Micro.blog
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
Micro.blog is a hybrid of blog hosting and a social feed. On its “About” page the platform describes itself as “paid hosting for personal blogs that makes publishing short and long posts easier”, and immediately spells out what it consists of: “Micro.blog combines blog hosting with a social-network-style feed and a community”. The project was “founded by Manton Reece in 2017”.
The main difference from microblogs such as Bluesky or Mastodon: your posts physically live on your own site, often on your own domain, and the feed is a shop window on top of those sites. The second difference is the economics: there is no advertising and no free plan with full functionality — the platform lives on user subscriptions. The same page declares “No ads”, and the feed is called “a safe place for conversation, free of ads, trolling and abuse”.
Micro.blog supports ActivityPub, that is, it connects to the federated network (the fediverse), but it is not a Mastodon server and behaves differently — see the section on limits.
Who's here
The platform does not publish audience numbers. Neither the “About” page nor the help centre we opened contains a count of users or blogs, or a breakdown by country and language.
Indirectly, the make-up of the audience is set by the design of the product: this is a paid platform for people who run their own blog. An entry we collected earlier records that the interface language is not specified in the markup of the home page.
Getting started
Registration begins with a trial period. The registration page promises: “We'll start you with a free 7-day trial”, which includes “hosting for your new blog”, “support for your domain name”, photo uploads, “podcast hosting or uploading audio narration”, themes and plug-ins, “importing from WordPress, Ghost, Tumblr and other platforms”, and apps for iOS, Android and macOS.
After the trial, according to the help article on pricing, the account “switches to the free plan” — that is, without payment what remains is a cut-down mode, not full hosting.
ActivityPub is enabled separately and not for everyone: the documentation on the fediverse says that it “requires paid microblog hosting”. Your fediverse address looks like @username@micro.blog or @you@yourdomain.com if you have connected your own domain.
What you can publish
Formally the length of a post is not limited — this is a blog. Only what goes out in the feed is limited. According to the article on longer posts, a title field appears when you type “more than 300 characters on the web or in the official apps for iOS, Android and macOS”; if a long post has no title, “the post will be truncated to about 280 characters and given a link to the full post on your blog”.
The timeline display rules add the details: below 300 characters and with no title the text is shown in full; “if a post contains a quote, the limit rises to 600 characters”; posts with a title are shown as the title with a link to your site. What counts is “the text version of the post, not counting the extra characters in HTML tags”.
Media are limited by file size: according to the help article on pricing, video is “up to 75 MB per clip” and podcasts “MP3 up to 75 MB”. The Studio plan, according to the pricing page, lets you “upload video up to 20 minutes long”, gives several video resolutions and podcast recording right in the browser.
What is forbidden is set out in the community guidelines: hate speech on protected characteristics, threats of violence and organizing it, harassment through repeated replies, doxxing, intimate images without consent, child sexual exploitation material, deliberate disinformation, unlabelled deepfakes and spam, including bulk AI content and SEO manipulation. An important caveat from the same source: the rules apply to the feed and replies, not to the contents of your own blog — “your site is yours and you are free to write about anything, but a service like Micro.blog has a duty to build a safe community”.
How to grow
There is no algorithmic feed and no ad manager here: the “About” page states outright “No ads”. The main distribution method is cross-posting.
The documentation on automatic cross-posting names a list of services: “Medium, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr, Bluesky, Nostr, Pixelfed and Threads”. The truncation rules depend on the service; for Mastodon it is described like this: “short posts with no title and under 500 characters go to Mastodon unchanged”, longer ones are “truncated with a link back to your microblog”, and posts with a title go out as the title and a link. There is a practical detail too: “photos must be larger than 200×200”, otherwise design elements will end up in the feed.
The second channel is the fediverse. According to the documentation, “your Micro.blog posts can appear in the federated Mastodon timeline”, and you can follow Mastodon users straight from Micro.blog.
No built-in view statistics are described in the help materials we opened.
Path to monetization
Micro.blog does not pay authors: there are no payout programmes, affiliate programmes or share of ad revenue in the help materials or on the pricing page. The logic runs the other way — the author pays, and in return gets ad-free hosting.
Prices are known precisely. The pricing page names four levels: Micro.blog — $5 a month (blog hosting on your own domain, automatic cross-posting), Premium — $10 a month (up to 5 blogs, email newsletters, bookmark archiving), Family — $15 a month (up to 5 people with the right to write and edit posts) and Studio — $20 a month (video up to 20 minutes, podcast recording in the browser, cross-posting video to Bluesky).
The help article on pricing adds an entry level, Micro.one, at “$1/month” and annual prices — $50, $100 and $150 for the corresponding levels.
The platform supports indirect ways of earning with tools: podcast hosting and email newsletters on the Premium plan. But no payment gateway, subscription to an author or tips inside the platform are described in the public materials.
