How to Get Past a Paywall to Read an Article for Free (2024)

Over the past several years, countless websites have added paywalls. If you want to read their articles, you have to sign up and pay a monthly subscription cost. Some sites have a “metered” paywall—meaning you can read a certain number of articles for free before they ask for money—and others have a hard paywall, where you’ll have to pay to read even one article.

Paywalls are mostly an thing with news websites, largely because relying on advertising income alone isn’t a viable strategy anymore, and news companies are pursuing more direct revenue sources, like monthly subscriptions. Of course, paywalls aren’t entirely a bad thing—it’s worth it to support journalism you find valuable, so by all means, if you can afford to pay to read articles, you absolutely should. But whether you lost your password, haven’t saved it on your phone, are in a rush, or are just strapped for cash and promise yourself that you’ll subscribe later, there are several ways to bypass paywalls on the internet.

You may be able to use some of these methods successfully today, but that could change in the future as websites clamp down on bypass methods. If nothing else, I hope you support the websites that you do read—especially your friendly local news outlet. But if you can’t right now, here are some of the best ways to bypass paywalls online.

Paste the headline into Google

The simplest ways are often the best. There are plenty of paywalled websites that have an arrangement that lets people arriving from Google search access their articles for free. Your first port of call should be to copy the headline and paste it into the search bar on Google. The article should appear as the first result, so just click that to read it for free.

Try a Facebook redirect

Some paywalled websites let readers arriving from Facebook read articles for free, and the method works even if you don’t have a Facebook account. To do it, open the article you want to read and go to the address bar of your web browser. Now paste https://facebook.com/l.php?u= before the URL of the paywalled article and open the page. This’ll show you a Facebook redirect page, and you can click Follow Link to open the website. The paywalled article should now be free to read.

Open the link in an incognito window

Another quick way is to open the paywalled articles in an incognito window in your web browser. Just note that this method works with metered paywalls only. If you’ve used up your free article quota for the month on any website, opening its articles in an incognito window could let you keep reading without paying yet.

Disable JavaScript in your browser

Some websites use JavaScript to hide content behind paywalls, and you can circumvent those blocks by disabling JavaScript in your browser. Note that disabling JavaScript can (and will) break most websites—some may not let you view comments, while others may not load at all. But it’s worth trying if you just need to read the content of the post.

Ideally, you’d use a separate browser for this so that you don’t have to keep enabling and disabling JavaScript. Once you’ve chosen your secondary browser, check out our guide to disabling JavaScript in various ones.

Enable "reader mode"

Most modern browsers now have a "reader mode" that strips extraneous elements from the page (like ads, formatting, and empty space). As a bonus, reader mode will sometimes also allow you to bypass paywalls. This article will tell you how to use reader mode in Safari, Firefox, Edge, and Chrome.

Use a VPN

Some paywalled sites, like The Washington Post, will let you read a limited number of articles for free each month, then throw up the wall once you've hit the limit. You can use a VPN to change up your IP address and trick the site into giving you more freebies. This method won't help you on sites that don't offer any free access, but it's worth trying, and will work with both paid and free VPNs.

Use Bypass Paywalls from GitHub

If you're using a Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Edge) or Firefox, you can install the Bypass Paywalls extension from GitHub. It's slightly intimidating if you've never installed an extension outside of the Chrome Web Store, but it's pretty simple—just click this link and follow the instructions for your browser of choice. For Chrome, for example, that involved downloading the extension, turning on "Developer Mode" in the browser's settings, and dragging the extension file into the browser window. Once completed successfully, this extension grants seamless, paywall-free access to more than 160 sites, including Vulture, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal—there's a complete list on the GitHub resource page. (Hat tip to reader dsww in the comments for pointing this one out.)

Try another browser add-on

There are lots of browser extensions that allow you to bypass paywalls on many websites. For academic articles, Unpaywall (Firefox, Chrome) is a good choice. For Chrome or Edge, you can also try Postlight Reader, which can also do you the favor of cleaning away the clutter of ads and generally making online content easier to read.

Edit a couple of elements on the webpage

If you understand a bit of HTML and CSS, you can edit elements using your browser to go past some paywalls. Essentially, you’re editing the page to remove the banners that lock content behind a subscription. It’s a lot like opening the curtains to reveal the nice view outside your window.

