How to start a blog for free in 2026

Starting a blog costs nothing. That’s the honest starting point: you can have a live blog with posts published today, without spending a penny, using platforms that are genuinely free.

The more complete answer is that free blogging has real limitations, and understanding those limitations upfront helps you make a better decision about where to start and what you’re building towards.

This guide on how to start a blog for free covers both things. How to actually start a blog for free, which platforms are worth using, and when free stops being enough so you can make the right call for where you are right now.

Can you really start a blog for free?

Yes – genuinely. The following things cost nothing:

• The WordPress.com free plan – a real blogging platform with no time limit
• The Wix free plan – a website builder with blogging capability
• Blogger – Google’s free blogging platform
• Medium – a publishing platform with a built-in audience

You can write posts, publish them publicly, and have people read them on all of these without spending anything.

What free plans typically don’t include:

• A custom domain (yourname.com vs yourname.wordpress.com)
• Removal of platform branding from your site
• Your own advertising on your site
• Full SEO control
• Plugin installation (WordPress.com free)
• Easy migration to another platform later

For a personal blog, a hobby project, or testing an idea before investing, free is a completely reasonable starting point. For a blog you intend to grow, monetise, and keep long-term, the limitations matter and knowing when to upgrade is important.

The best free blogging platforms

Option 1 – WordPress.com (free plan)

Best for: Bloggers who want the best writing experience and a potential upgrade path to self-hosted WordPress later

WordPress.com is the hosted version of WordPress, the same software that powers over 40% of the internet, managed for you so you don’t need to handle hosting or technical setup.

The free plan gives you a real blog at a WordPress.com subdomain, something like yourblogname.wordpress.com. You can write and publish posts immediately, organise them by category, and have people follow your blog through WordPress’s reader.

What the free plan includes:

• Unlimited posts
• Basic theme selection
• yourname.wordpress.com subdomain
• 1GB storage
• Basic stats
• WordPress Reader – a built-in way for other WordPress users to follow your blog

What the free plan doesn’t include:

• Custom domain (yourname.com)
• Plugin installation
• Full theme customisation
• Your own advertising (WordPress.com may show its own ads on your free site)
• Advanced SEO tools

The writing experience is genuinely excellent. The Gutenberg block editor is well-designed for writing clean, fast, and distraction-free when you’re in flow. For someone whose primary activity is writing and publishing, it’s among the best free options available.

The upgrade path is one of WordPress.com’s clearest advantages over other free platforms. When you outgrow the free plan, you can upgrade to WordPress.com’s paid plans or, better yet, migrate to self-hosted WordPress.org, where you have complete control. The migration is cleaner from WordPress.com than from most alternatives because the export format is the standard WordPress XML format, which imports directly.

Read our WordPress.com vs Wix comparison →

Option 2 – Wix (free plan)

Best for: Bloggers who want a visually designed site alongside their blog, or who want to test the platform before committing

Wix’s free plan gives you access to the full Wix website builder, including its blog functionality on a wixsite.com subdomain.

What the free plan includes:

• Full drag-and-drop editor
• 900+ templates
• yourname.wixsite.com subdomain
• 500MB storage
• Wix blog
• Basic SEO tools

What the free plan doesn’t include:

• Custom domain
• Removal of Wix branding from your site
• Your own advertising
• Ecommerce
• Most business features

The blogging experience on Wix is functional but secondary to the platform’s main strength visual website building. If the design of your blog matters as much as the writing experience, Wix gives you more design control than WordPress.com. If writing is the primary focus, WordPress.com’s writing environment is more refined.

The significant caveat: Wix’s portability is poor. If you start on Wix and later decide to move to WordPress, you’ll largely have to rebuild from scratch rather than migrate cleanly. Starting on WordPress.com rather than Wix preserves more options for the future.

Read our full Wix review →

Option 3 – Blogger

Best for: The absolute simplest free blogging setup with no limitations on monetisation

Blogger is Google’s free blogging platform, one of the oldest still operating, launched in 1999 and acquired by Google in 2003.

