Substack vs Medium: Fees, Reach & Ownership

Quick answer: Choose Substack to build an audience you own — an email list, direct paid subscriptions, a 10% fee on paid revenue. Choose Medium for built-in reach — its member pot pays per engagement, but the audience stays Medium’s. Building a publishing business long-term? An owned platform beats both; more on that below.

Fees verified July 2026 — confirm current figures on each platform’s pricing page.

Two Platforms, Two Opposite Bets

Substack (2017) and Medium (2012) both let writers publish without building a website — but they answer the money question in opposite ways.

Medium is a destination. Readers pay Medium for unlimited reading ($5/month, or $15/month for the “Friend of Medium” tier), and Medium distributes that pot to writers based on member engagement. You write, the algorithm distributes, the pot pays.

Substack is infrastructure. Readers subscribe to you, by email. Free until you charge; once you enable paid subscriptions, Substack takes 10% and Stripe takes its ~2.9% + $0.30 processing fee. There is no pot and no algorithmic payout — just your list and your price.

Everything else — reach, ownership, design, portability — follows from that split.

The Money

The practical difference: a Substack subscriber at $10/month keeps paying you every month — after the 10% cut and processing you keep roughly $8.41 of every $10. A Medium story that takes off can out-earn weeks of newsletter growth, then earn nothing next month. One is a business you build; the other is a lottery with skill weighting.

Substack’s other fee worth knowing: a one-time $50 custom-domain fee — and since Substack adopted Apple’s in-app purchases in 2025, iOS subscriptions can carry Apple’s cut of up to 30% unless you adjust settings. The full math is in our Substack breakdowns linked below.

Reach and Discovery

Medium wins here, and it isn’t close. Its recommendation system, topic pages, and publications put your writing in front of readers who’ve never heard of you. Substack has grown its own discovery (Notes, recommendations between newsletters), and it’s meaningful — but Substack growth still leans on you bringing or building the audience.

If you’re starting from zero and just want readers, Medium delivers them fastest.

Ownership and Portability

Substack wins here, and it isn’t close either. Every Substack subscriber is an email address you can export and take to any platform. Medium followers are Medium’s — there’s no list to export, so leaving means starting over.

This is the trade to be honest with yourself about: Medium rents you reach; Substack helps you build an asset. Which one matters depends on whether you’re writing for this quarter or for years.

Design, SEO, and the “Real Website” Question

Neither platform gives you much of a website. Every Substack looks like a Substack; every Medium story looks like Medium. SEO control is limited on both — Substack offers a custom domain (that one-time $50), while Medium’s domain and rankings belong to medium.com.

For occasional essays, that’s fine. For a publication with a brand, it’s the ceiling you’ll eventually hit — the point where writers typically look at Substack alternatives or a Medium alternative they fully control.

Where Ghost Fits (the Third Option)

Ghost is what many writers graduate to from either platform: the ownership model of Substack taken further, without the percentage fee.

• 0% platform fee — flat hosting (from $15/month, or $29/month with paid memberships) instead of 10% of your revenue, with payments in your own Stripe account
• A real website: your domain, your design via themes, full SEO control
• Built-in newsletters and memberships — the Substack feature set, owned outright
• A built-in importer for Substack posts and subscribers

The trade-off is Medium’s strength: no discovery network. Ghost suits writers who rank in search, bring an audience, or grow by referral. The full head-to-heads are here: Ghost vs Substack and Ghost vs Medium, plus the migration guide from Substack.

The Verdict

• Write for reach, starting from zero → Medium. The pot pays unevenly, but the readers are there.
• Build a subscriber business → Substack. Accept the 10% as the cost of simplicity.
• Both → Medium for discovery, Substack for the list.
• Own the whole thing → Ghost, once you’re past zero — the economics beat both at any real scale.

Comparing the wider field? Our best blogging platforms ranking covers all of them side by side.