One thing I kept noticing was writers comparing the time they put into Medium with what they earned, and many weren’t happy with the result.
The number was 9%.
That’s straight from Medium’s own Partner Program data, and it means only about 1 in 10 active writers earn more than $100 in a typical month.
And no, I’m not saying this to make you stop writing.
I’m saying it because if you’re searching for Medium alternatives, you probably already sensed something was off, and that number confirms it’s not just you.
Medium is still a place you can publish. It has a real audience. The domain authority means your articles actually show up in Google sometimes.
But the tradeoffs are worth knowing before you commit to it as your main home. You don’t own your readers. The algorithm decides who sees your work.
And the income is, for most writers, pretty unpredictable.
So here’s what people are actually moving to, and what each one is actually like to use in 2026.
What Each Platform Is Good For (Quick Look)
Before we get into the full list, here’s what each platform really is, how it works, and what kind of people usually use it.
| Platform | Best For | Free Plan | Earns From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professionals building visibility | Yes | Clients, sponsored posts | |
| Substack | Newsletter-first writers | Yes | Paid subscriptions |
| Kit | Creators who want email control | Yes (up to 10k subs) | Email marketing, products |
| HubPages | General content writers | Yes | Revenue share (~$3/1k impressions) |
| Vocal.Media | Storytellers, poets, creatives | Yes | Per-read payments |
| DEV Community | Developers and coders | Yes | Community only |
| WordPress | Full-ownership bloggers and businesses | Self-hosted | Ads, affiliates, products |
| Write.as | Privacy-first, anonymous writers | No (paid only) | External only |
Some platforms help you write and get your work in front of new people. Some are mainly for managing the audience you’ve already built.
A few are genuinely useful, and some are only worth using if they match your situation.
1. LinkedIn
LinkedIn changed in a way that surprised a lot of people. It’s not just job posts and corporate announcements anymore. Somewhere along the way it became a place to publish writing, especially if your topic has any kind of professional angle.
If you want to get results there, you need to activate creator mode first. That changes how your profile looks and gives you access to analytics and the newsletter feature. From there, you can publish long-form articles or short posts, and both can reach people if they get early engagement.
On the other hand, LinkedIn comes with its built-in reach. When your post gets early comments and other engagement, LinkedIn may show it to more people, even outside your network if it’s relevant.
Medium still recommends posts too, but it depends much more on what readers are interested in than on social activity.
But here, there’s no partner program, no per-read income. The way writers make money here is indirect, through clients finding them, through sponsored post deals once the following is large enough, or by promoting their own products or services.
If you’re a freelancer or consultant, though, the ROI can be better than any pay-per-read platform. And the keyword research side of things matters here too. Optimizing your articles for LinkedIn search actually helps with visibility.
2. Substack
Substack is probably the first thing most writers try after Medium, and I get it. You sign up, you write something, you hit publish. It takes maybe fifteen minutes to get going. No website to manage, no hosting bill, none of that.
What makes Substack actually worth it is that you own your subscribers, or we can say, your email list. If you build 500 subscribers there and decide to leave, you can take that list with you.
That’s not how it works on Medium. Your followers there live on Medium’s platform, and if Medium changes something, you have no say in it.
Substack also has a recommendation network now, where other writers can recommend your newsletter to their readers and help you grow. That’s useful, especially if you’re starting from zero.
But Substack takes 10% of everything you earn from paid subscriptions. And the growth tools are some kind of thin, no built-in referral program, no email automation for welcome sequences, nothing that helps you convert readers into paying subscribers over time.
You have to grow your audience outside Substack and bring people in yourself. If you already have an audience somewhere else, Substack is a great choice. If you’re starting from scratch, it’s not as easy as the landing page makes it look.
3. Kit (Formerly ConvertKit)
Kit is not exactly a Medium alternative in the way the others on this list are. It’s not a place where readers browse and discover you. It’s an email marketing platform, so think of it as the tool you use to manage and grow a list of readers, with the option to monetize that list directly.
I use Kit for the TalkBitz newsletter, and the difference compared to Substack shows up in control. You can set up automations, segment subscribers, create landing pages, and run paid subscriptions, all in one place.
The coolest thing here is, the free plan goes up to 10,000 subscribers, which is more than enough to grow before you have to start paying.
For monetization, Kit takes a 3.5% commission plus processing fees on paid subscriptions. That’s lower than Substack’s 10%. You can also sell digital products through Kit directly, which Substack doesn’t handle well.
But the thing is, Kit doesn’t have a reading community. Nobody is browsing Kit and discovering new writers. You bring your own traffic and build your own audience.
If you’re expecting Kit to replace Medium’s built-in reader base, it won’t. But if you want to build your own audience instead of depending on someone else’s algorithm, Kit is definitely worth trying.
4. HubPages
HubPages is for writers who want to publish content and earn from it without building their own website. You write articles, the platform handles the tech, and you earn a share of ad revenue based on impressions.
