Find the top publications on Substack

We have updated our homepage, substack.com, with a focus on readers. Now you can find a list of the top Substack posts and publications, free and paid, at any given time.

We want to help people find and fall in love with great writers, and this update is a first step in that effort. But we also don’t want this to turn into a troll-friendly upvote/downvote system. Instead, our goal is to surface the work that people actually value. With that in mind, top posts are (for now) ranked by number of likes from readers and paying subscribers, with the latter getting more weight. We also account for recency to keep things fresh.

Top paid publications are ranked by gross revenue, and top free publications are ranked by active readership.

Publishers have the ability to opt out of these lists completely via a checkbox on the Settings page in their dashboards.

Important caveat: we reserve the right to change this completely. This is all part of an evolving process and ecosystem, so we’d value all and any feedback. Please leave it in the comments below.

Meanwhile, you can still find information for publishers on substack.com/about.