Is SMF or Substack more popular?

Substack is used by more websites in our catalog: 117 use SMF and 463 use Substack.

Does SMF or Substack have higher-authority sites?

Substack sites have the higher median Ahrefs Domain Rating (SMF: 14, Substack: 32).

Is SMF or Substack growing faster?

Between 2026-06 and 2026-07, SMF went from 0.02% to 0.01% of all tracked sites, while Substack went from 0.06% to 0.05%. SMF is gaining ground faster in our index.

Can a site use both SMF and Substack?

No. A site runs a single CMS / website platform, so SMF and Substack are mutually exclusive.

Where does this SMF vs Substack data come from?

Adoption is counted from Site Stats Database's own crawl; Domain Rating comes from Ahrefs and traffic from DataForSEO. Figures reflect the sites we track and refresh at least monthly.

SMF vs Substack — Site Stats Database

SMF vs Substack

A side-by-side comparison of two content management systems, based on the 515,058 CMS sites tracked by Site Stats Database.

Last updated July 1, 2026

Metric	SMF	Substack
Websites	117	463
Market share	0.02%	0.09%
Share of top 10K sites	0.00%	0.02%
Share of top 100K sites

Rank	#86	#45

Median DR	14	32

Average DR	19	34

Median keywords	644	957

Median referring domains	310	435

Median domain age	19 yrs	8 yrs

Average domain age	18 yrs	10 yrs

Average monthly traffic	7,091	258,619

Combined monthly traffic	829,682	119,740,796

tropicalfruitforum.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)32
Total Keywords32,795
Referring Domains892
Domain Age14 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)55,775
Traffic Trend
TechnologySMF
learngospelmusic.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)1.5
Total Keywords11,007
Referring Domains226
Domain Age25 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)53,736
Traffic Trend
Technology
forestryforum.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)47
Total Keywords30,903
Referring Domains2,268
Domain Age25 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)49,595
Traffic Trend
Technology
chemicalforums.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)34
Total Keywords21,566
Referring Domains1,123
Domain Age22 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)44,932
Traffic Trend
Technology
pacificbulbsociety.org
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)53
Total Keywords6,311
Referring Domains2,159
Domain Age24 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)41,976
Traffic Trend
Technology
geekhack.org
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)71
Total Keywords12,518
Referring Domains4,086
Domain Age18 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)40,290
Traffic Trend
TechnologySMF
ballreviews.com
Language
DR (Ahrefs)35
Total Keywords10,572
Referring Domains804
Domain Age27 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)37,972
Traffic Trend
Technology
thefora.org
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)4.7
Total Keywords1,107
Referring Domains56
Domain Age7 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)30,204
Traffic Trend
TechnologySMF
allposterforum.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)8
Total Keywords544
Referring Domains247
Domain Age16 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)24,019
Traffic Trend
Technology
bitcointalk.org
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)83
Total Keywords11,493
Referring Domains45,974
Domain Age15 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)23,450
Traffic Trend
Technology

Website	Language	DR (Ahrefs)	Total Keywords	Referring Domains	Domain Age	Traffic (Jun 2026)	Traffic Trend	Technology
tropicalfruitforum.com	English	32	32,795	892	14 yrs	55,775		SMF

cbsnews.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)92
Total Keywords5,029,881
Referring Domains486,461
Domain Age31 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)59,376,408
Traffic Trend
TechnologySubstack
substack.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)94
Total Keywords5,643,513
Referring Domains561,764
Domain Age16 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)51,156,090
Traffic Trend
Technology
thefp.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)76
Total Keywords39,018
Referring Domains17,521
Domain Age24 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)738,323
Traffic Trend
TechnologySubstack
azdesertswarm.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)51
Total Keywords11,126
Referring Domains6,455
Domain Age17 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)664,536
Traffic Trend
Technology
thebulwark.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)75
Total Keywords23,103
Referring Domains13,098
Domain Age15 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)259,028
Traffic Trend
Technology
brokenpalate.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)40
Total Keywords3,164
Referring Domains295
Domain Age5 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)214,374
Traffic Trend
Technology
r-bloggers.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)75
Total Keywords27,627
Referring Domains8,306
Domain Age16 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)212,820
Traffic Trend
Technology
donaldrobertson.name
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)45
Total Keywords1,679
Referring Domains874
Domain Age12 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)202,345
Traffic Trend
Technology
noahpinion.blog
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)73
Total Keywords10,103
Referring Domains5,453
Domain Age3 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)174,978
Traffic Trend
Technology
jonathanlack.com
LanguageEnglish
DR (Ahrefs)11
Total Keywords6,130
Referring Domains697
Domain Age14 yrs
Traffic (Jun 2026)174,145
Traffic Trend
Technology