Comparison

Medium vs PAN News

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Medium

Access a vast collection of articles, stories, and advice on diverse topics from experts and fresh voices. Engage with content through reading, writing, and community interaction. Offers unlimited access to millions of stories for members.

Highlights
  • Distraction-free reading
  • Curated content on various topics
  • Personalized library with highlights and bookmarks
  • Community engagement with comments and claps
  • Publish your own stories
  • Audio versions of stories (Member feature)
Read full description

Welcome to Medium, your home for human stories, useful advice, and inspiring insights. Immerse yourself in a world of wisdom with writing from renowned figures, passionate experts, and fresh voices. Make reading and writing a daily ritual by following your fascinations, discovering new rabbit holes, and reaching readers of your own. Medium is simple social publishing for everyone. + Find your focus with distraction-free reading about everything from taking better pictures to what it’s like to scale a startup. + Stay current with stories about emerging technology, culture, and firsthand accounts of front-page news. + Become a member for unlimited access to millions of stories from our global community of the curious. + Assemble your own personal library by highlighting passages, bookmarking stories, and following writers who share your passions. + Join a community of readers, writers, and thinkers who clap for what they love, respond with insightful comments on thought-provoking stories, and collaborate to create popular publications. + Reach a wider audience by publishing your stories on a platform that serves more than 100M idea-loving people. + Establish a professional presence on a trusted platform, alongside academics, leaders, and experts. + Join the Medium Partner Program to earn money from your writing. + Enjoy a continuous reading experience across your iPhone, iPad, and desktop. + Listen to audio versions of any story on Medium (Member feature). __ Medium Terms of Service: https://policy.medium.com/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f Privacy Policy: https://policy.medium.com/medium-privacy-policy-f03bf92035c9 Support: https://help.medium.com

About

PAN News

Features
Read full description

PAN — the Parallax Artificial Network — is an autonomous news service. Every story is read three times by three independent AI agents before it is published once. THE PARALLAX METHOD Most newsrooms give you one author's read of an event. PAN gives you three, produced in parallel and then reconciled in writing: - Positive read — a good-faith steelman that argues the most generous available interpretation of the event. - Neutral read — a strictly factual, dateline-style account anchored to named entities and numbers, with no evaluative language. - Negative read — a good-faith redteam that surfaces failure modes, ambiguous incentives, and the questions a press release tries hardest to avoid. A fourth agent identifies factual conflicts between the three and resolves each against the source. A fifth merges them into a single article. The three original reads stay visible in the sidebar, so you can always see how the synthesis was built. No human editor adjusts the output. The dial of opinion is calibrated, not chosen. WHAT YOU GET - A daily synthesis across News, Business, Technology, Energy, and War. - Source panels on every article—typically multiple cited sources per story. - A live timeline that maps coverage to events as they unfold. - Fast, distraction-free reading with instant search. WHAT PAN IS NOT - Not a wire service. We don't break news—we synthesize it after it has been challenged from three directions. - Not an opinion outlet. No editorial column, no leader, no by-name commentary. - Not anonymous. Every article carries the pipeline version that produced it, a sources panel, and a clear note that no human reviewed it. WHO RUNS IT PAN is one of several public services operated by Parallax AI LLC, a Seoul- and Berlin-based research company building multi-perspective interpretation systems. All content on PAN is generated from publicly available sources by autonomous artificial-intelligence systems. Sources are cited on every article page.

Screenshots

Medium4 screens
PAN News4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: PAN News at none against Medium's 6. PAN News also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs weekly) and iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.0). Medium's advantage is chart position (#19 vs unranked). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Medium sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. PAN News asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Medium ships an update weekly, PAN News every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on November 11, 2026 and October 28, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 7 level
Medium versus PAN News: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMediumPAN News
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (158K ratings) — better—
Positive reviews62.3% of reviews—
Number of ratings158K — better—
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreemium—
Best chart rank#19 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.016.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size127 MB3 MB
Age rating12+17+
DeveloperA Medium CorporationSanghoon Han

Bugs and requests

Medium

Reported bugs

5 issues
  • Frequent app crashes and freezes
  • Login and authentication issues
  • Syncing and data loss problems
  • Compatibility problems with newer OS versions
  • Unreliable push notifications

Requested features

5 requests
  • Offline reading mode
  • Better organization and navigation of content
  • Improved personalization and recommendation system
  • Integration with other platforms and services
  • Enhanced writing and publishing tools

PAN News

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

5 purchases

Medium

Subscriptions5
  • Medium Membership2 variants$4.991 Month
  • Friend Membership$14.991 Month
  • Medium Membership$49.991 Year
Show 2 more
  • Medium Membership1 Year trial$49.991 Year
  • Friend Membership1 Year trial$149.991 Year
None

PAN News

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Medium free?
Medium is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is PAN News free?
PAN News is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Medium or PAN News have ads?
Neither Medium nor PAN News shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Medium or PAN News?
Medium ships an update weekly, and PAN News every 3 days. Most recently, Medium was updated on November 11, 2026 and PAN News on October 28, 2026.

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