X Articles vs Substack vs Medium
Three places to publish long-form writing, compared on audience, money, ownership, export and search visibility.
Three places to publish long-form writing, compared on audience, money, ownership, export and search visibility.
Platform rules and fees change. The table summarizes how each platform works at the time of writing (October 2026); check each platform's current terms before you decide.
| X Articles | Substack | Medium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main audience | Your followers and X's timeline | Email subscribers | Medium readers and members |
| Who can publish | Premium-tier subscribers | Anyone | Anyone |
| Monetization | X's creator payouts based on engagement from Premium users | Paid subscriptions; Substack takes 10% plus payment processing fees | Partner Program, paid by member reading time |
| Audience ownership | Followers, not a list you can export | Subscriber list is exportable | Followers and email on-platform |
| Export of posts | No built-in article export | Export posts and subscribers | Account data export |
X Articles sit where an existing audience already is. If you have followers, an Article can reach them with no new sign-up, and good posts can spread by reposts. The flip side is that the timeline decides what gets seen, and followers are not a list you control.
Substack delivers posts to subscribers' inboxes, so reach is more predictable but starts from zero. It also has its own recommendations and app.
Medium has built-in readers and topic feeds, which helps new writers be found. Much of the audience, however, is on a metered membership model, and reach depends on Medium's distribution.
X shifted its creator payouts in November 2024 to engagement from Premium subscribers rather than ad revenue (MediaPost). Substack lets you set prices for paid subscriptions and takes 10% plus Stripe fees (Substack FAQ). Medium distributes membership fees by member reading time (Medium Help). Earnings on all three vary widely, and we do not quote income figures.
This is the biggest difference. A Substack publication comes with an exportable subscriber list and exportable posts, so you can move to another platform. X offers an account data archive of your posts, but, as far as we can tell, Articles are not clearly covered in it, and there is no one-click export of your Articles. Medium lets you download your account data, although your readers stay on Medium.
If you publish Articles on X, keep your own copy. Xtracticle's Markdown export turns an Article into a clean .md file (with optional front-matter) that you can reuse on a blog, Substack or Obsidian. The backup guide shows a workflow.
Substack and Medium pages are ordinary public web pages that search engines index. X content is indexed too, but X is a heavy, login-oriented app, and how much of an Article is crawlable or shown to logged-out users changes. Treat X as a distribution channel and your own domain or newsletter as the place that earns lasting search traffic.
They are not exclusive. A common setup is to write once, publish on your own newsletter, and share on X.
They serve different goals. X Articles reach your existing X followers directly; Substack gives you an exportable email list and paid subscriptions. Many writers use both.
X has no one-click Article export. You can save each one as Markdown, PDF or ZIP with Xtracticle by pasting its link.
At the time of writing (October 2026), Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, plus payment processing fees from Stripe. Check its FAQ for current terms.
Through the Partner Program, which distributes membership fees based on how long members read or listen to a writer's stories.
Content on your own domain or newsletter archive usually gives the most durable search visibility. Substack and Medium pages are public web pages; X is mainly a social distribution channel.