What are the best indie alternatives to Medium?

6 curated indie and bootstrapped alternatives to Medium: Ghost, Substack, Buttondown, Mataroa, Bear Blog and more. All are smaller, founder-led tools that compete with Medium on price, openness or developer experience.

What category does Medium fall under?

Medium is listed in Newsletters & Email. See all newsletters & email tools in our directory.

Newsletters & Email6 alternatives

Alternatives to Medium

Medium is the long-running hosted blog platform. Indie alternatives offer ownership, OSS and writer-first models.

Visit Medium ↗

Compare Medium with…

Side-by-side pricing, founders and indie status.

Medium vs Bear Blog Medium vs Buttondown Medium vs Ghost Medium vs Hashnode Medium vs Mataroa Medium vs Substack

Top indie alternatives

Smaller, founder-led tools that quietly compete with Medium.

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Ghost

Open-source publishing.

Non-profit OSS — own your blog + audience.

$9/moOSS

visit ↗

Substack

Newsletter + paid publishing.

Newsletter-first competitor.

10% of paid subscriptions

visit ↗

Buttondown

Indie newsletter tool.

Solo-founder built.

$9/moBootstrapped

visit ↗

Mataroa

Bare blogging + newsletters.

Community-supported, ad-free.

$9/yr or pay what you wantOSSBootstrapped

visit ↗

Bear Blog

Minimal, fast blogging.

Indie solo-dev built.

visit ↗

Hashnode

Free blogging for devs.

Smaller dev-focused platform.

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