Tools and automation
The API is open and built on standards. The API overview lists: Micropub and Blogger XML-RPC for publishing, “our own JSON API” for feeds and users, RSS and related formats, separate APIs for books and bookmarks, IndieWeb formats and protocols, and Sidebar.js for embedding in a page. In its own words: “Micro.blog supports several APIs. Each section below serves its own purpose”.
The practical conclusion: any client that supports Micropub or Blogger XML-RPC can publish to your blog. Ready-made apps are supplied by the platform itself — the registration page names iOS, Android and macOS.
Import from other platforms is declared in the same place: “WordPress, Ghost, Tumblr and others”.
Limits and rules
The main limit is a practical one: Micro.blog is connected to the fediverse but does not behave like Mastodon. The documentation lists the divergences plainly: “Micro.blog has no feature equivalent to a retweet”, and “boosts from Mastodon users you follow will not be shown in the Micro.blog timeline”; content warnings are not supported; direct messages from Mastodon “turn into a private email to you”, because there are no private posts on Micro.blog; third-party Mastodon apps do not work with a Micro.blog account.
The second limit is that it costs money: without an active subscription ActivityPub is unavailable, and after the trial the account “switches to the free plan” (help on pricing).
Moderation is described in the community guidelines: reports are accepted at community@micro.blog with the reporter's confidentiality preserved, measures range from a warning to account deletion, and the offender has five days to appeal. Replies judged harmful are filtered and separated out automatically.
Who it's for
Micro.blog suits those who want to write on their own domain and use the social feed as a supplement rather than a foundation. It fits personal blogs, photo diaries, podcasts and newsletters well: all of this is included in the plans rather than assembled from separate services. It is also useful as a “single entry point” for cross-posting to nine services at once.
It will not suit those looking for reach and monetization on the platform itself: the audience is small (the numbers are not published), there is no advertising and there are no payouts. Nor will it suit those who need the full Mastodon feature set — there are no boosts, content warnings or private posts here. And it is a paid service: the minimum level costs $1 a month, a full one from $5.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself as follows: «Post short thoughts or long essays, share photos, all on your own blog. Micro.blog makes it easy, and provides a friendly community where you can share and engage with others.»
Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
the platform states that it was founded by Manton Reece in 2017
The platform's claim about itself
source, checked 2026-07-28
the service describes itself as paid hosting for personal blogs that combines a blog with a social-network-style feed and a community
The platform's claim about itself
source, checked 2026-07-28
Getting started
registration comes with a free 7-day trial period
Registration page
source, checked 2026-07-28
after the trial period ends the account switches to the free plan
Help article on pricing
source, checked 2026-07-28
Account and access
the fediverse address is @username@micro.blog or @you@yourdomain.com; enabling ActivityPub requires paid microblog hosting
Official documentation
source, checked 2026-07-28
Content
automatic cross-posting is available to Medium, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr, Bluesky, Nostr, Pixelfed and Threads
Official documentation
source, checked 2026-07-28
Advertising
the platform declares «No ads»; the feed is called free of advertising, trolling and abuse
The platform's claim about itself
source, checked 2026-07-28
Pricing
plans: Micro.blog $5/month, Premium $10/month (up to 5 blogs, newsletters, bookmark archive), Family $15/month (up to 5 people), Studio $20/month (video up to 20 minutes, podcast recording in the browser)
Official pricing page as of 2026-07-28
source, checked 2026-07-28
the entry level Micro.one is $1 a month; annual prices are $50, $100 and $150 for the corresponding levels
Help article on pricing
source, checked 2026-07-28
Limits and restrictions
video is up to 75 MB per clip, podcasts MP3 up to 75 MB
Help article on pricing
source, checked 2026-07-28
the title field appears when you type more than 300 characters; a post with no title is truncated to about 280 characters with a link to the full text
What is limited is the output in the feed, not the length of the blog post
source, checked 2026-07-28
posts under 300 characters with no title are shown in full in the feed; with a quote the limit rises to 600 characters; the text version without HTML tags is what counts
Official timeline display rules
source, checked 2026-07-28
posts with no title and under 500 characters go to Mastodon unchanged; longer ones are truncated with a link to the microblog
No specific values are given for the other services
source, checked 2026-07-28
Restrictions
Micro.blog has no equivalent of a boost, and content warnings and private posts are not supported; direct messages from Mastodon arrive as email; third-party Mastodon apps do not work
Official documentation
source, checked 2026-07-28
the guidelines forbid hate speech, threats of violence, harassment, doxxing, intimate images without consent, child sexual exploitation material, deliberate disinformation, unlabelled deepfakes and spam
The rules apply to the feed and replies, not to the contents of a personal blog
source, checked 2026-07-28
reports are accepted at community@micro.blog; measures range from a warning to account deletion; five days are given to appeal
Official community guidelines
source, checked 2026-07-28
API access
Micropub and Blogger XML-RPC are supported for publishing, along with an own JSON API, RSS, separate APIs for books and bookmarks, IndieWeb formats and Sidebar.js
Official API overview
source, checked 2026-07-28
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