Megaloader

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Getting started ​

Megaloader extracts file metadata from hosting platforms (like PixelDrain, GoFile or Bunkr). It gives you direct download URLs, filenames, and any required headers. You choose what to download and how to handle the requests.

Live demo ​

You can try the API directly in your browser to see how it works. The implementation is available in the /apps/api/ folder of the repo and is deployed via Vercel.

Demo limits: Max 4MB file size • Max 50 files

Requirements ​

Megaloader requires Python 3.10 or higher and can be installed with pip, uv, or any other compatible package manager.

INFO

Python 3.10+ is required for modern type annotation syntax (str | None). See PEP 604 for details.

Installation ​

The project is split into two packages:

  • megaloader, the core library, used in your Python code.
  • megaloader-cli, an optional command-line tool, for working from the terminal.

Core library ​

Install the core library to use megaloader in Python:

bash
pip install megaloader
bash
uv add megaloader

The core library provides the extract() function and all APIs for metadata extraction. It depends only on requests, BeautifulSoup4 and lxml.

CLI tool ​

The command-line interface is optional and distributed separately. This is recommended if you just want to download files now without writing code.

bash
pip install megaloader-cli
bash
uv add megaloader-cli

The CLI includes the core library as a dependency, plus Click for command-line parsing and Rich for beautiful terminal output.

Verify it works:

bash
megaloader --version
bash
uv run megaloader --version

INFO

If the megaloader command is not found, your system may not include Python's script directory in PATH. You can run it through your package manager or Python directly:

bash
python -m megaloader extract ...

List supported platforms:

bash
megaloader plugins
bash
uv run megaloader plugins

For source installation, see the contributing guide.

Your first extraction ​

The simplest way to use Megaloader is the extract() function:

python
import megaloader as mgl

for item in mgl.extract("https://pixeldrain.com/l/DDGtvvTU"):
    print(item.filename)
Output
sample-image-01.jpg
sample-image-02.jpg
sample-image-03.jpg
sample-image-04.jpg
sample-image-05.jpg
sample-image-06.jpg

The function returns a generator that yields DownloadItem objects. Network requests happen lazily during iteration, not when you call the function.

What you get ​

Each DownloadItem contains everything needed to download the file:

python
for item in mgl.extract("https://pixeldrain.com/l/DDGtvvTU"):
    print(f"{item.filename} - {item.size_bytes} bytes")
Output
sample-image-01.jpg - 207558 bytes
sample-image-02.jpg - 393216 bytes
sample-image-03.jpg - 276480 bytes
sample-image-04.jpg - 393216 bytes
sample-image-05.jpg - 196608 bytes
sample-image-06.jpg - 81920 bytes

The fields available are download_url (required), filename (required), size_bytes, collection_name, and headers. Some fields may be None depending on what the platform returns.

Downloading files ​

Megaloader gives you URLs and headers. You implement downloads:

python
import requests
from pathlib import Path

output = Path("./downloads")
output.mkdir(exist_ok=True)

for item in mgl.extract("https://pixeldrain.com/l/DDGtvvTU"):
    response = requests.get(item.download_url, headers=item.headers)
    filepath = output / item.filename
    filepath.write_bytes(response.content)

Always use item.headers in your requests. Some platforms require specific headers like Referer to prevent hotlinking.

Using the CLI ​

If you installed megaloader-cli, you can use it directly from your terminal.

Preview files without downloading:

bash
megaloader extract "https://pixeldrain.com/l/DDGtvvTU"
bash
uv run megaloader extract "https://pixeldrain.com/l/DDGtvvTU"
Output
✓ Using plugin: PixelDrain
Extracting metadata... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Found 6 files:

  01. sample-image-01.jpg
      Size: 0.20 MB
  02. sample-image-02.jpg
      Size: 0.39 MB
  03. sample-image-03.jpg
      Size: 0.27 MB
  04. sample-image-04.jpg
      Size: 0.39 MB
  05. sample-image-05.jpg
      Size: 0.19 MB
  06. sample-image-06.jpg
      Size: 0.08 MB

Download to a directory (defaults to ./downloads):

bash
megaloader download "https://pixeldrain.com/l/DDGtvvTU" ./downloads
bash
uv run megaloader download "https://pixeldrain.com/l/DDGtvvTU" ./downloads

List supported platforms:

bash
megaloader plugins
bash
uv run megaloader plugins

Platform-specific options ​

Some platforms need additional parameters. GoFile supports password-protected links:

python
mgl.extract("https://gofile.io/d/abc123", password="secret")

Fanbox and Pixiv often require authentication:

python
mgl.extract("https://creator.fanbox.cc", session_id="your_cookie")

Check the plugin options reference to see what each platform supports.

Error handling ​

Wrap extraction in try-except to handle problems gracefully:

python
try:
    items = list(mgl.extract(url))
except mgl.UnsupportedDomainError as e:
    print(f"Platform not supported: {e.domain}")
except mgl.ExtractionError as e:
    print(f"Extraction failed: {e}")

The two main exceptions you'll see are UnsupportedDomainError when the platform isn't supported, and ExtractionError for network or parsing failures.

Next steps ​

Learn core concepts in using the library, see download patterns in downloading files, explore advanced patterns for production use, check CLI usage for terminal workflows, or browse supported platforms to see what's available.

The library is intentionally minimal. Extraction is the hard part, downloading is just HTTP requests. You have full control over how files get saved.