Blogger is the best free blogging platform if you want your own domain without paying for a plan: you buy the domain, Blogger hosts it and lets you run AdSense. beehiiv's free plan also includes custom domains, for up to 2,500 subscribers. Substack and Medium are free to publish on but make their money elsewhere: Substack keeps 10% of paid subscriptions and charges $50 once for a custom domain, and Medium only pays writers who hold a paid membership. WordPress.com is the cheapest step up once you pay, at $4 a month billed yearly for its Personal plan. Ghost is free only if you host it yourself, and Wix is free with Wix ads on a wixsite.com address. Every figure below was checked on the vendor's own pages on October 19, 2026.
"Free" on a blogging platform rarely means the same thing twice. On one it means no ads but no domain. On another it means your own domain and a 10% cut of every subscription you sell. So the useful question isn't which platform is free. It's what the free tier lets you do, and what it charges the day you start earning.
At a glance: what each free tier allows
| Platform | Free tier | Own domain on free | How you earn | Platform cut | Cheapest paid step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blogger | Fully free, blogspot.com address | Yes, you buy the domain | AdSense or other ad networks | None | No paid plans |
| WordPress.com | wordpress.com subdomain, 1 GB, WordPress.com ads | No | Payments and paid subscribers | 10% on Free, 8% on Personal, plus processing | Personal $4/mo billed yearly ($9 monthly) |
| Medium | Free to publish | No (a member benefit) | Partner Program, paid on member reading time | You need a paid membership to earn | Membership $5/mo or $50/yr |
| Substack | Free, substack.com subdomain | $50 one-time | Paid subscriptions | 10% plus Stripe fees | No paid plan |
| beehiiv | Free up to 2,500 subscribers, beehiiv branding | Yes | Paid subscriptions start on Lite | 0% on paid plans | Lite $49/mo billed yearly (1,000 subscribers) |
| Wix | Wix ads, wixsite.com address, 500 MB | No | Payments start on the Core plan | Not applicable on free | Light, priced by country |
| Ghost | Free and open source if you self-host | Yes, on your own server | Paid subscriptions from Publisher | 0% on Ghost(Pro) | Ghost(Pro) Starter $15/mo billed yearly ($18 monthly) |
| Greta.sh | Free plan builds the site (5 credits a day) | Publishing and custom domain start on Starter | Whatever you build into it | None from Greta | Starter $5/mo on the welcome offer, normally $20/mo |
How we compared free blogging platforms
Five things decide whether a free blog stays free: whether you can use your own domain, whether the platform shows its ads on your pages, whether and how you can earn, how cleanly you can export your posts and readers, and what the address does for your search traffic. We read each platform's pricing page and help centre on October 19, 2026. Where a vendor sets prices by country (Wix is one), we link to the plans page instead of quoting a figure that would be wrong for most readers.
Which free blogging platform is best?
1. Blogger – the only fully free option with your own domain
Blogger is still Google's, still free, and still the only platform here where a custom domain costs nothing beyond the domain itself. You get a blogspot.com address by default, or connect a domain you bought elsewhere, and Blogger issues the HTTPS certificate for it. AdSense is built into the dashboard under Earnings, and you can add other ad networks through a gadget.
Who it's for: hobby blogs and anyone who wants a real address for $0 a month. Limits: templates look their age, there are no paid subscriptions, and ads aren't allowed on adult blogs.
2. WordPress.com – the cheapest step up
WordPress.com's free plan gives you a yoursite.wordpress.com subdomain, 1 GB of storage and unlimited posts, and it shows WordPress.com ads to your visitors. You can take payments and paid subscribers on Free, but the transaction fee is 10% plus processing. Personal is $4 a month billed yearly ($9 monthly), adds a custom domain free for the first year, removes the ads and drops the fee to 8%. The fee falls with each plan: 4% on Premium, 2% on Business, 0% on Commerce.
Who it's for: writers who expect to pay a little and want the WordPress ecosystem. Limits: plugins need a paid plan. Our Greta.sh vs WordPress guide covers when people outgrow it.
3. Medium – built-in readers, rented home
Publishing on Medium is free and you start with an audience that's already reading. Earning is different. To join the Partner Program you must be a paying member, have published one story, and bank in a supported country. There's no follower minimum, whatever older roundups say. Membership was $5 a month or $50 a year when we checked (with a first-year welcome price on annual), and connecting a custom domain is one of its member benefits.
Who it's for: writers who care more about being read than about owning the address. Limits: your posts live on medium.com, and pay depends on member reading time, a formula Medium says it updates periodically.
4. Substack – free until you charge
Substack is free to publish on with any number of subscribers. Turn on paid subscriptions and it keeps 10% of each payment, with Stripe charging its own fees on top (Substack's help page lists 2.9% + $0.30 per US card payment plus 0.7% for recurring billing). A custom domain is an optional one-time $50.
Who it's for: newsletter writers who want payments working on day one. Limits: the 10% never goes away, however big you get.
5. beehiiv – the free plan that includes a domain
beehiiv is a newsletter platform with a website attached, and its free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends and custom domains. Paid subscriptions start on Lite, $49 a month billed yearly at 1,000 subscribers, with a 0% take rate. Removing beehiiv branding needs Pro ($95 a month billed yearly).
Who it's for: email-first writers who want their own domain without paying. Limits: branding stays on the free and Lite plans.
6. Wix – a website with a blog inside
Wix is free to start, and the free plan publishes at a username.wixsite.com address with 500 MB of storage and Wix ads. A custom domain needs a paid plan, and accepting payments starts on Core. Prices vary by location, so check the plans page for yours.
