Medium vs Substack earnings is one of those comparisons that sounds simple and isn't. Both platforms pay writers. But they use completely different mechanisms, and the "better" platform depends entirely on the size of your audience, the depth of your readers' trust, and how patient you're willing to be.

I've earned money on both — on my Medium and my Substack. Here's the honest comparison.

How Medium pays

Medium's Partner Program pays based on reading time from paying members. Readers pay five dollars per month for a Medium membership. Medium distributes a portion of that pool to writers based on how much time members spend with their content.

You don't need any subscribers to start earning. You publish, readers find your article (through Medium's algorithm, Google, or social sharing), and if they're paying members and they read your piece, you earn money. The relationship is between you and Medium's algorithm — not between you and a specific reader who chose to follow you.

Since the 2024 Partner Program update, external traffic also contributes to earnings. Articles that rank on Google now generate more than they used to, even from non-member readers.

Typical Medium earnings per article: $1–200. The wide range reflects the enormous variance in member traffic. Most articles earn $2–15. Occasional articles earn significantly more.

How Substack pays

Substack pays through paid subscriptions. Readers who value your newsletter pay a recurring monthly or annual fee — you set the price — and Substack takes ten percent. You keep ninety percent.

To earn anything on Substack, you need subscribers who trust you enough to pay. That means you need a list first, and then you need to convert some of that list to paid. The relationship is direct — between you and specific people who chose you.

Typical Substack earnings: zero until you have an audience, then scaling based on subscriber count and conversion rate. A common outcome for a writer with two thousand free subscribers who launches paid: $100–400/month, depending on niche and conversion rate. A writer with twenty thousand free subscribers and a strong offer: $2,000–6,000/month.

The core tradeoff

Medium pays smaller amounts to more people more quickly. Substack pays larger amounts to fewer people more slowly.

This isn't a flaw in either model — it's an intentional design difference. Medium is built for discoverability and instant monetization of attention. Substack is built for loyalty and recurring revenue from a smaller, more committed audience.

New writers with no audience almost always earn more from Medium in their first six months than from Substack. They have no list to convert. Medium's algorithm at least gives their work a chance of being found.

Writers with established audiences of five thousand or more subscribers almost always earn more from Substack than from Medium. The math of paid subscriptions at scale is simply better than reading-time-based CPMs.

Running the math at different audience sizes

Let's make this concrete. Assume a writer publishing two articles per week, targeting tech and productivity audiences, with reasonably good writing.

500 readers:
Medium: ~$20–60/month (assuming modest internal distribution)
Substack paid: ~$25–75/month (if 3% of 500 pay $5/month)
Roughly comparable at this size.

2,000 readers:
Medium: ~$60–150/month
Substack paid: ~$150–420/month (3% of 2,000 at $7/month avg)
Substack starts pulling ahead.

10,000 readers:
Medium: ~$150–400/month (harder to scale Medium earnings linearly)
Substack paid: ~$700–2,100/month (3% of 10,000 at $7/month avg)
Substack is materially better.

These are rough estimates — real numbers vary significantly based on niche, content quality, and how actively you're growing. But the directional pattern holds across almost every writer I know who has data on both platforms.

What Medium does better

Medium still beats Substack on a few things that matter:

Zero-to-earnings speed. You can publish your first Medium article today and earn something from it this month. On Substack, you earn nothing until you've built and converted an audience. For writers who need some income signal while they're building, Medium provides that.

Discovery. Medium's algorithm surfaces your content to readers who don't know you exist. Substack's discovery features (Notes, recommendations, search) are improving, but Medium still has a larger reading audience and more established discovery infrastructure.

SEO headstart. Medium's domain authority is high. New articles on Medium can rank on Google within days. A brand-new Substack without a track record takes longer to rank for the same keywords.

What Substack does better

Substack beats Medium on the things that matter most for building a sustainable writing business:

Audience ownership. You own your Substack subscriber list. You can export every email address. If Substack disappears tomorrow, you take your readers with you. Medium followers are Medium's followers — you can't take them anywhere.

Earnings ceiling. There's no practical ceiling on Substack earnings because you're not limited by what Medium's algorithm decides to pay per member-read. If you have a hundred thousand subscribers and a three percent paid conversion at ten dollars per month, that's $300,000 per year. No Medium writer is earning that from the Partner Program.

Relationship depth. Paid Substack subscribers are your most engaged readers. They chose to pay for your writing specifically. That relationship — with specific, named, paying readers — is categorically different from anonymous Medium traffic.

The strategy that works best

The most effective approach for most writers isn't choosing one platform over the other. It's using both in the right sequence. I cover the full dual-platform playbook in my Dual Strategy guide. Here's the short version:

Build your audience on Substack. Treat it as your home — your list, your brand, your real business. Optimize your posts for Google search so you get subscriber growth from search traffic. Use Substack Notes to build visibility in the ecosystem. Pursue recommendations to grow from other newsletters.

Then republish on Medium. Every Substack post, three to five days after publishing, goes to Medium with a canonical link pointing back to Substack. Medium readers discover your work. Some subscribe to your newsletter. Your Substack post gets a backlink from Medium's high-authority domain, which helps it rank on Google.

Medium becomes a distribution multiplier for your Substack. The Medium earnings are a bonus — not the point. The point is the subscribers Medium sends to your list, where they eventually become paid subscribers who pay you directly, forever, at a rate that compounds.

Conclusion

Medium pays faster. Substack pays more. The right answer depends on where you are in building your audience.

If you're starting from zero: use Medium to build your early audience and earn while you grow. If you have an established list: Substack's paid subscription model will almost certainly earn you more per reader than Medium's Partner Program.

And if you're serious about building a writing business rather than just earning some extra income, you'll end up using both — with Substack as the foundation and Medium as the distribution layer on top.

For more on the full Substack vs Medium picture beyond just earnings, see my complete platform comparison. And for what Medium writer earnings actually look like month by month, this is the realistic breakdown. If you want to understand how Medium calculates those earnings in the first place, my breakdown of Medium's per-view pay has the real numbers.

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