Substack vs Medium 2026: Revenue, Features & Best Choice

Medium and Substack both position themselves as tools for serious writers, but they've evolved toward fundamentally different economic models — and the right choice depends almost entirely on whether you're building an audience from scratch or converting one you already have.

Substack's model is built around the newsletter-first, paid subscription premise. Writers publish via email to subscribers, optionally charge monthly or annual fees, and Substack takes 10% of gross revenue. The platform provides no organic discovery beyond its internal "Notes" feed and Substack's own editorial recommendations. This makes Substack powerful for writers who already have an audience — converting existing followers into paying subscribers with zero technical overhead. As of 2025, Substack has surpassed 5 million paid subscriptions, more than doubling in two years. Individual newsletters like The Free Press, Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American, and Emily Atkin's HEATED demonstrate that individual writers can generate six or seven-figure annual revenues independently of any media institution.

Medium's model operates differently. The Medium Partner Program pays writers based on reading time from paying Medium members ($5/month). Writers earn based on engagement, not direct subscriptions. This means Medium writers benefit from Medium's existing 100 million monthly readers — organic discovery, internal SEO, and curation by editors who can place articles on Medium's homepage or in major publications. For writers without an existing audience, this is a meaningful advantage: you can publish a well-crafted piece and reach thousands of readers within 24 hours without any existing follower base. Medium also hosts major publications (Towards Data Science, The Startup, Better Humans) that add institutional credibility to individual bylines.