What Blogger includes (all free):

• Unlimited posts
• yourname.blogspot.com subdomain
• Custom domain support (free – you just need to buy and connect your domain)
• Google AdSense integration – you can monetise with display ads from the start
• No platform ads on your blog
• Unlimited storage for posts (images count against your Google account storage – 15GB free)

What Blogger doesn’t do well:

The platform has received minimal investment in development from Google for years. The interface feels dated, the theme options are limited, and there’s a persistent uncertainty about Google’s long-term commitment to maintaining it. Google has a history of discontinuing products.

The design output tends to look old-fashioned without significant theme customisation, and the customisation tools are less capable than modern alternatives.

The interesting thing about Blogger is the AdSense integration. Unlike WordPress.com free (which shows its own ads without sharing revenue) or Wix free (which doesn’t allow your own ads), Blogger allows Google AdSense from the start, even on the free plan. If monetising with display ads from day one on a completely free platform matters, Blogger is the only mainstream option that allows it.

Option 4 – Medium

Best for: Writers who want built-in audience access and don’t need their own standalone site

Medium is a publishing platform rather than a traditional blog host; you write and publish on Medium’s domain rather than your own, and your content lives within Medium’s ecosystem.

What Medium includes (free):

• Unlimited publishing
• Medium’s built-in audience and discovery tools
• Clean, minimal writing interface
• Distribution to followers and the Medium homepage
• Basic stats

What Medium doesn’t include:

• Your own domain
• Full design control
• SEO for your specific domain (your content ranks under medium.com)
• Display advertising or traditional monetisation (Medium has its own Partner Programme for paid subscribers)

When Medium makes sense: If you want to reach an existing audience without building one from scratch, Medium’s distribution is a genuine advantage. Articles published on Medium can be discovered through Medium’s recommendation algorithm and reach readers you’d never find independently.

When Medium doesn’t make sense: If you’re building a blog as an asset, something you own, that builds domain authority, that you can monetise with your own advertising and affiliate links, Medium is the wrong platform. You’re building Medium’s platform, not yours.

Most serious bloggers treat Medium as a distribution channel for content published on their own site (using Medium’s canonical URL feature to preserve SEO credit) rather than as their primary platform.

Option 5 – Ghost (limited free option)

Ghost is a modern publishing platform focused on newsletters and paid content. It has a free self-hosted option, you can run Ghost on your own server for free, but this requires technical knowledge that makes it impractical for most beginners.

Ghost.org’s hosted plans start at ~$11/month (USA) or ~£9/month (UK). Worth knowing about for serious newsletter-focused bloggers, but not a genuinely accessible free option for most people.

The honest comparison

Platform	Custom domain	Your ads	Portable	Best for
WordPress.com	Paid upgrade	No (free plan)	Yes	Writing-focused bloggers
Wix	Paid upgrade	No	Poor	Design-focused bloggers
Blogger	Yes (free)	Yes	Moderate	AdSense from day one
Medium	No	No	N/A	Distribution/audience

When free stops being enough

Free blogging platforms are a great starting point. They’re also, eventually, limiting for most bloggers with real ambitions.

Here are the clearest signals that it’s time to upgrade.

You want a custom domain. A yourname.com address is more memorable, more professional, and significantly better for SEO than a yourname.wordpress.com or yourname.wixsite.com subdomain. The moment you’re serious about your blog, a custom domain is worth the $12–$15/year (USA) or £10–£15/year (UK) it costs.

You want to monetise with display ads. WordPress.com’s free plan doesn’t let you run your own ads. Wix restricts ad placement. Blogger allows AdSense, but on an ageing platform. For proper display ad monetisation, eventually working towards Mediavine or Raptive self-hosted WordPress is the only platform that gives you full ad network compatibility.

You want to earn from affiliate links. You can include affiliate links on most free platforms, but a self-hosted WordPress site gives you better tools for managing them (the Pretty Links plugin for clean, branded URLs and click tracking) and better SEO capabilities for ranking the content those links sit on.

