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CodePen VS Medium

Compare CodePen VS Medium and see what are their differences

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Contents:
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  3. » Reviews
  4. » Alternatives

CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.

Medium logo Medium

Welcome to Medium, a place to read, write, and interact with the stories that matter most to you.
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Medium Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-08

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

Medium features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Medium offers an easy-to-use interface that makes it simple for anyone to start writing and publishing content without any technical knowledge.
  • Built-in Audience
    The platform has a large and active user base, so new content has the potential to reach a wide audience quickly.
  • Publishing Tools
    Medium provides versatile publishing tools that support text, images, and various media formats, which helps in creating rich and engaging content.
  • SEO Benefits
    Articles posted on Medium tend to rank well in search engine results, thanks to the platform's high domain authority.
  • Community and Interaction
    Medium encourages reader engagement through comments, claps, and highlights, fostering a sense of community among writers and readers.

Possible disadvantages of Medium

  • Monetization
    While Medium has a Partner Program, it may not be as lucrative as other methods of monetization available on independent blogging platforms.
  • Control and Customization
    Medium offers limited customization options compared to dedicated blog platforms like WordPress, restricting how you can brand and personalize your blog.
  • Content Ownership
    By publishing on Medium, you agree to their terms and conditions, which may include giving up some control over how your content is used and distributed.
  • Paywall Issues
    Some articles are placed behind a paywall, which might limit the reach of your content if you want it to be freely accessible to everyone.
  • Dependency on Platform
    Relying solely on Medium means that any changes to the platform's policies or algorithms can directly impact your reach and engagement.

CodePen videos

+ Add

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Medium videos

+ Add

Medium Review - with Tom Vasel

More videos:

  • Review - Starting a blog on Medium.com? Watch this FIRST.
  • Review - The Medium Review
  • Review - The Medium - Before You Buy
  • Review - I recommend: The Medium (Review)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CodePen and Medium)

CodePen

Medium

Text Editors
100 100%
Text Editors
0% 0
Blogging
0 0%
Blogging
100% 100
Programming
100 100%
Programming
0% 0
Blogging Platform
0 0%
Blogging Platform
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using CodePen and Medium. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CodePen and Medium

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Source: www.softwarediscover.com
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.
Source: towardsdatascience.com

Medium Reviews

19 Best WordPress Alternatives in 2025
Medium focuses on thoughtful content and community engagement. It offers a user-friendly interface, a large readership base, and various features for writers and readers.
Source: www.pixpa.com
25+ Medium Alternative Platforms for Publishing Articles
Medium is an online platform that was created in 2012 by Evan Williams. It is a place for people to share their thoughts and ideas on various topics. Medium has about 100 million monthly visitors, which makes it one of the most popular platforms for publishing articles.
Source: forgefusion.io
10 Best Medium Alternatives for Reading and Publishing
From thе simplicity of Ghost to thе vеrsatility of Substack, thеrе’s a homе for еvеryonе seeking great Medium alternatives. Thеsе altеrnativеs offеr a world of possibilitiеs for rеadеrs and authors alikе. Whеthеr you’rе in sеarch of a uniquе platform to sharе your thoughts or want to read frеsh contеnt, thеsе platforms havе somеthing spеcial to offеr. All in all, we...
Source: www.geeksforgeeks.org
9 Best Medium Alternatives for Making Money With Your Writing in 2023
Substack and Medium differ primarily in their monetization methods. Medium pays creators based on reader engagement, while Substack enables writers to monetize directly through paid subscriptions to their newsletters. This business model allows Substack users to build a direct relationship with their readers via their email inboxes, whereas Medium interactions primarily...
Source: www.authorityhacker.com
How to Choose the Best Blogging Platform in 2021 (Compared)
Medium works much like a social networking site where you can create an account and start publishing your articles. After you sign up, you’ll have a profile address like this: https://medium.com/@yourname. But you cannot use your own domain.
Source: www.wpbeginner.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Medium should be more popular than CodePen. It has been mentiond 2575 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CodePen mentions (503)

View more

Medium mentions (2575)

  • Built a journalism ethics framework because no one else would
    I’m not in journalism, but I care deeply about its role in a functioning democracy. I built this because no one else seemed willing to move beyond talk. It’s a voluntary, nonpartisan structure for journalism ethics and accreditation—complete with a public manifesto and charter. I put it on Medium for everyone to see. NEAA Manifesto: https://medium.com/@t3llingn0t/the-neaa-manifesto-bcee088ee3bb. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 hour ago
  • Ask HN: Anyone with experience using scoped CSS?
    In my experience CSS is still a major time sink on large web projects. The main things being: 1) CSS links to HTML based on strings (ids and class names) so we cannot catch typos or automate rename-refactorings, and 2) CSS is not scoped (every rule works on every element). The lack of scoping aggravates the pain of the string based nature of CSS' coupling. With the new @scope directive [1], which is now available... - Source: Hacker News / about 5 hours ago
  • PDF to Text, a Challenging Problem
    Clarified above - referring to the visual side of coding PDFs by hand. https://medium.com/@jberkenbilt/the-structure-of-a-pdf-file-6f08114a58f6. - Source: Hacker News / 3 days ago
  • Human
    I like this story. And I like fan fiction. So : My continuation for my own imagination. https://medium.com/@bobby.blackstone.gemini. - Source: Hacker News / 1 day ago
  • Fingers wrinkle the same way every time you're in the water too long
    It reminded me of how brains form through wrinkling folds [^0], space filling curves[^1], and the emergence of form through origami[^2]. [^0]: https://www.livescience.com/47421-human-brain-wrinkles.html [^1]: https://medium.com/@nico727272/drawing-hilbert-curves-using-turtle-46f6d628732b [^2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miura_fold. - Source: Hacker News / 3 days ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CodePen and Medium, you can also consider the following products

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

Ghost - Ghost is a fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

WordPress - WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

Tumblr - A feature rich and free blog hosting platform offering professional and fully customizable templates, bookmarklets, photos, mobile apps, and social network integration.

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