medium-api/profile

Medium profile API — exact follower count, not the rounded one

Public Medium profile: followers, following, name, bio, avatar. Read from socialStats.followerCount in the Apollo state.

Parameters

Name	What it is
`handle`	The Medium handle.

Handle format and anchor

Handle: handle
Anchor: required — Medium does not 404

What this endpoint does not return.

verifiedNull. verifications.isBookAuthor says the person published a book, not that the account is verified. Those are different claims.

A field we cannot read comes back null, never 0. A zero would be a claim about the account; null is a fact about our collection.

Where this goes wrong.

Medium does NOT 404. A handle that does not exist returns 200 with 80 KB of account-not-found page, which is why the anchor is mandatory. And the read is by exact name, never by a Count suffix: the same object carries followerCount, followingCount and collectionFollowingCount.

Measured

About 270 KB decoded, about 35 KB on the wire, measured 2026-09-10.

Cost

1 credit per call. A call that finds nothing costs nothing.

The page says 83K. What does the API return?

The JSON says 83754. The page text is rounded for display; the Apollo state is not.

What happens with a handle that does not exist?

Medium returns 200, not 404, with an account-not-found page. The anchor catches it — without one you would parse that page as a profile.

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