# Open source Medium alternatives for AI agents

2 alternatives to Medium. 2 have an interface an agent can drive. 2 are open source.

Page: alternatives/medium.html

## Ghost

Open-source publishing platform with newsletters and memberships, driven through the official Admin API.

- Listing: apps/tryghost--ghost.html
- JSON: apps/tryghost--ghost.json
- License: MIT
- Agent interface: API, from the builder
- Reach: 8 of 10 jobs
- Last activity: 2026-09-03
- Effort: light-edit
- Agent cannot reach: Read post and email analytics; Moderate member comments
- Use it when: I publish a newsletter and blog and want members and payments without Substack's cut
- Use it when: I want my agent to draft posts, schedule them, and email subscribers through a real API
- Gotcha: Production requires MySQL 8; SQLite is dev-only
- Gotcha: Self-hosted newsletters need a Mailgun account for bulk sending; SMTP only covers transactional mail
- Gotcha: Admin API uses short-lived JWTs minted from an Admin API key; the official @tryghost/admin-api client handles this
- Gotcha: The repo's .env.example is empty of variables; configuration is the config.*.json family, not .env
- Gotcha: Third-party MCP wrappers exist (for example MFYDev/ghost-mcp) but are not needed for operability

## WriteFreely

Minimalist federated blogging server in one Go binary, driven by the official Write.as API and wf CLI.

- Listing: apps/writefreely--writefreely.html
- JSON: apps/writefreely--writefreely.json
- License: AGPL-3.0
- Agent interface: API, from the builder
- Reach: 7 of 10 jobs
- Last activity: 2026-09-01
- Effort: config-only
- Agent cannot reach: Federate over ActivityPub; Invite and manage users; Browse the local reader timeline
- Use it when: I want a fast, plain blog I own that also shows up in the fediverse
- Use it when: I want my agent to publish posts from my notes to my own instance with a one-line CLI
- Gotcha: AGPL-3.0 (server); the CLI is GPL-3.0
- Gotcha: Read operations on public content need no auth; writes need a token from /api/auth/login with username and password
- Gotcha: No env var surface; configuration is the ini file only
- Gotcha: Some write.as-only API features are not in WriteFreely; build against the WriteFreely subset

## Questions

### Is there an open source alternative to Medium?

Yes. Both listings here are open source: Ghost (MIT), WriteFreely (AGPL-3.0).

### Which Medium alternatives have an MCP server?

None of these has an MCP server from its builder on record. The recorded interface is API.

### Which Medium alternative can an agent do the most with?

Ghost: 8 of 10 recorded jobs reachable. Jobs differ by listing, so read each list before you choose.