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='')}"