medium-paywall-bypass

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

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.

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Sourceratacat/claude-skills

Added on2026-02-08

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add ratacat/claude-skills medium-paywall-bypass

SKILL.md Content

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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:

bash

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

python

# 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='')}"