Ladder is a web proxy to help bypass paywalls. This is a selfhosted version of 1ft.io and 12ft.io. It is inspired by 13ft.
Freedom of information is an essential pillar of democracy and informed decision-making. While media organizations have legitimate financial interests, it is crucial to strike a balance between profitability and the public's right to access information. The proliferation of paywalls raises concerns about the erosion of this fundamental freedom, and it is imperative for society to find innovative ways to preserve access to vital information without compromising the sustainability of journalism. In a world where knowledge should be shared and not commodified, paywalls should be critically examined to ensure that they do not undermine the principles of an open and informed society.
Disclaimer: This project is intended for educational purposes only. The author does not endorse or encourage any unethical or illegal activity. Use this tool at your own risk.
sequenceDiagram
client->>+ladder: GET
ladder-->>ladder: apply RequestModifications
ladder->>+website: GET
website->>-ladder: 200 OK
ladder-->>ladder: apply ResultModifications
ladder->>-client: 200 OK
- Bypass Paywalls
- Remove CORS headers from responses, assets, and images ...
- Apply domain based ruleset/code to modify response / requested URL
- Keep site browsable
- API
- Fetch RAW HTML
- Custom User Agent
- Custom X-Forwarded-For IP
- Docker container (amd64, arm64)
- Linux binary
- Mac OS binary
- Windows binary (untested)
- Removes most of the ads (unexpected side effect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
- Basic Auth
- Disable logs
- No Tracking
- Limit the proxy to a list of domains
- Expose Ruleset to other ladders
- Fetch from Google Cache
- Optional TOR proxy
- A key to share only one URL
Some sites do not expose their content to search engines, which means that the proxy cannot access the content. A future version will try to fetch the content from Google Cache.
Certain sites may display missing images or encounter formatting issues. This can be attributed to the site's reliance on JavaScript or CSS for image and resource loading, which presents a limitation when accessed through this proxy. If you prefer a full experience, please consider buying a subscription for the site.
Warning: If your instance will be publicly accessible, make sure to enable Basic Auth. This will prevent unauthorized users from using your proxy. If you do not enable Basic Auth, anyone can use your proxy to browse nasty/illegal stuff. And you will be responsible for it.
- Download binary here
- Unpack and run the binary
./ladder -r https://t.ly/14PSf - Open Browser (Default: http://localhost:8080)
docker run -p 8080:8080 -d --env RULESET=https://t.ly/14PSf --name ladder ghcr.io/everywall/ladder:latestcurl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/everywall/ladder/main/docker-compose.yaml --output docker-compose.yaml
docker-compose up -dSee README.md in helm-chart sub-directory for more information.
- Open Browser (Default: http://localhost:8080)
- Enter URL
- Press Enter
Or direct by appending the URL to the end of the proxy URL: http://localhost:8080/https://www.example.com
Or create a bookmark with the following URL:
javascript:window.location.href="http://localhost:8080/"+location.hrefcurl -X GET "http://localhost:8080/api/https://www.example.com"http://localhost:8080/raw/https://www.example.com
| Variable | Description | Value |
|---|---|---|
PORT |
Port to listen on | 8080 |
PREFORK |
Spawn multiple server instances | false |
USER_AGENT |
User agent to emulate | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) |
X_FORWARDED_FOR |
IP forwarder address | 66.249.66.1 |
USERPASS |
Enables Basic Auth, format admin:123456 |
`` |
LOG_URLS |
Log fetched URL's | true |
DISABLE_FORM |
Disables URL Form Frontpage | false |
FORM_PATH |
Path to custom Form HTML | `` |
RULESET |
Path or URL to a ruleset file, accepts local directories | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/everywall/ladder-rules/main/ruleset.yaml or /path/to/my/rules.yaml or /path/to/my/rules/ |
EXPOSE_RULESET |
Make your Ruleset available to other ladders | true |
ALLOWED_DOMAINS |
Comma separated list of allowed domains. Empty = no limitations | `` |
ALLOWED_DOMAINS_RULESET |
Allow Domains from Ruleset. false = no limitations | false |
ALLOWED_DOMAINS and ALLOWED_DOMAINS_RULESET are joined together. If both are empty, no limitations are applied.
It is possible to apply custom rules to modify the response or the requested URL. This can be used to remove unwanted or modify elements from the page. The ruleset is a YAML file, a directory with YAML Files, or an URL to a YAML file that contains a list of rules for each domain. These rules are loaded on startup.
There is a basic ruleset available in a separate repository ruleset.yaml. Feel free to add your own rules and create a pull request.
- domain: example.com # Includes all subdomains
domains: # Additional domains to apply the rule
- www.example.de
- www.beispiel.de
headers:
x-forwarded-for: none # override X-Forwarded-For header or delete with none
referer: none # override Referer header or delete with none
user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/119.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
content-security-policy: script-src 'self'; # override response header
cookie: privacy=1
regexRules:
- match: <script\s+([^>]*\s+)?src="(/)([^"]*)"
replace: <script $1 script="/https://www.example.com/$3"
injections:
- position: head # Position where to inject the code
append: | # possible keys: append, prepend, replace
<script>
window.localStorage.clear();
console.log("test");
alert("Hello!");
</script>
- domain: www.anotherdomain.com # Domain where the rule applies
paths: # Paths where the rule applies
- /article
googleCache: false # Use Google Cache to fetch the content
regexRules: # Regex rules to apply
- match: <script\s+([^>]*\s+)?src="(/)([^"]*)"
replace: <script $1 script="/https://www.example.com/$3"
injections:
- position: .left-content article .post-title # Position where to inject the code into DOM
replace: |
<h1>My Custom Title</h1>
- position: .left-content article # Position where to inject the code into DOM
prepend: |
<h2>Subtitle</h2>
- domain: demo.com
headers:
content-security-policy: script-src 'self';
user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/119.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
urlMods: # Modify the URL
query:
- key: amp # (this will append ?amp=1 to the URL)
value: 1
domain:
- match: www # regex to match part of domain
replace: amp # (this would modify the domain from www.demo.de to amp.demo.de)
path:
- match: ^ # regex to match part of path
replace: /amp/ # (modify the url from https://www.demo.com/article/ to https://www.demo.de/amp/article/)To run a development server at http://localhost:8080:
echo "dev" > handlers/VERSION
RULESET="./ruleset.yaml" go run cmd/main.goOptional: Live reloading development server with cosmtrek/air
Install air according to the installation instructions.
Run a development server at http://localhost:8080:
air # or the path to air if you haven't added a path alias to your .bashrc or .zshrcThis project uses pnpm to build a stylesheet with the Tailwind CSS classes. For local development, if you modify styles in form.html, run pnpm build to generate a new stylesheet.
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