Medium Followers Scraper

Medium Public Followers Scraper

Collect public follower connections for one or more Medium users and save the available profile information to an Apify dataset.

What this Actor collects

• One unique target-to-follower connection per row.
• Target and follower IDs, names, usernames, bios, avatars, canonical profile URLs, and optional Medium subdomains.
• Published membership dates, account flags, and follower/following counts.
• Per-target rank, global result position, public source URLs, HTTP status, and transport provenance.

Optional profile fields are omitted when Medium does not publish them. maxItems is a ceiling, so the dataset can contain fewer rows when a public list has fewer connections.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
username	string	—	One Medium username, optionally beginning with @.
usernames	string array	—	Up to 20 additional usernames; case-insensitive duplicates are removed.
maxItems	integer	50	Maximum total connections across all targets, from 1 to 500.

At least one username is required. When both username fields are supplied, unique values are combined and the limit is allocated fairly across requested targets.

{
  "usernames": ["karpathy", "Medium"],
  "maxItems": 10
}

Unknown fields, invalid usernames, and invalid limits fail before browser startup.

Dataset output

The default dataset contains medium_follower_connection rows. Each row describes one follower connection for a requested target.

{
  "recordType": "medium_follower_connection",
  "status": "ok",
  "connectionType": "follows",
  "followerRank": 1,
  "resultPosition": 1,
  "targetUsername": "karpathy",
  "targetProfileUrl": "https://medium.com/@karpathy",
  "targetName": "Andrej Karpathy",
  "targetFollowerCount": 61853,
  "followerUsername": "example-follower",
  "followerProfileUrl": "https://medium.com/@example-follower",
  "followerName": "Example Follower",
  "followerBio": "A public profile biography.",
  "sourcePageUrl": "https://medium.com/@karpathy/followers",
  "sourceGraphqlUrl": "https://medium.com/_/graphql",
  "sourceHttpStatus": 200,
  "extractionMethod": "browser-session-graphql",
  "browserSessionUsed": true,
  "browserFingerprinting": false,
  "headlessBrowser": true,
  "proxyConfigured": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Run summary

The Actor writes a run summary to the OUTPUT key-value-store record. It includes the overall status, requested usernames and limit, saved and unique row counts, and each target's result.

Responsible use

• Public follower lists can change over time and may contain fewer connections than the requested limit.
• Use small limits and reasonable intervals for repeated collection.
• Collect and use public profile information only where you have a lawful basis; respect Medium's terms, rate limits, privacy expectations, and applicable law.