Friend Links are a tool for writers to guarantee that friends, family, and fans have free access to their stories.
When your story is behind the paywall, anyone can still instantly read your work — even those without Medium accounts. But once someone has read all the free stories in their member preview for the month, they’ll need to become a Medium member to read additional paywalled stories that month.
If your story is not behind our paywall, it's already free for all to read, and you can share it using your story URL.
We understand there are moments where you want to make sure friends, family, and fans can read your work no matter what, so we created a handy Friend Link that gives anyone free access to your story — even if they’re not a subscribing Medium member and have already read all their complimentary stories for the month.
Authors receive Friend Links for every story that’s behind our metered paywall. You can share a Friend Link directly to, well, friends or through any social media platform.
Sharing a Friend Link
- Open the story for which you want to grab the Friend Link.
- Click the three-dot button in the bottom-right corner.
- Choose Copy Friend Link from the menu.
- Copy your custom Friend Link and share away! Anyone who uses this link will have free access.
Common questions
You can share a Friend Link with anyone. As long as they have that link, they’ll have free access. And people can share it with other people too — it doesn’t just have to come from you. They will need to receive the link from you, however — only the author can see the Friend Link when viewing their stories.
Yes, the author of the story and a publication editor can generate a Friend Link for stories in publications. The link is in the top right corner for posts in publications.