medium-paywall-bypass

name	medium-paywall-bypass
description	Use when user shares a Medium article URL behind a paywall and wants to read the full content. Also use for articles on Medium-hosted publications like towardsdatascience.com, betterprogramming.pub, levelup.gitconnected.com, etc.

Medium Paywall Bypass

Overview

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

Service Priority

Service	URL Pattern	WebFetch	curl	Notes
Freedium	https://freedium.cfd/{encoded_url}	Yes	Yes	Best option, returns content directly
Archive.today	https://archive.today/latest/{raw_url}	No	Maybe	Often requires captcha
RemovePaywalls	https://removepaywalls.com/{raw_url}	No	No	Redirect page only, needs browser
ReadMedium	https://readmedium.com/en/{encoded_url}	No	No	Returns 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

Problem	Solution
Freedium down	Try alternative mirror: freedium-mirror.cfd
Article not found	Article may be too new to be cached
Garbled HTML	Use WebFetch with prompt: "Extract the article text and format as markdown"
403/blocked	Try 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='')}"