For UK Creators
🇬🇧 UKMove your Medium archive to Substack — a complete guide for UK writers
Thousands of UK writers built their readership on Medium before its algorithm changes and Partner Programme cuts made it unviable. Here's how to migrate your full archive to Substack properly, without losing your content history or your readers.
Free plan available. No credit card required.
- 50+
- Articles importable in a single batch
- 2 mins
- Average time to import one article
- 100%
- Content ownership retained on Substack
- £0
- Cost to import with Narrareach free plan
The problem
The manual version gets old fast.
Medium's relationship with UK writers changed dramatically between 2021 and 2024. Partner Programme payouts fell, the algorithm heavily deprioritised non-Member content, and several UK-specific publications lost their featured placement. Writers who had spent years building an archive and an audience found themselves working hard to reach a fraction of their previous readership.
The move to Substack is the right call for most of those writers — but the migration itself is genuinely painful. Medium's export creates a zip file of HTML documents, not clean Markdown. Substack's import tool handles basic cases but frequently garbles formatting, drops images, and loses metadata like publication dates. Writers who try to move 100+ articles manually are looking at weeks of cleanup work.
The other problem is reader migration. Medium followers don't automatically become Substack subscribers. UK writers have to communicate the move, provide a migration path, and often accept that a significant portion of their Medium audience won't follow — especially the casual readers who never consciously chose to follow, just clicked through from the Medium homepage.
Exporting your Medium archive: what UK writers need to know
Medium allows you to export your full archive from Settings → Security and Apps → Download your information. The export includes your published articles, responses, claps data, and follower list — but the format is HTML, not a clean import-ready file.
The HTML files include Medium's own styling and layout markup which Substack's importer strips imperfectly. Articles with embedded tweets, code blocks, or custom formatting will need manual review after import. Images hosted on Medium's CDN are included as references, not as downloaded files — if Medium ever removes them, they'll break on Substack too.
For UK writers with large archives (100+ articles), the practical recommendation is to import in batches and review each category of content before the next import. Long-form essays import cleanest; articles with heavy media or embeds need the most cleanup.
- Download your Medium stats alongside your archive — you'll want to know which articles performed best so you can prioritise cleanup and promotion on Substack.
- Before importing, delete or skip any Medium articles that were responses, comments, or very short posts that won't stand alone on Substack.
- After syncing your Medium profile in Narrareach, batch-schedule your best archive pieces as Substack Notes — turning old content into new distribution.
- Set a canonical URL on each imported Substack post pointing back to the original Medium URL, so you don't lose any search traffic those Medium articles currently receive.
Migrating your Medium readers to Substack
Medium doesn't give you your followers' email addresses — only their Medium usernames. This is the fundamental barrier to reader migration and the reason many writers lose 60–70% of their Medium audience when they move.
The most effective approach UK writers have used: publish a clear migration announcement on Medium explaining where you're going and why, include a direct Substack subscribe link, and pin it at the top of your Medium profile. Publish two or three more posts on Medium over the following weeks, each mentioning the move, before going fully dark on the platform.
Some writers also use Medium's paid membership to export their subscriber list if they ran a paid publication — paid subscriber email addresses are available for export. Free follower emails are not. If you have a paid Medium publication, export those emails and import them to your Substack subscriber list before shutting down.
- Announce the move at least 3–4 weeks before you stop publishing on Medium to give followers time to subscribe.
- Offer something specific for subscribers who follow you to Substack — a curated reading list of your best past work, early access to a new series, or a personal note about what's changing.
- Don't delete your Medium articles after migrating — they still receive search traffic and can redirect readers to your Substack. Set your Medium bio to point to your Substack URL instead.
- Use Narrareach's subscriber attribution feature to track which of your early Substack posts bring in the most new subscribers, so you can understand what's working for the migrated audience.
UK GDPR considerations when migrating subscribers
If you're migrating paid subscribers' email addresses from Medium to Substack, UK GDPR applies. You need a lawful basis for processing those emails on a new platform. For paid subscribers, legitimate interest or the performance of a contract argument typically covers the migration — they signed up specifically to receive your content, and you're continuing to provide that content on a new platform.
The safest approach is to notify those subscribers before the migration: tell them you're moving to Substack, what will change, and give them an easy opt-out. This is both legally solid and practically better for list quality — subscribers who actively confirm they want to follow you convert to paid Substack subscribers at much higher rates than passive migrated lists.
Substack is GDPR-compliant and stores subscriber data on EU-compliant infrastructure. UK GDPR post-Brexit is substantively identical to EU GDPR for this purpose.
