Methodology
Every number on WriterPulse comes from publicly visible Medium pages, collected by an automated weekly scan.
Last scan: Oct 20, 2026 · 31,770 stories, 17,648 writers, 705 publications, 73 tags
What we collect
- Tags. For each of 73 tracked tags we read the newest stories (up to 14 days back, or up to 1,000 stories for very busy tags) together with public counts: claps, responses, reading time and the author’s follower count.
- Publications. Every publication that appears at least twice in those stories, with its public follower count.
- Writers. Public profile and story dates for writers with 20+ followers, plus a random 10% sample of smaller writers so statistics about newcomers are not biased toward successful accounts.
We never collect story text, private data or anything behind a login. Scans are slow and rate-limited.
Metrics
- Stories per day
- Stories found in the tag divided by the number of days they cover.
- Followers per daily story
- Tag followers divided by stories per day — a rough “readers per story” ratio.
- Median claps / zero-clap share
- Calculated only on stories at least 3 days old, since claps keep accumulating after publication.
- Small writers
- Writers with fewer than 100 followers at scan time.
- Open to new writers
- A publication with at least 3 recent stories by small writers making up 30% or more of its observed stories.
- New writers
- First Medium story within the last 12 months and at least 3 stories.
- Growth
- Week-over-week change between scans. Before two scans exist, followers per month since the first story.
- Clap farming filter
- Accounts whose recent stories get far more claps than their audience can explain (e.g. more than 20× their follower count, or very high volume with outsized claps) are excluded from rankings.
Limitations
- Publications are measured only through stories in the tags we track.
- Writers who stopped publishing are underrepresented in growth studies.
- Follower counts are public totals; we cannot see reads or earnings.