Medium’s published figures show a platform measured across several layers: drafts and stories, reading activity, writer participation, community responses, publications, and paid membership. The figures below keep each measurement period explicit, because a 2015 milestone, a 2023 forecast, and a 2024 platform total describe different points in Medium’s history.
Contents
- Publishing volume and platform scale
- Readership and reading activity
- Writers, authors, and account participation
- Community engagement and sharing
- Publications, lists, newsletters, and events
- Distribution, curation, membership, and earnings
Publishing volume and platform scale
Medium’s recent publishing figures show a large stream of user activity. Users started close to 8 million drafts in 2024, after creating 7.4 million new drafts during 2023. Drafts are an activity measure and should not be read as the same thing as published stories. Medium, It happened on Medium in 2024; Medium, It happened on Medium: December 2023 roundup.
Medium also reported more than 11,000 new publications in 2024. A separate 2024 platform figure said the service became home to more than 11,000 new publications, describing the same scale of growth in the publications category. Medium, It happened on Medium in 2024.
Longer-term figures provide historical context without making the periods directly comparable:
- More than 534,000 writers published 2.3 million stories on Medium in 2021. Medium, The Medium Stories That Defined 2021
- Medium surpassed 1 million posts by 2015. Medium, It happened on Medium: The first 10 years
- Medium’s archive included 7.5 million stories published during 2016. freeCodeCamp, What I learned from analyzing the top 252 Medium stories of 2016
- Medium said readers and published posts each increased by approximately 300% year over year in 2016 compared with 2015. Medium, Renewing Medium’s focus
The 2024 moderation figure is also part of platform scale: Medium said it removed 1.8 million users for rule violations, including spam, fraud, plagiarism, and other violations. That is a reported enforcement total for 2024, not a measure of active readership. Medium, It happened on Medium in 2024.
Readership and reading activity
Medium’s 2024 readership figures show several routes by which readers reached stories. Readers came to Medium more than 100 million times through Daily or Weekly Digest recommendations during 2024. In 2023, readers viewed 89.1 million stories from Medium Daily Digest emails. Medium, It happened on Medium in 2024; Medium, It happened on Medium: December 2023 roundup.
Monthly 2024 figures give a narrower view of reading and referral activity:
| Measurement period | Reading or referral measure |
|---|---|
| June 2024 | 262 million minutes read |
| July 2024 | More than 8 million stories viewed from Daily Digest emails |
| August 2024 | More than 9 million reaches from stories shared on X |
| August 2024 | Close to 5 million reads from Daily Digest recommendations |
Sources: Medium, June 2024 roundup, Medium, July 2024 roundup, and Medium, August 2024 roundup.
The June measure is time spent reading, while the July and August measures count viewed stories or reaches. They therefore describe different forms of activity. The August Digest figure counts reads from recommendations, while the X figure counts times readers reached stories shared on X.
A historical analysis of 2016 focused on highly recommended stories. It found that 169 different writers produced the 252 most-recommended Medium stories of that year. Each of those 252 stories had at least 2,500 reader recommendations, and the group accumulated 1,033,961 recommendations. freeCodeCamp, What I learned from analyzing the top 252 Medium stories of 2016
Writers, authors, and account participation
Medium’s participation figures span weekly writing, cumulative authorship, new accounts, and time spent composing. More than 20,000 people wrote on Medium each week in 2015. By August 2023, a total of 12.9 million authors had shared a story on Medium. The first figure is a weekly activity measure from 2015; the second is cumulative through August 2023. Medium, Medium’s New Funding Round; Medium, The State of Medium.
In November 2023, 1,519,790 people joined Medium by creating a new free account. Medium Day 2023 featured 350 authors as speakers or contributors. These figures concern account creation and event participation, respectively, rather than a single count of active writers. Medium, November 2023 roundup; Medium, The State of Medium.
Writing activity was also measured in time. Medium users spent 3,255,768 hours working on story and comment drafts in July 2024. Medium separately reported 7.4 million new drafts in 2023 and close to 8 million drafts in 2024. Draft counts and draft-writing time are related indicators, but neither one is a count of completed published stories. Medium, July 2024 roundup; Medium, December 2023 roundup; Medium, 2024 retrospective.
