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='')}"

medium-paywall-bypass