How to listen to Medium articles (any story, not just the ones with audio)
Medium has audio on some stories and none on most. If you've opened a 14-minute read you'd rather hear while you cook, the answer isn't waiting for Medium to add a narration: any story open in your browser can be read aloud in a natural voice, free, in about two minutes of setup. This guide covers that setup, what happens with member-only stories — the short version: if you can see the whole story, you can hear the whole story — and the honest limits, which mostly involve code blocks.
Listen to any Medium story in three steps
- Install a read-aloud extension. We make Lullula, free for Chrome, Edge and Firefox. It finds the article on a page and reads only that. No account needed to start.
- Open the story. On medium.com, or on a publication's own domain — those are Medium pages underneath and read the same way. If you're a member, log in first so member-only stories load in full.
- Press play. The story is read aloud in a natural voice, each sentence is highlighted as it's spoken, and your place is saved, so a half-finished longread resumes where you stopped.
A note on Medium's read-time estimate: it assumes about 265 words a minute, and spoken audio runs about 140. So a "10 min read" is roughly 19 minutes at 1×, or under 13 minutes at 1.5×. Speed goes from 0.5× to 2×, and an AI summary first tells you whether the 25-minute one is worth it.
Does Medium have its own text to speech?
Only on some stories. Medium has offered audio versions of selected stories to members; where a story has one, there's a play control near the top of the page, and it's usually the better listen because someone produced it deliberately. Most stories — nearly everything outside the big publications, and everything from the writers you follow for their own sake — have none. That's the gap a read-aloud extension fills. It doesn't care whether Medium made audio, because it reads the text on the page.
Member-only stories: if you can read it, you can hear it
The paywall question, straight. A member-only story loads as a normal web page for members. Log in, open the story, press play, and the whole thing reads. The extension reads what your browser shows, so it doesn't bypass anything and doesn't need to.
If you're not a member, the page contains the preview — the first few paragraphs — and a prompt to join. That's what you'll hear, and then it stops. It isn't the reader failing; the rest of the story isn't on the page. The legitimate way past that is a friend link: writers can share a member-only story free with a link, and a story opened that way loads in full and reads in full.
Where Medium stories read well, and where they don't
Medium's layout is close to ideal for listening: one column, no sidebar interrupting the text, generous headings. Essays, personal stories, opinion pieces and most tech writing in prose read well, and the sentence highlighting keeps you with a long argument. Article detection reads the story, not the claps, the responses or the "more from Medium" block underneath.
The weak spots are the ones every text-to-speech tool has. Code blocks read badly, because code isn't sentences, and Medium hosts a great many programming tutorials; read those with your eyes and let the voice handle the explanation between them. Embedded gists live in a frame, so their contents aren't part of the story text. Math is usually an image on Medium and gets skipped. Image captions are read as text, which is fine but occasionally odd. Our guide to listening to articles has more on what listening is good for and what it isn't.
Other ways to listen to Medium, fairly compared
| Option | What you get | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Lullula (that's us) | Reads any story open in your browser, with sentence highlighting, saved place and summaries. Unlimited listening in browser voices plus 2,000 premium words a month, free, no account. | You read Medium on a laptop and want one queue for stories, articles and PDFs. |
| Medium's own audio | Audio versions on selected stories, played from the story page. | It exists for the story you're reading. Use it when it does. |
| Chrome reading mode or Edge Read Aloud | Built into the browser, free, no install. No saved place, no summary. | Occasional listening. Here's how Chrome's works. |
| Speechify | An extension plus polished phone apps, from the biggest name in the space. The free tier is thin, and the paid plans cost several times ours. | You want one subscription across phone and browser. Our comparison. |
| Read-later apps (Matter, Readwise Reader) | Built-in narration, a queue, and phone apps. | You save everything you read into one app and listen on your phone. |
Frequently asked questions
Does Medium have text to speech?
Only on selected stories, where you'll see a play control on the page. For everything else, a browser extension or your operating system's reader turns the text into audio.
Can I listen to member-only stories?
Yes, if you're a member and logged in: the story loads as a normal page and reads in full. Without membership, only the preview is on the page, so only the preview is read. A friend link from the writer loads the full story.
Why did it stop after a few paragraphs?
Almost always the paywall: you reached the end of the preview. Log in as a member, or open the story through a friend link, and press play again.
Does it read the responses and the “more from Medium” section?
No. Article detection reads the story body. Responses, claps and recommendations are page furniture, and skipping them is the point of an article-aware reader.
Can I listen to Medium on my phone?
Not with Lullula yet; it's a desktop extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox. On a phone, Medium's own audio plays where it exists, and your device's built-in reader — Speak Screen on iOS, Select to Speak on Android — reads a story that's on screen.
What does it cost?
Nothing to start: unlimited listening in your browser's built-in voices, plus 2,000 words a month of premium neural voices, which is about one long story. Pro is from $4.17 a month billed yearly ($49.99 a year), or $4.99 monthly, with a much larger premium-voice allowance. Details here.
Press play on the story you bookmarked last week
Open it, press play, and find out whether you take in an essay by ear while doing something with your hands. The free tier is enough to know within one story. The full detail on how articles are detected is on the Read web pages aloud page.