How to Export Your Medium Stories

To export your Medium stories, go to Settings → Security and apps → Download your information and click Export. Medium emails you a link to a ZIP file with your stories as HTML files. It's a good backup, but WordPress can't import it as it is, and your images aren't in it.

Below is what you get, what's missing, and how to get the stories into WordPress. We checked every claim about Medium and WordPress on 13 November 2026, on their own websites and on live Medium feeds.

The short answer

• A backup of everything you wrote: Medium's Download your information archive.
• A list of your latest stories: the RSS feed. It isn't an export.
• Your stories in WordPress: the archive, plus a tool that converts it. On a site hosted by WordPress.com, use its Medium importer. On any other WordPress site, use a converter or Blog Porter.

How to download your Medium archive

Medium says it lets you export your personal data and stories as HTML files in a .zip archive.

On the web:

1. On your homepage, click your profile picture, then Settings.
2. Open the Security and apps tab.
3. Click Download your information.
4. Click Export to confirm.

In the Medium app: tap your profile picture, then Settings → Account → Security and apps → Download your information → Export.

Medium emails you a download link when the archive is ready. Download it, and keep an untouched copy somewhere safe before you unzip or change anything.

Exporting a publication

The archive covers your own account. For a Medium publication, WordPress.com's guide says you need to ask Medium support to create the backup file. It also says support offers HTML or XML, and that the HTML version is the one to use.

What's in the ZIP

The archive is a set of HTML files, one per story, in a folder called posts, next to other folders of account data. Open any of them in your browser and you'll see the story with very little styling.

• Published stories. Each one has its title, subtitle, body text and formatting. At the bottom, a footer lists its tags, author, publish date and a Canonical link to the story's address on Medium.
• Drafts. They're in the same folder. WordPress.com's importer keeps them unpublished. Ghost's open-source Medium importer treats files whose names start with draft as drafts.
• Your responses. Medium says a response has its own page and acts just like any post. So responses you wrote can sit in the same folder as your stories.

What isn't in it

• Images. The HTML files link to images on Medium's servers, at addresses starting with cdn-images-1.medium.com. The image files themselves aren't included. If you copy a story into WordPress and leave those links in place, your images still depend on Medium. WordPress says an image that isn't in your Media Library may stop displaying if the original is moved or deleted.
• Your followers. There's no export for them.
• Your email subscribers, mostly. You can export the emails you imported, plus readers who subscribed before April 2025. Medium says that if all your subscribers joined after April 2025, the export is empty. Keep your Medium SEO and readers covers what you can do instead.
• Responses other people left on your stories. Each one is a post on its author's account.

The RSS feed is not an export

Medium gives every profile and publication an RSS feed:

We opened four public Medium feeds, two profiles and two publications. Each one held exactly 10 stories, the most recent ones, with images still linking to cdn-images-1.medium.com. Asking for a second page of a feed returned the same 10 stories. Medium also says that stories behind the paywall are not available as full stories in any feed.

You could import a feed with WordPress's RSS Importer plugin. You'd get your 10 latest stories, with any member-only ones cut short and the images still on Medium. That's fine for a quick test, but not for moving an archive.

Getting the archive into WordPress

WordPress can't read Medium's HTML files directly, so something has to convert them.

Option 1: copy and paste

Open each story file in your browser and paste it into a new WordPress post. It's free and it works, but for each story you also fix the formatting, re-add the images, and set the date and slug. Our estimate is 10 to 15 minutes per story, so 50 stories take roughly 8 to 12 hours. It makes sense for a handful of stories.

Option 2: WordPress.com's Medium importer

If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, go to Tools → Import and choose the Medium importer. WordPress.com says your stories arrive with their original dates and tags. Published stories are published and drafts stay unpublished, and you can run it again later without duplicating posts.

It imports into WordPress.com sites only. Some writers use it as a stepping stone to a self-hosted site: they import into a WordPress.com site, then download an XML file under Tools → Export and load it on their own site with the WordPress Importer. WordPress.com says that file includes links to your media files, not the files themselves, so check your images afterwards.

Option 3: a converter and the WordPress Importer

For a WordPress site hosted elsewhere, WPBeginner's Medium guide uses its free online converter, mediumtowp.com. It turns the archive into a WordPress import file, which you load with the WordPress Importer plugin under Tools → Import. WPBeginner warns that some images can fail to import and featured images don't always come across. It suggests checking your Media Library and re-uploading what's missing.

Option 4: Blog Porter

Blog Porter is a WordPress plugin. Choose Medium as your platform, upload the ZIP that Medium emailed you, and it imports the stories straight into WordPress. You don't need a converter or an import file.

It imports:

• story titles, and content as editable WordPress blocks
• each story's slug, taken from its Medium link, so the last part of the address stays the same
• publish dates
• available images, downloaded into your Media Library, with a retry for any that fail

The analysis is free. It counts the stories in your archive and shows the exact price before you pay: $0.20 per story, paid once, with a minimum of 5 stories. The import runs in batches inside WordPress, so you can pause and resume.

Blog Porter imports each story's tags and author, and uses its subtitle as the WordPress excerpt. It doesn't import featured images, and it doesn't move followers, subscribers, claps or readers' responses. Add featured images in WordPress afterwards.

Before you upload: Blog Porter reads every published story in the archive's posts folder. It leaves out drafts and very short notes, so they aren't counted, charged or imported. You can't pick individual Medium stories, so every other story in the archive is counted. Check the count in the analysis against the number of published stories on your Medium Stories page. Responses you wrote can make it a little higher.

Keep Medium running

Your archive is a copy, not a move. Keep your Medium account until your WordPress site is live and checked. Your images may still load from Medium, and your old stories still bring in readers. How to migrate from Medium to WordPress compares every route and lists every step in order.

Move your Medium stories into WordPress

Install the Blog Porter plugin, upload your Medium archive, and the free analysis shows how many stories it found and the exact price. Read more about moving from Medium to WordPress.