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January 28, 2022

How To Read Paywall Articles for Free



Paywall articles are those articles that require a subscription before you can access or read them further. Most news articles and exclusive content require in-app purchases to access them. To achieve this, they make use of in-app purchase subscription infrastructure like Apphud.



Although paywall articles require you to pay for them, there's a way to get around it and read these articles for free.

Here is how to get past paywalls and read articles for free.

Paste the Headline in Google (News - Alert)

If you want to read an article but land upon one that requires a subscription, don’t worry! Just copy the article’s headline (they allow you to do this for free), and paste it into the Google search bar. It will list various versions of the same article. Usually, the first few articles allow users to read the article for free. This is one way you can read articles behind paywalls.

Facebook (News - Alert) Direct

Another way to read paywall articles is through Facebook Direct. Open the paywall article you want to read, and add https://facebook.com/l.php?u= before the URL of the paywalled article. Next, click Follow, and Facebook will redirect you, letting you read the article for free.

Use an Incognito Window to Open The Link

To open a link in an incognito window, open your browser. Tap on the three vertical dots placed at the top right of the screen. From the drop-down menu, find the "New incognito window" option. Click on it to open the incognito window.

In Internet Explorer, you will find it as "new InPrivate window."

Paste your article link in the incognito window search bar to read the article behind a paywall.

Disable JavaScript in Your Browser

Want to get past a newspaper paywall? To disable JavaScript in Google Chrome, open the browser and click on the three vertical dots on the right top corner of the screen.

From the drop-down menu, go to Settings > Advanced Settings > Content or Site settings. If you can’t find the site settings, type "JavaScript" in the settings search bar (at the top). Click on "site settings" from the search results. Scroll to find JavaScript. Click on JavaScript, and click on "don’t allow sites to use JavaScript." You can also just add a specific website to the “not allowed to use JavaScript” list.

Edit a Couple of Elements on the Webpage

If you want to read subscription articles for free, you need to first right-click on the box that says "sign in to read more." From the drop-down menu, select Inspect or Reader View depending on the browser you are using. Then follow the steps as mentioned in this Reddit GIF. This may require a bit of understanding of HTML or CSS (News - Alert), though.

Look for a Duplicate Article

This one is super easy. There is a lot of copied content available on the internet. To find such websites, just copy the news headline and paste it in your search engine along with (“...") on both sides of the article.

Use a VPN Service

To read behind a paywall, you can also use a VPN service. A VPN service is a Virtual Private Network that allows users to establish a private network across the public network for safe and encrypted access to data online.

When you use a VPN service, your IP address will no longer be tracked, and you will be able to access an article for free. This method works best for metered subscriptions, i.e., for those websites that allow users to read the first few articles for free.

Use an Annotation Service

Are you wondering how to get past newspaper paywalls? An annotation service allows users to read articles without any distractions. One free annotation service is Outline.

You need to copy the paywalled article URL, go to Outline.com, and paste the article URL in the search bar. When you click on Outline, you can access the full article without any subscriptions. Alternatively, use is.gd as a URL shortener if Outline can’t access the article.



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