Turning your archive into a Substack growth engine
The mistake most writers make after migrating is treating their archive as static content. A well-written article from three years ago is still valuable — especially if it covers a topic that's evergreen and you're now writing for a Substack audience that hasn't seen it.
Narrareach's AI repurposing tool can take any archived article and generate a Substack Note from it in seconds. That Note can be scheduled to go out over the coming weeks, giving new subscribers a taste of your best work and giving you a publishing schedule without writing anything new.
Many UK writers who've migrated from Medium find they have 50–200 articles worth repurposing. Spread as Substack Notes over six months, that archive becomes a constant source of new subscriber touchpoints.
- Connect your Medium profile to Narrareach, sync your session, then select your top 20 articles by views and repurpose each one as a Substack Note.
- Schedule repurposed archive Notes between new content — don't flood subscribers with old material, but weave it in as background reading.
- Update the key facts in older articles before repurposing — a 2021 article about a technology that has changed significantly needs current data to be genuinely useful.
How Narrareach solves it
Keep the publishing system close to the writing.
Bulk article import — Import up to 50 articles at a time from your Medium export, rather than copying and pasting one by one.
AI content repurposing — Select any imported article and Narrareach generates a Substack Note from it — turning your archive into a scheduling queue.
Scheduled re-publication — Queue repurposed archive content to publish as Notes throughout the week, automatically, without manual posting.
Subscriber attribution — Track which archive pieces drive new Substack subscribers after migration so you know which content to promote first.
Cross-posting to LinkedIn and X — When you re-publish a great older piece on Substack, automatically cross-post it to LinkedIn and X to reach your broader audience.
Cloud-based publishing — Schedule a month of repurposed content in one session — Narrareach posts it automatically without you needing to be at your desk.
“I had 140 articles on Medium from five years of writing and no idea how to move them without losing everything. Narrareach let me import them in batches and turn the best ones into scheduled Notes. Three months later I have a proper Substack archive and a publishing queue that runs itself.”
Rebecca H., Tech writer and newsletter creator, Bristol
Import your Medium archive and start building on Substack
Free plan available. No credit card required.
Questions UK creators ask
Can I import all my Medium articles to Substack at once?
Medium's export gives you a zip file of HTML articles. Substack's native importer handles this but can struggle with large archives. Narrareach supports bulk import and can process articles in batches of up to 50, which is more reliable for writers with 100+ articles.
Will my Medium articles keep their original publication dates on Substack?
You can set the publication date manually on each imported article in Substack. For bulk imports via Narrareach, you can preserve original dates or set new ones depending on whether you want the content to appear as historical archive or fresh content.
Does moving from Medium to Substack affect my Google search rankings?
Articles that rank on Google from your Medium URLs will lose that ranking when you move them — unless you keep the Medium versions live. The recommended approach is to keep Medium articles live, set canonical URLs pointing to the Substack versions, and let Google gradually transfer ranking over 3–6 months.
Can I export my Medium followers to Substack?
Medium doesn't export free follower email addresses — only usernames. If you had a paid Medium publication, you can export paid subscriber emails. The practical approach is to publish migration announcements on Medium and invite followers to subscribe directly on Substack.
Is migrating email addresses from Medium to Substack GDPR-compliant?
For paid subscriber emails, the migration is generally covered under legitimate interest or contract performance, since subscribers signed up to receive your content. Notify subscribers before migrating and give them a clear opt-out. Free follower usernames without emails don't present GDPR issues as you're not processing email data.
What happens to my Medium Partner Programme earnings if I stop publishing?
Any accumulated Partner Programme earnings owed to you will be paid out on the normal monthly schedule even if you stop publishing. Check Medium's current minimum threshold — amounts below it roll over but are paid once you hit the minimum. After migrating, you can leave articles live on Medium to continue earning small amounts from existing traffic.
How do I turn my Medium archive into Substack Notes?
Narrareach's AI repurposing feature takes any article URL and generates a Substack Note from it. You can then schedule these Notes to publish over time — turning a static archive into an ongoing content queue. This is one of the fastest ways to build a publishing rhythm on Substack without writing new content immediately.
Is Narrareach free to use for the Medium to Substack migration?
Yes. The free plan includes bulk import and AI repurposing features. For writers with larger archives or higher scheduling volumes, paid plans start at $19/month.
Narrareach LLM connector
Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible agent to read drafts, schedule posts, and automate Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, and Threads workflows.