How to Save Medium Articles as Markdown
Medium hosts some of the best technical writing, personal essays, and industry insights on the web. But Medium’s interface—with its paywalls, popups, and custom formatting—makes it hard to save articles for later. Here’s how to convert Medium articles to clean Markdown.
Why Save Medium Articles as Markdown?
Medium content has unique challenges:
- Paywall limits — you only get a few free articles per month
- No offline access — requires internet connection
- Formatting issues — copy-paste loses structure
- Articles disappear — writers delete or move content
Saving to Markdown solves all of these.
What Minibase Captures from Medium
Article Content
- Full article text with formatting
- Headings and subheadings
- Code blocks (properly formatted)
- Block quotes and callouts
- Lists and embedded links
Metadata
- Article title
- Author name
- Publication date
- Reading time
Example Output
# The Art of Writing Clean Code
**Author:** Jane Developer
**Published:** December 15, 2024
**Reading time:** 8 min
---
Clean code isn't just about following rules—it's about
communication. Every line you write is a message to
the next developer...
## The Single Responsibility Principle
Functions should do one thing. If you find yourself
using "and" to describe what a function does...
\`\`\`javascript
// Bad: Does too many things
function processUserAndSendEmail(user) {
// ...
}
// Good: Single responsibility
function processUser(user) {
// ...
}
\`\`\`
Use Cases
Building a Reading Archive
- Save articles before hitting the paywall
- Create a personal library of valuable content
- Organize articles by topic in your notes app
Research and Writing
- Collect sources for your own articles
- Minibase quotes and statistics with context
- Build reference material for projects
Learning and Development
- Archive technical tutorials
- Create study materials from educational content
- Build personal documentation from how-to guides
AI-Assisted Learning
Feed saved articles to AI assistants to:
- Summarize key points
- Explain complex concepts
- Generate questions for comprehension
Tips for Best Results
- Works on paywalled articles — if you can see it, you can save it
- Wait for images to load — ensures image references are captured
- Works on publications too — not just individual writer pages
Handling Medium’s Formatting
Medium uses custom components like:
- Pull quotes → converted to block quotes
- Code blocks → preserved with syntax
- Embedded tweets → converted to links
- Images → referenced as Markdown images
Get Started
Install Save from the Chrome Web Store — build your reading library.
Have questions? Reach out at hello@minibase.md
Continue reading
How to Save News Articles as Markdown
Minibase news articles from any site as clean Markdown. Archive journalism, bypass clutter, and build a personal news library without ads or paywalls.
How the Minibase API renders JavaScript pages to Markdown
A look inside the tiered fetch engine: cheap server-side fetch first, headless render only when a page is a JS shell, then boilerplate stripped. How we keep quality high and cost near zero.
Introducing the Minibase API: turn any URL into clean Markdown
The engine behind Minibase is now a developer API. POST a URL, get back clean, LLM-ready Markdown. Built for AI agents, RAG pipelines and scrapers. Pay as you go from $2 per 1,000 pages.
Minibase API vs Firecrawl vs Jina Reader: choosing a URL-to-Markdown API
A practical comparison of three URL-to-Markdown APIs for AI agents and RAG. How pricing, JavaScript rendering, and the cheap-vs-AI split actually differ — and when to pick each.