Your SEO ambitions are real. The SEO ceiling on free hosted platforms is meaningful. Custom domains, full URL control, advanced SEO plugins like Rank Math, Core Web Vitals optimisation, all of these require either paid hosted plans or self-hosted WordPress. For a blog whose growth depends on ranking in Google, self-hosted WordPress is the strongest long-term foundation.

You’ve outgrown your storage or features. Free plans have storage limits. As your blog grows with images and media, these limits become relevant.

The upgrade path – moving from free to self-hosted WordPress

When you’re ready to upgrade from a free blogging platform, self-hosted WordPress is the destination most serious bloggers end up at and for good reason.

Self-hosted WordPress gives you:

• A custom domain from day one
• Complete ownership and control of your content
• The best SEO tools available – Rank Math, full URL control, schema markup
• Full display ad compatibility – Google AdSense, Mediavine, Raptive
• 60,000+ plugins for any functionality you need
• The ability to monetise in any way you choose
• No platform branding on your site

What it costs:

The WordPress software is free. You pay for hosting – from $2.95–$4.99/month (USA) or £1.50–£3.50/month (UK) at entry level and a domain name, ~$12–$15/year (USA) or ~£10–£15/year (UK). A lean first year on self-hosted WordPress costs $50–$75 (USA) or £30–£55 (UK) all in.

That’s less than many “free” platforms cost once you upgrade to remove branding and add a custom domain.

The best hosts for a new blog:

Hostinger – the most affordable option. From ~$2.99/month (USA) or ~£1.50/month (UK) introductory. Good performance for the price, with AI-assisted setup tools.

Bluehost – officially recommended by WordPress.org. From ~$2.95/month (USA) or ~£2.50/month (UK) introductory. Beginner-friendly with strong support.

SiteGround – best performance and support quality at the entry level. From ~$4.99/month (USA) or ~£3.50/month (UK) introductory. Worth the slightly higher cost for a blog you’re serious about monetising.

Not sure which host is right for your blog? Our hosting quiz takes your budget and goals into account.

Migrating from a free platform to WordPress

From WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress

The cleanest migration path available. WordPress.com lets you export your content as a WordPress XML file that can be imported directly into a self-hosted WordPress site.

In WordPress.com: go to Settings → Export → Export All. Download the XML file.

In your self-hosted WordPress: go to Tools → Import → WordPress. Upload the XML file. Your posts, pages, categories, and tags import cleanly.

You’ll need to update your images (which may still reference WordPress.com’s servers) and rebuild your design on your new theme, but the content migration is genuinely smooth.

From Wix to self-hosted WordPress

More involved than WordPress.com migration due to Wix’s limited export functionality. Your blog posts can be exported as an RSS feed and imported into WordPress, but page designs need to be recreated and images re-downloaded and re-uploaded.

Read our full guide: How to move from Wix to WordPress →

From Blogger to self-hosted WordPress

Blogger allows you to export your blog as an XML file. WordPress has a Blogger importer (Tools → Import → Blogger) that handles the conversion. Generally cleaner than migrating from Wix but less seamless than migrating from WordPress.com.

Setting up your free blog – step by step with WordPress.com

If you’ve decided to start with WordPress.com for free, here’s how to get going quickly.

Step 1 – Create your WordPress.com account

Go to wordpress.com and click Get Started. Enter your email address and create a password.

Step 2 – Choose your address

You’ll be asked to choose your blog’s address. This will be yourname.wordpress.com on the free plan. Choose something that represents your blog, your name, your topic, or your brand. This subdomain is permanent on the free plan, so choose thoughtfully.

Step 3 – Choose the free plan

WordPress.com will show you paid plans. Scroll down and select the free option, which is usually presented less prominently than the paid plans. Click Start with Free.

Step 4 – Set up your blog

Complete the basic setup wizard, choose a visual style, give your blog a name and tagline, and indicate what you’ll be writing about.

