Medium Public Following Scraper

Collect public accounts shown on one or more Medium following pages. The Actor uses an ordinary headless Chromium session and reads rendered names, profile links, bios, and avatars from the page DOM.

It does not sign in, call Medium's internal GraphQL endpoint, fingerprint the browser, solve challenges, or access private lists. If Medium presents an access-control page, the run fails clearly without attempting a bypass.

Input

{
  "username": "karpathy",
  "maxItems": 3
}

Use usernames instead of username for several targets. Duplicate usernames are removed and maxItems is divided fairly across targets. Usernames may include a leading @; maxItems must be an integer from 1 through 500. Unknown input fields and type coercion are rejected.

Output

Each default-dataset row is one public targetFollowsUser connection:

{
  "recordType": "mediumFollowing",
  "connectionType": "targetFollowsUser",
  "followingRank": 1,
  "targetUsername": "karpathy",
  "targetProfileUrl": "https://medium.com/@karpathy",
  "targetFollowingCount": 186,
  "followedName": "Nicolas Pinto",
  "followedUsername": "nicolas.pinto",
  "followedProfileUrl": "https://medium.com/@nicolas.pinto",
  "sourcePageUrl": "https://medium.com/@karpathy/following",
  "sourceHttpStatus": 200,
  "extractionMethod": "public-following-dom",
  "browserFingerprinting": false,
  "headlessBrowser": true,
  "proxyConfigured": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-31T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Optional followedBio and followedAvatarUrl fields are omitted when Medium does not render them. The Actor preserves rendered order, removes duplicate target/profile pairs, stops at the exact requested limit, and performs only bounded scrolling.

Limits and responsible use

Public page availability and layout can change. A nonexistent user, a non-public list, an access-control response, or a page with no rendered cards may produce no data and fail the run. The Actor intentionally has no proxy input. Use collected public profile data only where you have a lawful basis and respect Medium's terms, privacy expectations, and applicable law.