Who it's for: people who want a blog as one page of a bigger site. Limits: the free version is fine for testing and weak as a public home.
7. Ghost – free software, paid hosting
Ghost is MIT-licensed, so self-hosting costs nothing but the server; its install docs recommend an Ubuntu server with at least 1 GB of memory. There's no free hosted plan. Ghost(Pro) Starter is $15 a month billed yearly ($18 monthly) for 1,000 members, but it can't take paid subscriptions. Publisher, at $29 a month billed yearly ($35 monthly), adds paid subscriptions with a 0% Ghost fee.
Who it's for: writers who plan to sell subscriptions seriously. Limits: free only if you're comfortable running a server.
Got an idea? Build it now!
Just start with a simple prompt. No coding required: Greta.sh turns your idea into a working app in minutes.
Which free blogging platform is best for making money?
It depends on how you plan to earn, and the cut matters more than the sticker price.
If you earn from ads, Blogger is the only free option here with AdSense built in. If you earn from readers, look at the percentage. Say your paid subscriptions bring in $1,000 a month. Substack keeps $100 before Stripe's fees. WordPress.com keeps $100 on Free or $80 on Personal. Ghost(Pro) Publisher and beehiiv Lite take 0%, so you pay their flat subscription instead ($29 or $49 a month billed yearly). The break-even point is low: once paid revenue passes $290 a month, Ghost Publisher costs less than Substack's 10%.
Medium is the odd one out. You don't sell subscriptions; you earn a share of a pool based on how long paying members read. It's the easiest money to start and the hardest to predict. Medium's own help page notes that its referral program, which ran from 2021 to 2025 and paid a recurring share of new members' fees, was replaced by a one-time conversion amount.
If the newsletter is the business rather than a side channel, our guide to building your own newsletter platform walks through what running it yourself involves.
Do you own your blog on a free platform?
You own the words. Whether you can take the readers is the real test. These five document how to leave with your posts:
- Blogger backs up content through Google Takeout or Settings.
- WordPress.com exports posts, pages and comments as an XML file most platforms can import.
- Substack exports posts, subscriber list and stats as a zip.
- Medium exports your stories as HTML files in a zip.
- Ghost imports and exports members as CSV on every plan.
The harder part is the address. If your readers know you at yourname.substack.com, they follow that link, not you. Medium shows how fast rules can move: the earnings model changed in 2025, and writers had no say. Our vendor lock-in checklist is written for apps, but the same three checks apply to a blog: can you export it, can you point your domain elsewhere, and what breaks when you do.
Is a subdomain bad for SEO?
Not for ranking a single post. A post on yourname.substack.com or yoursite.wordpress.com can rank perfectly well. The cost shows up later, when you move. Every link anyone ever gave you points at an address you don't control, and your search history goes with it unless the old platform redirects for you.
That's why the domain is the first thing to sort out, even on a free plan. Blogger and beehiiv let you use one for free, Substack charges $50 once, and WordPress.com includes a domain for the first year from $4 a month. Start on your own domain and you can switch platforms later without starting your search traffic over. For the technical side (rendering, redirects, structured data), see our website builders for SEO comparison.
Got an idea? Build it now!
Just start with a simple prompt. No coding required: Greta.sh turns your idea into a working app in minutes.
What if you want a blog that keeps publishing?
Every platform above waits for you to write the next post. For a hobby blog that's the point. For a business, the blog is often the part nobody has time for.
That's the case for a self-growing website on Greta.sh. Greta builds and publishes the site, then keeps improving it on a schedule, adding fresh content and tuning it for search engines and AI answers based on the site's own analytics. It's a business tool and a paid one: Greta.sh's Free plan gives you 5 credits a day to build, while deployment and a custom domain start on Starter, which is $5 a month on the welcome offer (normally $20 a month).
Be honest with yourself about which one you need. If you want to write, pick Blogger, WordPress.com or Substack and spend the time on posts. If you run a company and the blog keeps slipping to next quarter, a site that publishes on its own is worth more than another free editor.
FAQ
What is the best free blogging platform?
Blogger, if you want your own domain at no cost beyond the domain, plus AdSense. beehiiv is the best free choice for an email-first blog with a custom domain, up to 2,500 subscribers. Substack is best if you want paid subscriptions working immediately and can accept a 10% cut.
Can you make money on a free blog?
Yes. Blogger lets you run AdSense on a free blog, Substack and WordPress.com take payments on their free tiers (Substack keeps 10%, WordPress.com Free charges a 10% transaction fee), and Medium pays Partner Program writers, who must hold a paid membership. beehiiv and Ghost need a paid plan before you can sell subscriptions.
Is Blogger still free?
Yes. Blogger has no paid plans. You can publish on a blogspot.com address or connect a domain you buy, and Blogger issues the HTTPS certificate for it.
Which free blogging platform lets you use your own domain?
Blogger and beehiiv include custom domains on their free plans, and self-hosted Ghost runs on whatever domain you point at it. Substack charges a one-time $50. WordPress.com, Medium and Wix need a paid plan or membership for a custom domain.
Is Substack or Medium better for earning?
Substack, if you have readers willing to pay you directly: you set the price and keep 90% before Stripe fees. Medium suits writers without an audience yet, because its readers are already there, but earnings depend on member reading time and you must pay for a membership to earn.
Pick the domain first
Choose the address before the platform. Register a domain, start on a free tier that respects it, and every post you write keeps its value wherever you go next. If your business needs a site that keeps working after launch, see how self-growing websites work on Greta.sh.
