Substack vs Medium: 5 Big Differences That Could Change How You Grow as a Writer

Medium and Substack are popular tools for writers, but they’re built with different goals in mind.

Both platforms let you:

• Publish long-form written content
• Build an email following
• Earn money directly from your work
• Grow a personal brand as a writer or thought leader

But despite their similarities, choosing between the two isn’t always simple. 

Do you pick Medium for its built-in reach or Substack for its control and independence? And what if you want both an audience and a business?

In this guide, I’ll compare how each platform handles audience growth, monetization, ownership, and long-term success. I’ll also flag the hidden trade-offs you won’t see on their landing pages.

Let’s get started.

Substack vs Medium Comparison Overview

Category	Medium	Substack
Monetization & Business Model	Partner Program Member-only stories Earnings based on member reading time	Paid subscriptions (monthly, annual, Founding Member)  Pledges & Boost features  Revenue share (10% fee)
Audience & Discoverability	Large built-in audience Algorithm-driven recommendations Homepage and email digest distribution	Email list ownership Creator-to-creator recommendations Growth via self-promotion
Content Formats & Organization	Rich text editor Multimedia embeds (300+ providers)	Email newsletters  Podcast  Video hosting  “Notes” for short content
Community & Engagement	Comments (“Responses”) Collaborative Publications	Comments on posts “Chat” for group discussions “Notes” for micro-blogging
Automation & Workflows	Automated content distribution to followers	Basic automations (e.g., welcome emails)
Ownership & Portability	Retain content copyright	Full ownership of content & email list CSV export of subscriber data

Substack vs Medium: Who Are They For?

Medium

Medium is great for writers and creatives who want to reach a wide audience without struggling with marketing or email lists. It has a built-in audience and smart tools that help your work get noticed, even if you’re new.

Substack

Substack is ideal for writers, journalists, and creators who want to turn their work into a business and connect directly with readers. Its paid newsletter setup provides steady income and lets you own your email list.

Substack vs Medium: I Tried Both — Here’s What Stood Out

In this section, I’ll explain how Medium and Substack compare based on their core features. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Monetization and Business Model
• Audience Acquisition & Discoverability
• Content Formats and Organization
• Community and Engagement Tools
• Ownership and Portability
• The Ultimate Substack vs Medium Alternative: GroupApp

1. Substack vs Medium: Monetization and Business Model

Both Medium and Substack let you earn from your writing, but how they handle revenue, audience connection, and business control feels different once you start using them.

Let me show you how they compare side-by-side.

Substack Pays You Directly Through Your Readers, While Medium Pays You From a Shared Revenue Pool

Substack runs on a direct subscription model. You decide what content is free and what goes behind a paywall. You also set your own pricing (monthly, annual, or even offer a “founding member” tier); whenever someone subscribes, that money goes directly to you.

The platform takes 10% of your earnings, and Stripe’s fees are 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, plus an additional 0.7% billing fee for recurring subscriptions on credit cards.

Medium, on the other hand, runs a revenue pool system. You can join the Medium Partner Program and place your content behind a paywall. 

From there, you get paid based on how long Medium’s paying members read your articles and how much engagement (like claps) you receive.

Your payout comes from a portion of Medium’s membership fees. That means your income depends not only on how good your writing is but also on how well it performs relative to every other writer on Medium (and how the algorithm treats it).

Substack Income Is Steady, While Medium Earnings Change Each Month.

With Substack, you can forecast your income. If you have 200 paying subscribers at $5/month, your monthly gross revenue would be $1,000. After fees are deducted (10% to Substack plus payment processor fees), your net income would be a predictable amount that stays fairly stable unless a subscriber cancels or a new one joins.

This stability lets you budget, plan, and grow your business over time.

Medium’s income, in contrast, is anything but stable. You might publish a viral piece that brings in a few hundred dollars one month. But the next month? The algorithm might not push your work the same way, or the platform might have fewer active readers. 

You could go from $500 to $50 without changing your writing.

Such unpredictability makes Medium hard to rely on as a primary income source, especially for anyone trying to write full-time.

