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medium-paywall-bypass

medium-paywall-bypass

github.com/ratacatProductivity5856 installsUpdated 37w ago
Repository

About medium-paywall-bypass

A skill for fetching paywalled Medium articles through free mirrors, trying services in sequence and extracting article text. It documents WebFetch and curl workflows, with Freedium as the first option.

Key features

  1. 01Try article mirrors in priority order
  2. 02Fetch content with WebFetch
  3. 03Provide a curl fallback
  4. 04Cover Medium-hosted domains

Use cases

  1. 01Read Medium articles behind a paywall
  2. 02Switch to another mirror when one fails

Install

Copy the command and run it in a terminal.

$npx skills add https://github.com/ratacat/claude-skills --skill medium-paywall-bypass

After installing, type/medium-paywall-bypassin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.

Details

From the project README

Medium Paywall Bypass

Overview

Fetch paywalled Medium articles using free mirror services. Try services in order until one works.

Service Priority

ServiceURL PatternWebFetchcurlNotes
Freediumhttps://freedium.cfd/{encoded_url}YesYesBest option, returns content directly
Archive.todayhttps://archive.today/latest/{raw_url}NoMaybeOften requires captcha
RemovePaywallshttps://removepaywalls.com/{raw_url}NoNoRedirect page only, needs browser
ReadMediumhttps://readmedium.com/en/{encoded_url}NoNoReturns 403 programmatically
  • {encoded_url} = URL-encoded (slashes become %2F, @ becomes %40, etc.)
  • {raw_url} = Original URL as-is

For Claude Code: Use Freedium via WebFetch. Other services require browser interaction.

Workflow

1. User provides Medium URL
2. Try Freedium first via WebFetch
3. If blocked/empty, try next service
4. Extract and present article content

Example Usage

Given: https://medium.com/@user/some-article-abc123

WebFetch (recommended):

URL: https://freedium.cfd/https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40user%2Fsome-article-abc123
Prompt: Extract the full article content

curl fallback:

curl -sL "https://freedium.cfd/https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40user%2Fsome-article-abc123"

Medium-Hosted Domains

These domains use Medium's paywall system:

  • medium.com, *.medium.com
  • towardsdatascience.com
  • betterprogramming.pub
  • levelup.gitconnected.com
  • javascript.plainenglish.io
  • uxdesign.cc
  • hackernoon.com
  • codeburst.io
  • itnext.io
  • proandroiddev.com
  • infosecwriteups.com

Common Issues

ProblemSolution
Freedium downTry alternative mirror: freedium-mirror.cfd
Article not foundArticle may be too new to be cached
Garbled HTMLUse WebFetch with prompt: "Extract the article text and format as markdown"
403/blockedTry curl with dangerouslyDisableSandbox: true

Quick Reference

# URL encoding in Python
from urllib.parse import quote
encoded = quote(url, safe='')

# For WebFetch tool
freedium_url = f"https://freedium.cfd/{quote(medium_url, safe='')}"

Comments

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