The Partner Program reached writers across 119 countries after a 77-country expansion in 2024. Medium said it paid 34% more writers through the Partner Program in 2024 than in the prior year. The 119-country figure describes coverage after the expansion; the 34% figure describes change in the number of writers paid year over year. Medium, 2024 retrospective; Medium, July 2024 roundup.
Community engagement and sharing
Medium users responded more than 11 million times in 2024. A July 2024 monthly figure recorded 871,095 comments. The annual response total and monthly comment total use different periods and labels, so they should be treated as separate reported measures. Medium, It happened on Medium in 2024; Medium, July 2024 roundup.
Editorial participation in distribution was measured through Boost nominations. Medium editors nominated 2,756 stories for Boost in June 2024, including 1,926 nominations from publication editors. In November 2023, publication editors in the Boost Nomination Pilot nominated 2,261 stories. Medium, June 2024 roundup; Medium, November 2023 roundup.
Sharing activity was reported for August 2024. Users shared stories more than 700,000 times on desktop and mobile. They shared stories more than 126,000 times on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Medium also reported that readers reached stories more than 9 million times from stories shared on X during August. The sharing totals count shares, while the X figure counts reader reaches. Medium, August 2024 roundup.
Medium’s 2024 moderation milestone belongs in the community picture as well: the platform said it removed 1.8 million users for spam, fraud, plagiarism, and other rule violations. Separately, the Partner Program expansion added 77 countries to eligible-writer coverage. These are platform-governance and distribution figures, not engagement rates. Medium, 2024 retrospective; Medium, August 2024 roundup.
Publications, lists, newsletters, and events
Lists were a substantial organizing activity in Medium’s recent reports. Readers and writers curated 46,000 Lists in 2024. Medium users created 71,000 Lists in June 2024, while users created 1,379 new lists in November 2023. In 2023, readers saved 57,500 lists. These measures refer to creation, curation, saving, and different periods, so they are not interchangeable totals. Medium, 2024 retrospective; Medium, June 2024 roundup; Medium, November 2023 roundup; Medium, December 2023 roundup.
Medium’s newsletter reached 2.2 million subscribers in 2024. The platform also listed more than 150 publications accepting submissions in November 2023. For readers and prospective contributors, those figures describe newsletter reach and a reported submission pathway at specific points in time. Medium, 2024 retrospective; Medium, November 2023 roundup.
Medium Day figures show the scale of organized participation. Medium Day 2024 had 6,800 attendees from 59 countries. Medium Day 2023 consisted of 230 different sessions and featured 350 authors as speakers or contributors. The 2024 attendance and country count and the 2023 session and contributor counts refer to separate events. Medium, August 2024 roundup; Medium, The State of Medium.
Medium’s first 10-year retrospective said one commissioned novella contained 100 parts. That is a historical editorial milestone reported in 2022, not a current publishing-volume estimate. The same retrospective reported that Medium had surpassed 1 million posts by 2015. Medium, It happened on Medium: The first 10 years.
Distribution, curation, membership, and earnings
Medium reported that, in a typical week described in March 2024, its curation team reviewed about 5,000 stories out of about 1.2 million published. The source reported a review rate of about 0.5%. This is a reported estimate for a typical week, not a guarantee that every week had the same volume or rate. Medium, Our curation team’s approach to keeping AI-generated content out of your recommendations.
Medium reached 1 million members in 2024 and became profitable for the first time in its 12-year history that year. These are company-reported 2024 milestones. The membership figure is not the same as the 12.9 million authors who had shared a story by August 2023, because the measures describe different forms of participation. Medium, It happened on Medium in 2024.
Medium reported 35,000 new member sign-ups in June 2023 and 47,000 in July 2023. It projected 101,000 new member sign-ups for August 2023. The August number is explicitly a forecast, while the June and July numbers are reported sign-up figures. Medium, The State of Medium.
The platform also reported raising $57 million in capital in September 2015. That financing figure is historical and should not be treated as current revenue, profit, or valuation. Medium, Medium’s New Funding Round.
Finally, Medium’s 2024 Partner Program expansion enabled writer earnings in 77 additional countries. Together with coverage in 119 countries and the reported 34% year-over-year increase in writers paid, the figures describe a wider geographic scope for the program, while leaving earnings amounts unspecified. Medium, August 2024 roundup; Medium, 2024 retrospective.