Substack Gives You Tools to Grow, While Medium Locks You Into Its Platform

Substack gives you tools to help convert readers into subscribers. You can:

• Enable Pledges, where readers commit to paying once you go paid
• Use Boost, which automatically offers personalized discounts to likely subscribers
• Customize your welcome email to onboard new readers

It also gives you access to your subscribers’ email addresses, so even if you leave Substack, you still have your audience.

You cannot create the kind of direct subscription tiers that Substack offers. While Medium has its own membership tiers (‘Medium Member’ and ‘Friend of Medium’), writers cannot set their own pricing or create different subscription levels for their content.

Substack Gives You Ownership. Medium Gives You Exposure

Substack treats you like a business owner. You’re responsible for marketing and growth, but also own your content and audience. Everything is in your control: pricing, delivery, and the option to move your content elsewhere.

Medium functions more like a content hosting platform. You get access to Medium’s large built-in audience, which is great for visibility, especially at the start of your career. But you never get to own your relationship with individual readers. 

While publication editors can send newsletters to their followers, you cannot export an email list or contact individual readers directly, so your audience is essentially locked within the Medium ecosystem.

Substack vs Medium: Monetization Summary

Here’s how the monetization models stack up:

Feature	Substack	Medium
Revenue model	Direct subscriptions from readers	Shared revenue pool based on reading time
Control over pricing	Full control; you set monthly/annual rates	No control; Medium decides earnings
Audience ownership	Yes, the email list and data belong to you	No, you cannot export or directly message readers
Earnings predictability	High, based on subscription count	Low; depends on the algorithm and platform engagement
Discovery tools	Limited; you promote on your own	Strong, built-in audience and algorithmic discovery
Business scalability	Strong; grows with your subscribers	Weak; limited by platform rules and volatility
Revenue loss to fees	10% Substack  fees	Variable (Medium takes a cut from the revenue pool)

Substack vs Medium Monetization: Winner

It depends on your goal, but if you’re thinking long term, Substack wins. It gives you a steady income, direct audience access, and full control. Medium is easier to start and great for exposure, but its earnings are unpredictable and driven by algorithms.

2. Substack vs Medium: Audience Acquisition and Discoverability

When it comes to getting your writing in front of readers, Medium and Substack take radically different approaches.

Simply put, Medium gives you access to its readers, while Substack helps you grow your own.

Let’s look at how they compare in detail.

Medium Helps You Get Noticed Quickly

Medium has a massive built-in audience and an algorithm to push content to the right people. Writers don’t have to work too hard on promotion because the platform does much of the heavy lifting.

Here’s how Medium helps you get discovered:

• Built-in distribution engine: Medium’s recommendation algorithm promotes your content based on reader interests and engagement.
• Homepage placement: Top-performing articles can appear on Medium’s homepage — giving you instant exposure.
• Email digests: Medium distributes stories to followers and email subscribers. The platform can also feature stories in its email digests, which can reach many readers.

• Topic pages: Your articles are automatically sorted into niche categories (Productivity, Tech, Health), helping the right readers find you.

What this means: Even if you’re just starting out, Medium gives you a shot at going viral. You can publish your first article and, if it resonates, reach tens of thousands of readers within days.

But the downside is that you don’t own any of it.

• No email list access: While publication editors can send newsletters to their followers, Medium does not provide writers with a downloadable list of their subscribers’ email addresses, so you cannot take your audience with you.
• No portability: If you leave Medium, your audience stays behind. You can’t export or reconnect with them outside the platform.
• Algorithm dependence: Your reach is tied to Medium’s algorithm, which can change anytime.

Substack Gives You Control, but No Shortcuts

Substack doesn’t hand you an audience; it gives you the tools to build one.

That starts with email and full ownership.

Here’s how Substack helps you grow:

• Email list ownership: Every subscriber is added to your list. You can download it, migrate it, and communicate directly.

• Direct delivery: Whenever you hit publish, your content lands in your subscribers’ inboxes.
• Recommendations: Writers can recommend other writers on the platform, helping with discovery inside the network.
• Pledges & Boost: Substack provides features like ‘Pledges,’ where readers can pre-commit to paying for your content. It also has a ‘Boost’ feature that automatically shows discounts to readers to help accelerate revenue growth.

Why it works: Substack follows an “email-first” model, where readers subscribe because they want to hear from you, not because an algorithm pushed your story. This creates a highly engaged audience that sticks around. And since you own the list, you can build a long-term business on your terms.

