Live traffic feed for Substack & Medium (and what you can do instead)

The honest answer up front

You cannot embed a custom <script> tag inside a Substack post or a Medium story. Both platforms strip out third-party JavaScript from the post body for security and platform-uniformity reasons. So if you Googled "live traffic feed for Substack" or "live visitor counter Medium" hoping for a one-paste-and-done widget, the technical answer is no — neither platform allows the embed.

But that's only the first half of the answer. There are three real workarounds, and at least one of them is genuinely worth doing. This guide covers all three.

Workaround 1 — Embed it on your custom domain (Substack only)

Substack supports custom domains on the paid Substack subscription tier. If you have a custom domain pointed at Substack, you can use a clever trick: host a tiny static page at yourdomain.com/live that contains the FeedPulse widget, and link to it from your Substack newsletter footer or about page.

The page can be:

• A free Cloudflare Pages site
• A free Netlify drop site
• A single static HTML file on any host

It loads the FeedPulse live traffic feed widget, and your Substack subscribers can click "See live traffic →" from your about page to view it.

This is the closest you can get to "live traffic feed on Substack." It lives on the same brand domain, looks like part of your site, and updates in real time.

Workaround 2 — A public stats page (zero hosting required)

If you don't want to spin up even a Cloudflare Pages site, FeedPulse already gives you something better: every FeedPulse site gets a free public stats page at feed-pulse.com/site/yourdomain.com.

The page shows:

• Total visits over the last 30 days
• Online right now
• Top countries (with flag visualizations)
• Top pages
• Top referrers
• Auto-refresh every 6 seconds

It's a public, indexable, branded URL you can link to from:

• Your Substack about page ("see our live readership →")
• Your Twitter / Bluesky / LinkedIn bio
• Your email newsletter footer
• A pinned post

When someone clicks it, they see a dedicated page with your live numbers. Bonus: the page generates an Open Graph card automatically — when you share feed-pulse.com/site/yourdomain.com on Twitter/LinkedIn, a beautiful preview shows your big visit number and country count. That's a viral loop for free.

Workaround 3 — Newsletter footer GIF (very lightweight)

If you want a tiny visual signal inside your Substack email itself (not on the web post — Substack also strips scripts there), you can:

1. Build a static badge SVG generator (FeedPulse exposes one at /api/og/{domain}.svg for your public stats page).
2. Embed it as an <img> tag in your newsletter footer.

Substack email rendering does allow <img> tags with external URLs (most email clients do). The image won't be real-time — most email clients cache images aggressively — but it'll show a snapshot of your latest visit count at the moment the email was sent.

This is the lowest-effort option and doesn't require a custom domain.

What does Medium allow for live widgets?

Medium is stricter than Substack: no custom domains for the website, no <script> tags in story bodies, and even <iframe> embeds are limited to a whitelisted set (YouTube, Twitter, GitHub Gist, CodePen, etc.). FeedPulse is not on that whitelist.

So on Medium, your only real options are workaround 2 (link to your public FeedPulse stats page) or workaround 3 (image-only badge in author bios that allow Markdown image syntax).

Should you even want a live traffic feed on a newsletter platform?

A fair question. Newsletter readers convert better when the page feels editorial and uncluttered, not when there's a sidebar widget competing for attention. A live traffic feed makes sense on:

• Indie blogs and personal sites
• Affiliate / niche content sites
• Small SaaS marketing pages
• Hobby and portfolio sites
• Forums and community sites

It's less appropriate for an email-first newsletter where each post is meant to read like a letter from the author. So if you came here looking for the embed because you'd seen it on indie blogs, you might find the better fit is workaround 2 — a public stats page you link to from your about page, not an inline widget on every post.

Recap

• Substack and Medium both block third-party <script> embeds inside posts.
• Best workaround: link to your free FeedPulse public stats page from your about/footer. No hosting, no signup, no email.
• For Substack with a custom domain: host a static /live page on Cloudflare Pages and embed the widget there.
• For email footers: use the auto-generated SVG/PNG badge from FeedPulse as an <img> tag.

Get your free public stats page →