Have you ever felt frustrated when reading an article online, only to have a paywall suddenly appear blocking you from seeing the full content? I‘ve certainly experienced that before. It‘s annoying when you just want access to information that may impact your life or interests.
Well here‘s some great news – there‘s actually a simple, legal way to bypass most online paywalls. In this guide, I‘ll walk you through the easy step-by-step process so you can access full articles without paying.
A Quick History of Online Paywalls
Before we get into how to jump over paywalls, let me give you some background on why they exist in the first place. Understanding the purpose behind paywalls makes the motivation to bypass them much more clear.
Online publications started experimenting with paywalls back in the early 2000s as a new way to increase profits. One of the first was the Financial Times in 2001, and it proved very lucrative despite losing some readers.
The New York Times took the concept mainstream in 2011. Although they lost 90% of traffic initially after implementing their paywall, the 10% retained ended up generating far more revenue than ads did previously with 100% of readers.
This demonstrated the profit potential of paywalls stemming from loyal fans willing to pay for access.
The chart below shows the accelerating growth of publications adopting some form of online paywall over the past decade as profit strategies evolved:
| Year | # of Publications With Paywalls |
|---|---|
| 2012 | 331 |
| 2015 | 446 |
| 2019 | 616 |
| 2022 | 1,007 |
Many allow a number of free articles before paying, but some use hard paywalls granting 0 access unless you subscribe. Some also do a "freemium" model letting you buy premium ad-free content.
But no matter what type you encounter, the good news is there‘s a simple trick to access full articles for free as I‘ll explain next.
Step-By-Step Guide to Bypassing Paywalls
If you‘ve found a news article or content you want to read in full, here is an easy 3-step method to bypass the paywall or "subscription gate" using a handy archiving site:
Step 1: Copy the Article Link
Start by copying the URL of the article locked behind the paywall that you want to unlock:
You can right click the link and select copy, or press Command+C on Macs or Ctrl+C on Windows.
Step 2: Open Archive.today
Next, open your web browser and go to Archive.today. This is a free tool that takes "snapshots" of webpages to preserve them in an online archive.
Archive.today has noble intentions focused on transparency and public access to information. That makes it a safe and ethical method for accessing paywalled content in full if you just want to read an article without paying.
Step 3: Paste Link & Archive
Once on Archive.today, simply right click and paste the article link you copied earlier into the red box. Then click "save" and Archive.today will take a snapshot of the full page content before the paywall pops up.
Give it a few seconds to work, and you‘ll now have a fully accessible version posted on Archive.today for free public view! You can scroll down to see the full paywalled article you wanted to read in its entirety without any subscription prompts.
It‘s really that easy to jump over paywalls in just a few seconds using archive snapshots. I hope this short tutorial gives you the tools and confidence to access all the paywalled information you want ethically for free! Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions.
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