But here’s the catch: There’s no built-in virality engine.

• No discovery homepage: Substack has no central homepage showcasing trending content.
• Limited search visibility: The platform’s audience growth is primarily driven by the writer’s own efforts and recommendations from other writers. This suggests that your posts may have limited visibility without an existing following or a recommendation.
• You’re responsible for promoting your work: Growth on Substack depends heavily on your ability to promote your work on social media, podcasts, other newsletters, etc.

Substack vs Medium: Audience Acquisition and Discoverability Summary

Feature	Medium	Substack
Discoverability	Strong built-in traffic via the algorithm	Limited and relies on external promotion
Audience Ownership	You don’t own emails or data	Full ownership of your email list
Email Access	No direct access to individual subscriber emails or a full exportable list	Full exportable list
Portability	Locked into Medium’s ecosystem	You can move your list anywhere
Control over Reach	Direct email delivery provides a reliable channel for reaching your subscribers, but doesn’t guarantee engagement	Direct email delivery ensures reach

So, Who Wins?

It depends on your goals.

Use Medium for quick exposure with minimal effort. It’s a great place to experiment, build confidence, and go viral, especially if you’re starting without an audience.

Choose Substack if you want to own your audience and build a long-term writing business. It takes more effort at first, but it gives you freedom, control, and direct reader access for sustainable growth.

3. Substack vs Medium: Content Formats and Organization

Substack and Medium let you publish long-form writing and build an audience, but differ in supporting diverse content types and organizing them for a better creator and reader experience.

Let’s explore these differences.

Medium Is a Simple Blog Platform, While Substack Is a Full-Featured Content Hub

Medium’s WYSIWYG text editor is simple and easy for essays and articles, with features like bold text, quotes, lists, headers, and images. 

You can also add multimedia content from over 300 providers by pasting a link, as the platform supports embedding via Embed.ly.

But that’s where the flexibility ends.

Medium is made for reading, not organizing. It’s great for essays, but not for courses, resource hubs, or multimedia content.

On the other hand, Substack supports a variety of content, including newsletters, podcasts, and video (live and uploaded). The platform also has a ‘Notes’ feature for short-form posts and real-time sharing, allowing you to run your entire publication from a single dashboard.

Medium Is Simple and Linear. Substack Has More Structure but Can Still Feel Cluttered

Medium organizes content in a simple feed, showing the newest posts first. Everything you publish appears as a blog post without folders, collections, or a central dashboard for premium resources.

If you wanted to publish a structured 10-part course, you’d have to publish 10 separate articles. While you can group them within a publication, the linear structure still forces readers to navigate between parts, unlike a dedicated course platform.

Substack lets you publish in different formats, but the content is still arranged in a timeline. Despite offering newsletters, podcasts, videos, and notes, they all live inside the same scrolling feed. There’s no folder system or visual dashboard to group content into structured themes, paths, or collections.

Subscribers have to scroll or use the search bar to find older content. While there are some ways to highlight key posts, the platform’s chronological organization prevents you from building a true ‘learning path’ or structured course journey for your audience.

Medium Keeps Your Content and Community Separate. Substack Links Them, but Not Smoothly

Medium lacks a centralized dashboard for community conversations or threads outside individual articles. Each post functions as a silo, which makes building a sustained, ongoing community difficult.

Substack offers a variety of interaction tools, including subscriber-only chats, comments on posts, and the ‘Notes’ feature. However, these tools are not fully integrated into a single, centralized experience. This makes it challenging to build a cohesive learning experience where all content and community discussions are easily interlinked and organized.

Substack Wins for Format Diversity, but Both Fail at Structured Content Delivery

Substack gives creators more tools to diversify their content, making it ideal if you want to combine writing with video, audio, and community updates. However, its lack of advanced content organization prevents it from being a true course platform.

Medium is clean and simple, but that can be a problem if you want to share more than just text. It’s built for reading, not for organizing or growing your content.

If you’re building a multimedia brand with diverse content, Substack is the better bet. But if you’re focused purely on writing and tapping into an existing reader network, Medium is still a decent option.

