Medium Scraper (Articles, Claps, Tags, Reading Time)

What is Medium Scraper?

Medium Scraper collects stories from Medium by tag, author or publication. Each story becomes one dataset row with its title, subtitle, author, dates, claps, responses, tags, reading time, word count and link. The full article text is optional. No Medium login or API key is needed.

Why use Medium Scraper?

• Claps and responses for each story, from the tag and author pages, to see what is getting traction.
• Reading time and word count as Medium computes them.
• Tags on every story, for topic research and content planning.
• Optional full article text as plain paragraphs.
• Pay only for stories saved.

How to use Medium Scraper

1. Enter tag slugs (javascript), author handles (@addyosmani) and/or publication slugs (towards-data-science). Full Medium URLs also work.
2. Set how many stories to collect from each source.
3. Turn on "Include full article text" if you need the body.
4. Run it and download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read it through the API.

Example input

{
    "tags": ["javascript"],
    "authors": ["addyosmani"],
    "publications": [],
    "maxArticlesPerSource": 12,
    "includeFullText": false
}

Example output

A real row from a run on 2026-10-23 (tag javascript):

{
    "source": "tag",
    "query": "javascript",
    "postId": "integrals-where-i-learned-web-development-by-doing-it-bc20b3c53351",
    "title": "Integrals: Where I Learned Web Development by Doing It",
    "subtitle": "A small web studio in Tbilisi, a lot of client meetings, and two years of building websites between 2016 and 2018.",
    "author": "Giorgi Mgebrishvili",
    "authorUsername": "mgebrov",
    "publishedAt": "2026-10-09T14:52:39.464Z",
    "updatedAt": "2026-10-09T14:56:52.688Z",
    "claps": 48,
    "responses": 8,
    "readingTimeMinutes": 5.4,
    "wordCount": 1387,
    "tags": ["php", "web-development", "agmashenebeli-avenue", "career-development"],
    "url": "https://medium.com/@mgebrov/integrals-where-i-learned-web-development-by-doing-it-bc20b3c53351",
    "locked": false,
    "fullText": null,
    "position": 1
}

Data table

Field	Meaning	Where it comes from
title, subtitle, author, authorUsername, url	story text and links	tag/author page or feed
publishedAt, updatedAt	first and latest publish time (UTC)	tag/author page or feed
claps, responses	clap count and response count	tag/author page; story page when missing; empty for feed-only rows
readingTimeMinutes, wordCount	Medium's own values	story page; empty when the story page does not expose them
tags	tag slugs on the story	tag/author page or feed
fullText	body paragraphs (only with "Include full article text")	story page
locked	Medium's members-only flag	tag/author page

Input parameters

• Tags: tag slugs or tag URLs. A tag page shows about 30 stories.
• Authors: author handles or profile URLs. An author page shows about 10 stories.
• Publications: publication slugs. Publication feeds hold about 10 stories.
• Max articles per tag, author or publication: 1 to 100.
• Include full article text: off by default. Turn it on to add the body; it costs one more page request per story.
• Max concurrency: stories fetched at the same time.

Pricing

Pay per article saved, with volume tiers (see the Actor page for the current prices). The run stops before it would exceed your max total charge.

Medium Scraper vs. Medium's own tools

Medium has no public API for searching stories by tag. This Actor reads the public tag, author and publication pages, and the RSS feeds that Medium serves to any visitor. It does not read member-only content beyond what Medium shows to visitors, and it does not collect responses or the people who wrote them.

Using Medium Scraper with AI agents and MCP

Use it from the Apify MCP server or the API with a tag, an author or a publication. Pay-per-event pricing is charged per article, so an agent that sets a maxTotalChargeUsd never goes over that budget.

FAQ

Why are some reading times empty? Stories published on a publication's own domain (for example a custom domain) did not expose reading time or word count on their story page during testing (2026-10-23). These fields stay empty rather than being estimated.

Why does a tag return about 30 stories? Medium's tag page shows about 30 stories. Deeper pages are loaded by Medium's own app and are not used here.

Why are claps empty for some rows? Publication feeds do not include claps. The story page is used to fill them when it exposes the count.

Support and feedback

If you find a problem, open an issue in the Actor's Issues tab. A review helps other users find it.