According to their own documentation, the average earnings are about $3 per 1,000 impressions. But that varies a lot depending on your niche and how much traffic your articles pull in.
The platform also has a network of topic-specific sites that it pushes well-performing content to, which can increase your visibility if your articles hit their quality bar.
But if we look a bit closer, HubPages is not as strong in search as it used to be, with its visibility changing a lot over the past few years.
So yes, getting some meaningful traffic takes time and consistent publishing, and the income ceiling might also be lower than it was five or six years ago.
It’s worth trying if you want somewhere low-effort to turn existing writing skills into a small side income, but I wouldn’t plan a full writing career around it.
5. Vocal.Media
Vocal is probably the closest to Medium in how people read content. It has a clean look, different categories, and a mix of writers from different places. You publish articles, readers find it, and you make money based on reads.
The pay structure is somewhat decent compared to HubPages. Free members earn $3.80 for every 1,000 reads. With Vocal+ (about $10/month or a yearly plan), you can earn $6 per 1,000 reads and join exclusive challenges that offer cash prizes. Readers can also send you tips directly, which is a good bonus.
You can find categories like fiction, poetry, technology, health, and more, so it’s not only a place for professional writing like Medium can sometimes feel.
The main thing to know is that getting a good number of reads takes time. The platform’s audience is smaller than Medium’s, and discoverability relies heavily on how much you promote your own work outside the platform.
The numbers can work out over time, but don’t start with the expectation of making money quickly.
6. DEV Community (dev.to)
DEV is a great place to know about if your content is about tech, coding, software, or developers. It combines a blog platform, forum, and community in one place. People actually interact there by commenting, sharing, and replying to each other.
The writing experience is clean and code-friendly. You can paste code snippets, use tags to categorize posts, and get reactions and bookmarks from readers. The community is pretty active, and people often join conversations, share ideas, and reply to others.
For earning, DEV added Web Monetization a while back, which allows supported browsers and wallets to send small payments to authors as people read. The payments are usually very small because adoption is still limited.
So, don’t expect this to become a real income source. The bigger value of DEV is the audience, feedback from other developers, and building your reputation in tech.
7. WordPress
WordPress is the one I can talk about from my own experience better because TalkBitz runs on WordPress and is hosted on Cloudways. So when I say it has a learning curve, I mean I had to learn it myself.
Setting up WordPress isn’t as simple as signing up for Substack. You need hosting, like from Bluehost (best pick for beginners), a domain, a theme, and probably a few plugins before things look the way you want.
There were weeks early on where something small would break and I’d spend more time troubleshooting than actually writing. That happens, and it’s something you should know before getting into it.
But what you get on the other side is complete ownership. Your content lives on your own domain. You can run ads, set up affiliate links, sell products, build an email list, create a membership area, and do all of it without giving a cut of your income to any platform except your hosting provider.
Not only that, over 41% of all websites run on WordPress. That’s not an accident. It grows as your needs grow, and the website you build is really yours, unlike platforms like Medium, Substack, and HubPages.
So if your goal is just to write and share ideas casually, WordPress is more than you need. But if you’re building something, a brand, a writing business, a long-term income, it’s the strongest option on this list.
8. Write.as
Write.as is the most minimal platform I found as an alternative to Medium. There are no social features, no comments, and no analytics dashboard trying to tell you what to optimize. You write, you publish, you get a URL. That’s it.
The whole point is privacy. You don’t even need an account to publish anonymously. You get a link, you share it with whoever you want, or you don’t share it at all. It’s designed for people who want to write without the performance pressure of being on a platform.
One thing that is also worth knowing is Write.as has a free tier with a plain text editor and one blog, but new signups for it are currently closed. So for most people landing there today, the paid plan at around $6/month is the starting point.
Write.as supports Web Monetization, but the main service that made it practical, Coil, shut down in 2023. Since adoption is still very limited, it is not a reliable way to earn money from your writing right now.
No partner program, no subscriptions through the platform, nothing. If making money from your writing is the goal, you’d have to build that somewhere else and use Write.as purely as a publishing space.
It can work as a portfolio or a private writing outlet, but as a Medium replacement for income, it’s not the right fit.
Which One Should You Actually Pick
If you want to leave Medium, I would say WordPress is the best option.
That is the one where you’re building something that belongs to you, not something that lives on a platform that can change the rules on you.
If you just want somewhere to keep writing while you figure out the longer plan, Substack and Kit are the easiest starts.
Ten minutes to set up, you have a real email list from day one, and if you stay consistent, the recommendation network can help you grow.
The platforms that pay you based on reads, like HubPages, Vocal.Media can bring in some extra income over time.
But I would treat them as a small extra income source, not something that can replace the money you expected from Medium.
On the other hand, LinkedIn is worth testing if you have any kind of professional angle to your writing. The income is indirect but visibility can be genuinely high if the content connects.
And before you pick a platform, make sure you can take your reader list with you anytime you need to.
That’s the one thing Medium never gave anyone, and after going through it once, it’s probably worth treating as a non-negotiable from here on.
