Medium vs Substack
Headline patterns, posting days and hours, and text length compared across the Medium and Substack articles in our sample.
| Measure | Medium | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| Articles in sample | 189 | 80 |
| Different writers | 166 | 13 |
| Median headline length (characters) | 54 | 48 |
| Headlines that are questions | 7.4% | 7.5% |
| Headlines starting with a number | 4.8% | 1.3% |
| “How” or “why” headlines | 8.5% | 12.5% |
| Two-part headlines (colon or dash) | 32.8% | 38.8% |
| Busiest publishing day (UTC) | Sunday | Monday |
| Median words in feed text | — | 734.5 |
The Substack figures cover a small, hand-picked set of newsletters, not all of Substack. Medium feeds carry no article text, so Medium word counts are not available.