Step 5 – Write your first post

Go to your WordPress.com dashboard → Posts → Add New.

Give your post a title. Write your content using the Gutenberg block editor. Add a featured image. Set a category.

Click Publish when you’re ready.

Step 6 – Set up your profile

Go to your WordPress.com profile and add a photo and bio. This appears with your posts, and in WordPress’s Reader, a complete profile looks more professional and earns more followers.

Step 7 – Connect to social media

In your WordPress.com dashboard, find the Jetpack Social settings and connect your Twitter, Facebook, or other social accounts. New posts will automatically share to your connected accounts when published.

Tips for growing a free blog

Having a free blog doesn’t mean settling for slow growth. These habits make a real difference.

Publish consistently. One post per week is better than five posts one week and nothing for two months. Consistency builds audience habit and signals to search engines that your site is active.

Write for your reader, not for yourself. The most successful blogs answer questions, solve problems, or provide information people are actively looking for. Before writing each post, ask: who is this for and what are they trying to find out?

Use your post titles strategically. Your post title is the most important SEO element you have on a free platform. Write titles that include the phrases people actually search for “how to”, “best”, “review”, “guide” and describe the content accurately.

Build your email list from day one. Even on a free plan, WordPress.com allows you to collect email subscribers through its built-in subscription feature. Every subscriber is a direct connection to your audience that no algorithm can take away.

Engage with other bloggers in your niche. Leave thoughtful comments on relevant blogs. Follow and interact with others on social media. Being part of a community drives more traffic to a new blog than almost any other activity in the early stages.

Think about your upgrade path. Even if you’re starting out free, know what your transition to self-hosted WordPress will look like. The habits you build now, consistent publishing, audience building, and email list growth, transfer directly to a self-hosted setup. The sooner you make the move, the sooner you have a platform that properly supports everything you’re building.

Frequently asked questions

How do I start a blog for free? Sign up for a free plan on WordPress.com, Wix, or Blogger, choose a subdomain address, pick a basic theme, and write and publish your first post. The whole process takes under an hour and requires no technical knowledge or payment details. WordPress.com is the strongest choice if you might want to move to a custom domain and self-hosted WordPress later.

Is WordPress.com free forever? Yes, the free plan has no time limit. You can use it indefinitely without paying. The limitations (subdomain, no custom domain, restricted SEO) don’t change unless you upgrade.

Can I make money from a free blog? On most free platforms, monetisation is restricted. WordPress.com free doesn’t allow you to display your own advertising. Wix Free doesn’t allow advertising. Blogger allows Google AdSense from the free plan. Affiliate links are generally allowed on most free platforms, but may be subject to each platform’s terms of service.

For serious monetisation, display ads with Mediavine or Raptive, full affiliate link management, and selling products, self-hosted WordPress is the only platform that gives you full flexibility.

Which is better for a beginner – WordPress.com or Wix? For blogging specifically, WordPress.com is better because the writing experience is more refined, and the migration path to self-hosted WordPress is much cleaner if you want to upgrade later. For a site that’s primarily visual with a blog as one component, Wix gives you more design control. Read our full comparison →

How much does it cost to upgrade from a free blog to a self-hosted WordPress? Hosting from $2.95–$4.99/month (USA) or £1.50–£3.50/month (UK) plus a domain name at ~$12–$15/year (USA) or ~£10–£15/year (UK). A lean first year on self-hosted WordPress costs $50–$75 (USA) or £30–£55 (UK) all in, less than most paid plans on hosted platforms at comparable feature levels.

Do I need technical knowledge to start a blog for free? No WordPress.com, Wix, Blogger, and Medium require any technical knowledge. Creating an account and publishing your first post can be done in under an hour on any of these platforms.

What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org? WordPress.com is a hosted platform where hosting is included and managed for you. WordPress.org is the free software you download and install on your own hosting. WordPress.com free is the right starting point for beginners. WordPress.org self-hosted is where serious bloggers typically end up. Read our full explainer →