Substack vs Medium: Content Formats and Organization Summary

Feature	Substack	Medium
Supported Content Types	Text, audio, video, livestreams, Notes (microblogging)	Long-form text with multimedia embeds, including images, GIFs, code snippets, audio, and videos
Organization Tools	Chronological feed, some post pinning, no folders or libraries	Purely chronological, no grouping, no courses or collections
Community Tools	Comments, private chats, Notes, limited integration	Comments and collaborative ‘Publications’ for multiple authors
Ideal Use Case	Creators running a publication with multiple content types (writers + podcast owners)	Writers focused on essays, articles, and exposure via the Medium network

4. Substack vs Medium: Community and Engagement Tools

Both Substack and Medium let creators interact with their audience, but Substack focuses more on building community. Medium is more passive and centered around articles.

Here’s how they fare:

Substack Offers Chat, Notes, and Comments

Substack provides a variety of engagement tools, including ‘Chat’ for private discussions, ‘Notes’ for real-time sharing, and a comments section on each post. These features give creators multiple ways to interact with their audience.

The benefits include:

• Chat is ideal for live discussion, Q&As, or community threads
• Notes are great for short updates, questions, polls, or shares, like Twitter, but just for your subscribers
• Comments allow for post-specific feedback and debates

Medium Sticks With Traditional Comments and Collaborative “Publications,” but Lacks Real Community Flow

Medium supports article comments (called “Responses”) and allows creators to publish into shared “Publications,” similar to digital magazines run by multiple contributors.

The advantages are: 

• Publications give newer writers access to large audiences and editorial standards
• Comments enable readers to ask questions or give feedback directly under the article

The platform lacks features for a live space, side-channels, or a central community hub. This limits conversations to the comments section of individual articles, which may hinder the continuation of discussions.

Substack Supports Private, Paid-Only Discussions, but Medium Doesn’t

Substack allows you to create private chat threads and gives you the option to only let paid subscribers reply, which is ideal for creating exclusive spaces for your community. 

However, the ‘Notes’ feature is for broader, real-time sharing and discovery.

Medium’s primary engagement is public and tied to articles. While some options exist for privately sharing content, the platform does not offer dedicated private discussion spaces like Substack’s Chat.

Substack Lacks Structure. Medium Lacks Options

Neither platform offers a full suite of community tools like dedicated channels or member profiles. Substack’s Chat is a single, continuous stream, making it challenging for larger communities to organize discussions by topic, as important threads can get lost.

One of the primary ways to foster discussion on Medium is to publish new posts and encourage engagement in the comments. Publication editors can also send email newsletters to their followers to spark conversation.

Substack vs Medium: Community and Engagement Tools Summary

Feature	Substack	Medium
Comments on Posts	Yes	Yes (called ‘Responses’)
Real-Time Chat	Yes (creator can choose to limit replies to paid subscribers)	No
Microblogging	“Notes” feature (Twitter-style)	No
Private Spaces	Chats/Notes for paid subscribers	None
Member Directory	No	No
Community Structure (e.g., channels, threads)	Basic (single-threaded Chat)	Limited (Publications for collaborative authorship)

5. Substack vs Medium: Ownership and Portability

On both Medium and Substack, you retain copyright over everything you publish. That’s a given; you’re not giving away intellectual property. But the real difference lies in who owns the relationship with your readers.

Content Ownership: Both Win, but Only One Gives Full Control

Medium allows you to retain copyright. You can legally repost your articles elsewhere, repackage them, or license them independently. This is foundational, but also expected.

Substack offers the same, but adds more practical control. For example, if you decide to move off Substack, you can export your subscriber list in a CSV file, and because you retain full ownership, you can also take your content and media with you.

Audience Ownership: The Real Dealbreaker

This is where the platforms part ways.

On Medium, you don’t own your audience’s data. While you can send newsletters to your publication followers, you cannot export an email list or contact individual readers outside the platform’s tools.

Substack, on the other hand, gives you full control of your subscriber list. Every subscriber, free or paid, is an email address you can download anytime.

Portability: Substack Offers a Safety Net

Moving your content off Medium may require manually copying and pasting or using third-party tools. 

And because custom domains are only available to publications, not individual writers, a writer’s personal links will be tied to the medium.com domain. If you leave the platform, links would break, negatively impacting your online presence.

