We'd rather tell you honestly than oversell it. Here's how paywalls actually break down by publisher, and what to expect from each category. If you don't see a specific site here, try it anyway — the tool works on most news sites that archive their own content, which is the vast majority of them.
Soft paywalls or generous archiving — an archived copy is almost always available.
Metered or moderately protected — archive-based methods work reliably, but the paywall is real.
Tighter anti-scraping or hard paywalls. Archive-based methods work less consistently here; the AI-extraction method (Smry.ai) is often the better first try.
Medium is a special case: most posts are free by default, and only stories an author explicitly marks "Member-only" are locked — for those, our Freedium method (built specifically for Medium) usually gets you in. More on that →
Don't see your site listed? Try it anyway — most news sites archive their own content.
Try Bypass Paywall Reader →It comes down to two things: whether the site is a soft paywall (article exists on the page, just visually blocked — easy) or a hard paywall (content isn't sent to your browser at all until you pay — genuinely difficult), and how aggressively the publisher blocks automated archiving.
This list covers the publications people ask about most. The underlying method — finding an archived version of the specific URL — works the same way regardless of publisher, so it's worth trying any site, listed or not.
Yes. Publishers periodically tighten or loosen their paywalls and anti-scraping measures, so a site that's hard today might work better in a few months, or vice versa. We update this page when we notice a meaningful shift.