Medium vs Substack: I resent you both
A comparison that rejects monetization, audience hacking, and personal branding
Recently, someone I trust told me that I should move to Substack. I finally looked into it. After reading a bunch of comparison articles, here’s yet another. Why? Because nothing I read addressed my concerns—they are all obsessed about monetization.
I don’t care about making money
My goal is not to monetize my writing. The likelihood that I’ll make significant revenue from my writing is negligible. I’ll make more with consulting.
Even if I did, is it worth optimizing for right now? No. Yet almost every article comparing Medium and Substack focuses on monetization. I’m not playing that game.
So what do I care about? Read below.
F#*k a publishing schedule
The conventional wisdom: publish weekly or monthly because readers love predictability.
But I don’t write predictably. I write in fits and spurts. Sometimes I sit on a blog post for years until a conversation or question crystallizes my thinking. I’m not going to fill your inbox with drivel to serve an arbitrary schedule. I’ll publish when I think I have something meaningful to share.
Publications I once loved now feel like homework in my inbox. Same ideas, repackaged at 9am on Wednesday to optimize clicks. Real insights—at least in my field—aren’t predictable. So let’s stop pretending we can schedule them.
Stepping back—the entire concept of a week is arbitrary: so why structure your publishing life around it? I’m trying to unwind from productivity metrics that dominated the first 40 years of my life. The last thing I want to do is poison this writing thing I enjoy.
Substack builds in the expectation (and pressure) of a publishing schedule more than Medium.
Medium, better. Substack, worse.
I contain multitudes
Substack wisdom says: find your niche, build a dedicated audience.
Sure, I write mostly about civic tech and data. But I’m a complex person with wide-ranging interests. The idea that I’d commit myself to only writing about data and tech? That just engenders a soul sucking sound in my heart.
I stumbled into this work. It doesn’t have to define me. I’m a voracious reader with many interests. My real talent is synthesis and framework building. I might review books and topics far afield from government modernization. I can’t promise a theoretical “readership” a specific domain.
This goes back to: I’m not trying to brand myself to monetize myself. I’m writing because writing helps me think through complex things. And I like sharing my thoughts, even if it benefits only one person or none. (We’re all cosmically insignificant—so who cares how many read it?) It benefits me to write as “writing rearranges the furniture of the mind”.
Apparently, Medium is better for random discovery and sharing.
Medium, better. Substack, stop pressuring me.
No paywalls, no confusion
I dislike pop-ups that suggest readers need to pay when they don’t. So I don’t want people who are less familiar with one platform or another to be dissuaded by platform tricks.
Medium, goodish. Substack, please drop the subscribe screen.
Please just let me publish a table
I need to post a table. I just do. Tables are a succinct way of communicating complex comparisons. Just let me do that. I don’t care if it sucks on small screens. Read it on your laptop. Or don’t. Some things require a big screen.
They both suck at tables. It’s 2025—figure it out.
Medium, bad. Substack, also bad.
I write AND speak
I’ve wanted to do short videos or podcasts for some time. I’m only held back by fear of production needs and lack of skills. So a platform that allows me to do multimodal publications (and makes it easy) is compelling.
Medium, bad. Substack, better…I think?
AND sometimes I write and speak with others
The inability to credit coauthors is unfathomable to me.
Medium, what is wrong with you? Did you have a bad boss? Substack, thank you!
The SEO thing I apparently have to care about
This is not something I care about but apparently I have to. If you post the same content in multiple places, search engines don’t like it. Medium allows you to flag canonical links, Substack doesn’t, forcing you to post first on Substack.
Medium, good sport, love the collaboration! Substack - shame on you.
Verdict
Starting with this post: I’m going to originally post on Substack and immediately cross post on Medium (which includes all my old posts).
What I will NOT DO:
Slightly vary content between platforms to create artificial differentiation
Optimize for engagement
Apologize for posting tables
Commit to arbitrary publishing schedules
Limit myself to my supposed “niche”
PS I resent having to think about this. This relates to a broader policy concept I’ve been working on about digital platforms and incentives and the public that I will be writing about sometime soon. Or not ;-).