Substack offers built-in export tools. You can download your email list, posts, and media with a few clicks. Custom domains are available to all users, not just organizations, which means you can build a brand on yourname.com and take it with you if you ever leave.

Verdict: Substack Wins for Business Ownership

Substack wins, not because Medium is bad at content hosting, but because owning your audience and brand allows you to future-proof your work. On Medium, your growth benefits the platform. On Substack, it benefits you.

Substack vs Medium: Ownership and Portability Summary

Feature	Medium	Substack
Content Ownership	Yes. Writers retain copyright	Yes. Writers retain copyright
Audience Data Ownership	No. You don’t own your audience list	Yes. Full access to email subscribers
Email List Export	Not allowed	Fully exportable in CSV format
Custom Domain Support	Available only on publications (limited)	Available on all newsletters
Content Export	Limited. No bulk export feature	Export all content and media easily
Infrastructure Dependence	Fully tied to Medium’s ecosystem	Optional. Portable content and list

Medium Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Large, built-in audience for immediate exposure	❌ No audience ownership (cannot export email list)
✅ Algorithm for content discoverability	❌ Unpredictable and volatile income from the Partner Program
✅ Simple, elegant, and distraction-free writing interface	❌ Limited customization and branding options
✅ Ability to earn money without directly selling subscriptions	❌ Lack of advanced community management tools
✅ Opportunity for a single post to go viral and generate a large payout	❌ Content is organized chronologically, making it difficult to create a structured resource library
✅ Easy collaboration through publications	❌ Zero built-in automation or workflows
	❌ Business is vulnerable to changes in the platform’s algorithm
	❌ Does not support direct, recurring subscriptions from readers
	❌ Cannot create branded landing pages
	❌ Lacks the ability to host podcasts or video natively

Substack Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Predictable, recurring revenue through a subscription model	❌ Significant 10% transaction fee on all subscription revenue
✅ Full ownership of your content and email list	❌ Limited built-in discoverability (audience growth is on the creator)
✅ Ability to export your subscriber list for portability	❌ Lacks advanced, conditional automation and workflows
✅ Direct and personal relationship with your audience	❌ Community tools are limited and not as robust as dedicated platforms
✅ More customization and branding options than Medium	❌ No centralized resource library for organizing diverse content
✅ Integrated support for podcasts and video	❌ No built-in course creation or educational features
✅ “Chat” feature for more intimate group discussions	❌ The “Notes” feature can feel fragmented from core content
	❌ Heavy reliance on the creator’s own marketing efforts
	❌ Migration of content and audience can still be complex
	❌ Lacks powerful landing page builders for marketing

Substack or Medium: Which One Should You Pick?

We’ve compared Medium and Substack and their features, strengths, and weaknesses. Both let you share your writing, but they’re made for different creators.

Choose Medium if you want to grow your audience fast and focus on writing. It’s great for exposure, but you don’t own your audience, and income can be unpredictable.

Choose Substack if you want to build a long-term writing business. You own your email list, can earn a steady income, and have full control, but it takes more work to grow.

With GroupApp, you get Substack’s core strengths of audience ownership and steady income potential in an all-in-one platform. Unlike Medium and Substack, you can go beyond just publishing articles by adding courses, discussions, and other interactive features to deepen engagement while keeping full control over your community, content, and revenue.

GroupApp is for creators who want the security and profitability of Substack’s model, but with a full suite of business and community tools neither platform provides.

GroupApp: The Ultimate Substack vs Medium Alternative

GroupApp gives you everything you need to grow your business, share your content, and unite your community.

Here’s what you get:

• Full control in one place: Run your business, share content, and build community without juggling tools.
• 0% transaction fees: Keep 100% of your earnings from subscriptions, courses, and memberships.
• All content and community in one hub: Organize videos, articles, PDFs, and host discussions under one roof.
  Custom branding: Use your own colors, logo, and design to make the platform match your style.
• Easy automation: GroupApp’s powerful workflows with conditional logic allow you to set up member onboarding and content delivery to run automatically in the background, saving countless hours of manual work.
• Pro community tools: Manage members, channels, and discussions with tools made for real engagement.
• Built to grow your business: A single platform to launch, manage, and scale your brand easily.