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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

FS

24 alternatives to Free Substack and Medium Writer Tool

Initial quick launch! Run your account through this free analytical tool. Would appreciate feedback on features you would like to see.

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Free Substack and Medium Writer Tool launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1
    FreeStack▲488

    Free tools & resources for designers

    2016 · freestack.co.uk · its alternatives →

  2. 2
    Substage▲183

    Hey all! I’m a solo indie dev and I’ve been working on Substage – a Mac app that docks under your Finder window and lets you interact with your files using natural language. Stuff like: • Convert to webp • zip these up • Author of this PDF? • Download this file: • Is this really a PNG? • What's 5 foot 9 in cm? • Open in TextMate Substage converts your prompt into a Terminal command using an LLM (GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, or your own local model), runs it, and summarises the output. If it detects something risky, it’ll pause for confirmation before running. Commands run locally on your…

    2025 · selkie.design · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    Draft▲149

    GitHub for writing

    2013 · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    So this weekend I and a friend of mine (@ronitrajfr) created a minimalist writing editor. It's ui is clean, beautiful and distraction free, it also has a vim mode and everything stays on your computer no authentication is required to write your thoughts and all we wanted an application where we just start typing with no BS and that's what we made. and did I tell ya that it's open source as well lmk your thoughts and feedback!!

    Dec 2025 · betterwrite.ronitt.xyz · its alternatives →

  5. 5LA

    Gun.io connects companies with elite freelance software developers. Vetted engineers, automated compliance, and guaranteed delivery for high-stakes projects.

    2011 · gun.io · its alternatives →

  6. 6IM

    TLDR: I made a public only web analytics without signup. Stores views and visitors for 10 days before deleting data. Exactly 25 days ago today I posted here, proud of my new web analytics. The response was mixed and my post even got flagged (understandable). It was my first real launch and I actually made a sale just a day later of 49$(!). Back then my project was pay once, keep forever. Since then I have sadly went over to the dark side (subscription based). Anyways, I never went back to look at the post after the first two hours, turns out I got a lot of answers. Most answers was something…

    2024 · indielytics.link · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Questions to save you time & money

    2016 · traffic.libsyn.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Hi▲62

    A real-time writing community.

    2014 · its alternatives →

  9. 9AU

    I blew off a bunch of "serious" side work last month and built a tiny little embeddable editing tool that I've wanted to have for Ars Technica since, well, the beginning of internet time. It lets any random user make edit suggestions for writers/editors to consider and act on. I think it's pretty cool and it's gotten some good use over the last few weeks. Of note, it's uses a single-field signup form. Edit administration is currently email based, so all it needs is an email address to get people going. I'm sure I'm not the only person to ever do this, but I basically just turned it on one…

    2011 · copypasta.credibl.es · its alternatives →

  10. 10WW

    Over three months ago, I posted my book on HN and got tremendous +ve reponse. I am happy to inform that I have published the book to leanpub as per the comments I got on HN itself! It is pay as you go model, and the minimum is $0 because I wanted to contribute back to the FOSS Community

    2016 · its alternatives →

  11. 11RM

    Hello HN! Being a software engineer and an SEO guy I wrote a heap of tools and scripts to make my life easier. Now I've decided to share some of them with the community, and made a small site where I will be publishing them. They are all completely free (yes, free forever) and you don't even need to sign up for the site. Just use the thing as you like, no limits. Currently you can access 4 instruments: - Backlink retriever - Thin/weak content analyzer - Traffic trend analysis - Visitor list retriever I am planning on releasing more free tools with time, and trying to stay original by…

    2018 · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Simple and free online tools to improve your writing

    Dec 2025 · toolsforwriting.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    The analytics Substack should have given you.

    Mar 2026 · stackstats.app · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Thousands of Quality Writers. Intelligent Writer Matching.

    2020 · typeface.ai · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    This is a tool which lets you easily manage different versions of ideas, helpful for writing essays. I've found myself wanting this every single time I go through the drafting process when writing, and I've been frustrated every time I find myself accidentally working on an old draft just because there was a paragraph that I liked better. This solves it. I hope the community like this as much I enjoyed working on it! Note that it's currently a beta waitlist because there's some bugs with the undo/redo state management and so I want to dogfood it for a bit for reliability. It says April…

    Mar 2026 · quillium.bryanhu.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16OS

    I got tired of collecting open source projects in my chrome bookmarks so I decided to compile a curated list of: - Recently active projects on GitHub - Mostly dev tools (but also productivity, analytics) - Projects which are "Alternative to X software" My bookmarks are finally empty:D If you have a great open source tool you use, I'd be glad to hear your suggestions. Also, any feedback is greatly appreciated.

    2025 · alternativeoss.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I built this tool simply because I need it for myself. I'm not a native English speaker, and every time I write something, I like to double-check if the grammar is good Key features: - Fix grammar and clarity with one click - Rephrase, shorten, or expand text instantly - Generate content from scratch - Translate to multiple languages - Works on any website (no copy-pasting needed) It's built with Next.js and Plasmo. I wanted something lightweight that stays out of the way until you need it. I'd love to hear your feedback!

    Jan 2026 · text-pilot.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18AT

    Hey HN! While writing prompts for a few projects recently, a couple of friends and I realised that writing prompts today is like writing code in a txt file - it sucks and there is no tooling to help you. So we decided to hack on a tool to help you fix this - https://optimist.varied.ai/ It is literally a hack rn but we already find it useful for writing prompts. That said we'd love to talk to folks who are writing serious prompts everyday and see how the product can be better. Also the only reason the waitlist is there, is running this is super expensive like $100/day for…

    2023 · optimist.varied.ai · its alternatives →

  19. 19IA

    I was working on validating some of my own project ideas. While trying to find how to validate my idea, I realized the process itself could be turned into a tool. A few late nights later, I had something that takes any startup idea, fetches discussions, summarizes sentiment, and gives a quick “validation score.” It’s very rough, but it works, and it’s already making me rethink a few of my own ideas. It's still a work in progress. I don't actually know what I'm doing, but I know it's worth it. Honest feedback welcomed! Live demo here: https://validationly.com/

    2025 · validationly.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    I’ve always found it funny how simple feedback widgets end up as $20–$30/month products. The tech is dead simple, infra is cheap, and most of us here could rebuild one in a weekend. So as a “principle experiment” I built my own today as a side project and priced it at 1 dollar. Just because if something is cheap to run and easy to replicate, it should be priced accordingly, and it’s also fun marketing. 1$ feedback tool. Shipped today, got the first users/moneys today, writing this post today. Side Sunday project, then back to the main product tomorrow.

    Dec 2025 · onedollarfeedback.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    15 powerful tools to create, collab, and optimize your work

    2025 · freetoolstack.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Free tools for writing, SEO, images, data & development

    Nov 2025 · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Toolsspark – 100+ instant, private, no ads tools (2025)

    2025 · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Track subs. Save coins!

    Feb 2026 · readymag.website · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →