# 13 Feet Ladder

13 Feet Ladder is a self-hosted development app. A self-hosted 12ft.io alternative that bypasses paywalls by fetching pages as GoogleBot, giving you clean access to paywalled articles from sites that 12ft.io does not support. It is open source and self-hosted, installable on Docker Hub and Unraid.

Canonical page: https://ourlocalhost.com/app/1300/13-feet-ladder

## Description

A self-hosted 12ft.io alternative that bypasses paywalls by fetching pages as GoogleBot, giving you clean access to paywalled articles from sites that 12ft.io does not support.

## Platform availability

Available on 1 of 9 platforms: Unraid.

## Health score

65/100 (Good), based on 3 of 4 factors.
- Maintained: 82 (last commit 26 days ago)
- Popular: 73 (4,309 GitHub stars)
- Easy to install: 20 (1 install platform, Docker image)

## Links

- GitHub: https://github.com/wasi-master/13ft
- Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/wasimaster/13ft
- Unraid: https://ca.unraid.net/apps/13feet-ladder-1q1s2n21adt5ua?q=13Feet-Ladder

## Common questions

### How does 13Feet-Ladder access paywalled articles?

It impersonates GoogleBot so it requests the same crawler-served content. While fetching the target article it shows a loading or status page and can try multiple bypass methods if the primary approach fails.

### How can I run 13Feet-Ladder with Docker Compose?

Clone the repository, enter the cloned directory, and run docker compose up. The image can also be pulled from DockerHub or ghcr.io.

### Can I bind 13Feet-Ladder to a specific address and port?

Yes. In the venv/Flask workflow you can set FLASK_APP=app/portable.py and run flask run --host=127.0.0.1 --port=9982 to use a chosen bind address and port.

### Can I create a Chrome bookmarklet for 13Feet-Ladder?

Yes. The project describes making a Chrome bookmarklet that performs the URL transformation by executing a small JavaScript snippet.

## Alternatives

- Anti-Paywall: This extension will mangle your browser's requests to maximize the chances of bypassing paywalls.
- Marreta: Marreta is a tool that removes access barriers and visual distractions.
- PaywallBuster: Remove paywalls from news articles instantly.
- PaywallSkip: Skip paywalls, access knowledge.
- Unpaywall: Access free PDFs when viewing scholarly articles using a free browser extension for Chrome and Firefox from multiple devices.
- smry: AI-powered article reader for clean reading, summaries, audio, highlights, annotations, article chat, and YouTube transcripts.

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Source: Our Local Host (https://ourlocalhost.com/app/1300/13-feet-ladder), the self-hosted and open-source app directory.