It works with some websites, but others have added a hard block that reveals the article only if you’ve signed in with a paid account. Still, it’s worth trying once to see if it works:

On any website, right-click the banner just below the last visible sentence of the article and select Inspect Element. This will open up a console where you can search for the offending elements and hide or change them. The exact element varies from site to site, but it’s often labeled display, paywall, or subscribe. Here’s a neat GIF on Reddit that shows you how to get it done.

Use 12ft.io

12ft.io is a simple website created with the sole purpose of breaking through paywalls—and it's so simple to use, it appears to have become an easy target for those who'd like to keep you from easily bypassing a paywall. A few months ago, the site was taken offline (the link returned an error message reading ”This Deployment has been disabled. Your connection is working correctly. Vercel is working correctly,” whatever that means). It's now back, but who knows for how long. (Previously, there was an alternative, 1ft.io, that worked in much the same way, but the developer recently shut it down permanently, as evidenced by an announcement posted to that URL.)

To use 12ft.io, simply paste the paywalled link in the text field and hit “Submit.” (Alternately, you can type “https://12ft.io/” before the URL in your browser bar.) The site will then show you the cached, “unpaywalled version” of the page. The only problem is that the site doesn't always work on all websites (The Wall Street Journal being a notable example). If you get the “access denied” message, try this next tool.

Explore the web 'shackle-free'

If 12ft.io isn't working for you, there's a similar alternative, shacklefree.in. You can either visit that site and paste your link into the address bar, or you can type shacklefree.in/, and paste the article link directly into the browser bar after the slash. The service claims to work with "150+ websites."

Use Archive.today to archive the page

Archive.today is a website that archives any website you paste the link on their bar. Think of it like taking a screenshot of any website with a time stamp (a self-described “time capsule,” if you will). It “saves a text and a graphical copy of the page for better accuracy” and gives you a short link to an unalterable record of any web page. As a bonus, you can often use this functionality to bypass a paywall and read the entire article. Pate your link into the black “I want to search the archive for saved snapshots” bar. If the article you’re trying to bypass isn’t already archived, then put the URL into the red “My URL is alive and I want to archive its content” bar. This tool is a good bet if 12ft.io has already failed you.

Spaywall promises to "legally bypass paywalls"

Another site that works similarly to 12ft.io and Archive.today, Spaywall states that the site "legally [bypasses] paywalls by redirecting you to archived news and research papers." In testing links, it appears it takes the site a big longer to archive pages than some of your other options, so it's probably best for reading older articles.

Use a paywall bypass shortcut on Android

If you are trying to read a paywalled article on an Android phone, you can get around it with the Bypass Paywalls Clean browser extension. This extension used to be available for Firefox but has been removed from the Mozilla store. However, you can add it to a different browser; Reddit users recommend trying the Kiwi browser.

Use a paywall bypass shortcut on iPhone

The last method on our list works only on iPhones: Apple’s free Shortcuts app lets you run automation routines on your iPhone, and its tools have been used to bypass paywalls on various websites. There are plenty of these shortcuts, and they may all not work with all websites. Get started by trying AntiPaywall, Bypass Paywall, Paywall and Cookie Bypass, or Unpaywall.

Check if your local library provides access

Many libraries offer access to paid magazine and newspaper subscriptions online. Typically you'll have to go to your library's website, log in with your card number or account details, and then access different publications indirectly, via the library's portal (for example, if you live in Marin County, California, you can easily read The Washington Post for free). There are too many library systems out there to count, so you may or may not be lucky enough to be in one that allows this perk, but it's worth a shot; since the library is paying the publication for the service, you don't even need to feel guilty. (Not sure if your system has a news portal? Ask your local librarian!)

Ask a subscriber for a "gift article"

This one isn't likely to be feasible often, but it's worth a shot for when you're trying to read that one paywalled article that's going viral: Many publications allow paid subscribers to "gift" a copy of a certain number of articles every month (The Washington Post and The New York Times each allows gifting 10 articles per month, for example). If you know your aunt subscribes to The New York Times, it can't hurt to ask if she's willing to gift you the occasional read.

Buy a single article with Blendle

If you can't pay for a subscription but don't mind paying for a single article, you can try the Blendle app. This news aggregator partners with publications and will sell you a single article for a nominal fee—according to the App Store page, most articles cost a quarter. The downside: The selection of publishers is limited in the U.S. (the company is based in Europe), but includes The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and more.