Basecamp: DHH left in 2019, citing concerns about “centralizing the internet.”
• HackerNoon (8 million monthly views): Left after Medium banned third-party advertising, destroying their business model.

The pattern: publications outgrow Medium when they want to control their revenue, brand, or audience.

Who Should Stay on Medium

• You write casually and don’t need to earn meaningful income
• You want Medium’s 100M monthly visitor discovery network
• You don’t care about owning your audience or brand
• You want zero setup — no domain, no theme, no hosting decisions

Who Should Choose Ghost

• You want to earn directly from readers and keep 100%
• Your brand identity matters — a publication that looks distinctly yours
• You’re building a newsletter with real email tools
• SEO-driven evergreen content is part of your strategy
• You want multiple revenue streams (free tier, paid tiers, tips)
• Platform independence matters — own your content permanently

Make Your Ghost Publication Stand Out

The theme you choose is the biggest visual difference between Ghost and Medium. Every Medium post looks identical. Every Ghost publication can look unique.

Our themes are built for publishers who take their brand seriously, starting at $69.

Browse Ghost themes →

For the full case for leaving Medium, see our Medium alternative guide.