Round-up
Best platforms for independent journalists
If you report, analyse or comment on the news independently, you need somewhere to publish. This page compares the realistic options, including NewsPlatform — which is our product — and is explicit about when one of the others is the better answer.
Last updated October 2026.
How to choose
Three questions settle most of it:
- Do you need to charge readers? If yes, you need a platform with payments built in — Substack or Ghost.
- Do you need to own the site? Own domain, own design, own subscriber list — Ghost or WordPress.
- Do you mainly need to be read and found? Then a platform with an existing front page and strong indexing matters more than ownership — NewsPlatform or Medium.
NewsPlatform
Best for: publishing news articles free on an open, indexable site without running anything yourself.
NewsPlatform gives each writer a channel — name, description, imagery, category focus, public subscriber count — and puts every published article on a shared newest-first homepage, in a category section, in the site RSS feed and in the XML sitemap. Articles are prerendered as plain HTML with NewsArticle structured data, so search engines and AI assistants can read them without running JavaScript. There is a public read-only JSON API for recent stories and an authenticated write API for publishing programmatically. It is free, with no revenue cut.
Not for you if: you need paid subscriptions, a paywall, email newsletter sending, or a custom domain — NewsPlatform has none of those. Full detail on Publishing on NewsPlatform.
Substack
Best for: building an email list and charging for it.
As of October 2026, per substack.com, Substack is free to start, handles subscription payments for you and takes a percentage of paid-subscription revenue, supports custom domains, and has a large cross-recommendation network and reader app. If your model is paid subscribers, this is the default choice. The trade-off is that the centre of gravity is the inbox rather than an open, browsable news site. Detailed comparison: NewsPlatform vs Substack.
Ghost
Best for: owning your publication outright.
As of October 2026, per ghost.org, Ghost is open-source software under the MIT licence, run by a non-profit foundation, with built-in memberships, paid subscriptions and newsletters. You can self-host it for the cost of a server or pay for their managed hosting. It is the strongest option for a publication that is a business and wants nobody between it and its readers — at the cost of setup, maintenance and starting with no audience. Detailed comparison: NewsPlatform vs Ghost.
Medium
Best for: general-interest writing in front of a large existing readership.
As of October 2026, per medium.com, Medium is free to publish on, has a large audience across many topics, runs a paid membership programme through which writers can earn, and surfaces articles through recommendations rather than strictly by date. Some stories are member-only. It is less news-shaped than the others — no category ribbon, no location tags, no channel-level subscriber mechanics. Detailed comparison: NewsPlatform vs Medium.
Self-hosted WordPress
Best for: maximum flexibility if you are comfortable maintaining a site.
As of October 2026, per wordpress.org, WordPress is free open-source software with an enormous plugin and theme ecosystem, so almost anything — memberships, paywalls, newsletters, multi-author newsrooms — can be bolted on. The cost is that you are responsible for hosting, updates, security and performance, and that it takes real work to get right.
A note on Ground News
People searching for "independent news platforms" often land on Ground News. It is not a publishing platform: as of October 2026, per its website, it aggregates coverage from existing outlets and shows how sources across the political spectrum framed the same story. You cannot publish your own reporting to it. It is a reading and media-literacy tool, and a good one, but it does not compete with the platforms above.
Summary table
| Platform | Cost to publish | Charge readers | Own domain | Built-in audience |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NewsPlatform | Free | No | No | Shared front page and channel directory |
| Substack | Free to start; cut of paid revenue | Yes | Yes | Recommendation network and app |
| Ghost | Hosting or managed plan | Yes | Yes | None |
| Medium | Free | Via membership programme | No | Large general readership |
| WordPress (self-hosted) | Hosting | With plugins | Yes | None |
Competitor facts above are general, publicly published details taken from each company's own site as of October 2026. Terms change — check the links before deciding.