How to Bypass the Paywall and Read the Article for Free
Over the past few years , countless websites have added paywalls . If you want to read their articles, you need to register and pay a monthly subscription. Some sites have a “metered” paywall—meaning you can read a certain number of articles for free before they ask for money—while others have a hard paywall where you have to pay to read even one article.
Paywalls are mostly common for news websites, mainly because relying on advertising revenue alone is no longer a viable strategy and news companies are looking for more direct sources of revenue (such as monthly subscriptions). Of course, paywalls aren’t all bad: it’s worth it to support the journalism you find valuable, so by all means, if you can afford to pay to read articles, you should definitely do so. But if you’ve lost your password, haven’t saved it on your phone, are in a hurry, or are simply strapped for cash and promising yourself you’ll sign up later, there are a few ways to bypass paywalls online.
You may be able to successfully use some of these methods today, but this may change in the future as websites restrict circumvention methods. I hope you support the websites you read, especially your local news outlet, but if you can’t right now, here are some of the best ways to bypass paywalls on the internet.
Paste title into Google
The simplest ways are often the best. There are many websites with paywalls that allow people coming from a Google search to access their articles for free. The first thing you should do is copy the title and paste it into the Google search bar. The article should appear among the first results, so just click on it to read it for free.
Try Facebook redirect
Some paywalled websites allow readers coming from Facebook to read articles for free, and this method works even if you don’t have a Facebook account. To do this, open the article you want to read and go to the address bar of your web browser. Now insert https://facebook.com/l.php?u= before the paid article URL and open the page. The Facebook redirect page will open and you can click Follow Link to open the website. An article with a paywall should now be available to read for free.
Open link in incognito window
Another quick method is to open paywalled articles in an incognito window in your web browser. Please note that this method only works with metered paywalls. If you’ve used up your monthly quota of free articles on a website, opening its articles in an incognito window may allow you to continue reading without paying more.
Disable JavaScript in your browser
Some websites use JavaScript to hide content behind paywalls, and you can bypass these blocks by disabling JavaScript in your browser. Please note that disabling JavaScript can (and will) break most websites: some may not allow you to view comments, and others may not load at all. But it’s worth a try if you just want to read the content of the post.
Ideally, you should use a separate browser for this so that you don’t have to constantly turn JavaScript on and off. Once you’ve chosen your secondary browser, check out our guide to disabling JavaScript in different browsers .
Use a VPN
Some paywalled sites, such as The Washington Post, will allow you to read a limited number of articles for free each month, then close the wall once you reach the limit. You can use a VPN to change your IP address and trick a site into giving you more free services. This method won’t help you on sites that don’t offer free access, but it’s worth a try and will work with both paid and free VPNs .
Edit a couple of elements on a web page.
If you know a little about HTML and CSS, you can edit elements using the browser to bypass some of the paywall restrictions. Essentially, you edit the page to remove banners that block subscription content. It’s much like opening the curtains to reveal a beautiful view from the window.
It works with some websites, but others have added a hard lock that only shows the article if you’re logged in with a paid account. However, it’s worth trying once and checking 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 a console where you can find the offending items and hide or change them. The exact element varies from site to site, but is often referred to as display , paywall , or subscription . Here’s a nifty GIF on Reddit that shows how to do it.
Try a browser add-on
There are many browser extensions that allow you to bypass paywalls on most websites. You can check out the paywall bypass (works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox). For academic articles, Unpaywall ( Firefox , Chrome ) is a good choice. For Chrome or Edge, you can also try Postlight Reader , which can also help you cut through ad clutter and make online content easier to read overall.
Use 12ft.io (or try 1ft.io)
12ft.io is a simple website created for the sole purpose of breaking paywalls. It’s so easy to use that it seems to have become an easy target for those who want to stop you from easily bypassing the paywall. A few months ago the site went offline (the link returned an error message: ” This deployment is offline. Your connection is working correctly. Vercel is working correctly,” whatever that means). Now it has returned, but who knows for how long. Luckily, there is an alternative that works much the same way: 1ft.io.
To use any of the sites, simply paste the link into the text box and click submit. (Alternatively, you can type “https://1ft.io/” before the URL in your browser.) Both websites will determine how you cache the “non-paid version” of the page. The only problem is that these sites do not work on all sites (The Wall Street Journal being a prime example). If you receive an “Access Denied” message, try the following tool.
Archive the page to bypass the paywall
Archive.today is a website that archives any website you paste a link to in its dashboard. It’s like a screenshot of any website with a timestamp (the “time capsule” it calls itself, if you will). It “saves text and graphical copy of the page for greater accuracy” and gives you a short link to an immutable record of any web page. And you can use this to read the entire article and bypass the paywall. If the website you’re trying to crawl isn’t already archived (it will appear after you paste the link into the black “I want to search for archived snapshots” bar), place it on the red “My URL is alive and I want to archive it” bar content”. This tool worked 100% of the time I used it.
Check shortcuts to bypass paywalls on Android
If you are trying to read a paywalled article on an Android phone, you can bypass it using the Bypass Paywalls Clean browser extension. This extension was previously available for Firefox, but has been removed from the Mozilla store. However, you can add it to another browser; Reddit users recommend trying the Kiwi browser .
Check out the paywall bypass shortcuts on iPhone
The last method on our list only works on the iPhone: 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 many such shortcuts, and they may not all work with all websites. Start by using AntiPaywall , Bypass Paywall , Paywall and Cookie Bypass or Unpaywall .