How to Get Around Newspaper Paywalls in 2020
By: Casey Botticello
Tags: Technology, Productivity, Entrepreneurship, Privacy, Social Media

A paywall is a method of restricting access to content via a paid subscription. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of decline in paid print readership and advertising revenue. In academics, research papers are often subject to a paywall and are available via academic libraries that subscribe.

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales has stated that he “would rather write [an opinion piece] where it is going to be read”, declaring that “putting opinion pieces behind paywalls [makes] no sense.” Without easy access to both read and share insights and opinions, the online news platform loses an essential characteristic of democratic exchange.

This article is not meant to debate the commodification of information. If you use a news-source regularly for work or personal use, and derive significant value from it, you should pay for it. But in an increasingly fragmented media landscape, it is not economically feasible for a casual reader to pay for a costly monthly or yearly subscription to dozens of news sites.

Below is a (nearly) comprehensive guide to the various methods allowing you get around paywalls, pop-ups, and adwalls, that are common on many news sites. There will always be one or two articles that you cannot access without a purchase or compromising your personal information, but you should be able to access at least 95% of news content for free using these tricks. These techniques will help you get around paywalls for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and more, without requiring username and password logins credentials or illegal hacking.

One last note before you start hacking paywalls. If you only need access to these sites for a brief period of time, you may be better off taking advantage of the free trial periods many publications offer and cancelling your subscription before it renews:

Source: Paywall Hacks

How to Get Around Almost any Paywall Easily (UPDATED 12/2/19 with new WSJ Bypass)

I vowed to find a way around their paywall after they sent a cease and desist to Outline (still an amazing resource for many news sites). It took me a few tries to find something that works, but here you go:

1. Use The Following Firefox Browser Add-on

Link: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox/blob/master/README.md

Note: this add-on reportedly works on these other sites as well (although I have not tested all of them):

Baltimore Sun (baltimoresun.com)

Barron’s (barrons.com)

Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)

Caixin (caixinglobal.com)

Chemical & Engineering News (cen.acs.org)

Central Western Daily (centralwesterndaily.com.au)

Chicago Tribune (chicagotribune.com)

Crain’s Chicago Business (chicagobusiness.com)

Corriere Della Sera (corriere.it)

Daily Press (dailypress.com)

Denver Post (denverpost.com)

De Tijd (tijd.be)

de Volkskrant (volkskrant.nl)

The Economist (economist.com)

Examiner (examiner.com.au)

Financial Times (ft.com)

Foreign Policy (foreignpolicy.com)

Glassdoor (glassdoor.com)

Haaretz (haaretz.co.il / haaretz.com)

Handelsblatt (handelsblatt.com)

Hartford Courant (courant.com)

Harvard Business Review (hbr.org)

Inc.com (inc.com)

Investors Chronicle (investorschronicle.co.uk)

Irish Times (irishtimes.com)

La Repubblica (repubblica.it)

Le Temps (letemps.ch)

Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

Medium (medium.com)

Medscape (medscape.com)

MIT Technology Review (technologyreview.com)

Mountain View Voice (mv-voice.com)

National Post (nationalpost.com)

New Statesman (newstatesman.com)

New York Magazine (nymag.com)

Nikkei Asian Review (asia.nikkei.com)

NRC (nrc.nl)

Orange County Register (ocregister.com)

Orlando Sentinel (orlandosentinel.com)

Palo Alto Online (paloaltoonline.com)

Quora (quora.com)

SunSentinel (sun-sentinel.com)

Tech in Asia (techinasia.com)

The Advocate (theadvocate.com.au)

The Age (theage.com.au)

The Australian (theaustralian.com.au)

The Australian Financial Review (afr.com)

The Boston Globe (bostonglobe.com)

The Globe and Mail (theglobeandmail.com)

The Herald (theherald.com.au)

The Japan Times (japantimes.co.jp)

TheMarker (themarker.com)

The Mercury News (mercurynews.com)

The Morning Call (mcall.com)

The Nation (thenation.com)

The New York Times (nytimes.com)

The New Yorker (newyorker.com)

The News-Gazette (news-gazette.com)

The Saturday Paper (thesaturdaypaper.com.au)

The Spectator (spectator.co.uk)

The Business Journals (bizjournals.com)

The Seattle Times (seattletimes.com)

The Sydney Morning Herald (smh.com.au)

The Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk)

The Times (thetimes.co.uk)

The Toronto Star (thestar.com)

The Washington Post (washingtonpost.com)

The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)

Towards Data Science (towardsdatascience.com)

Vanity Fair (vanityfair.com)

Wired (wired.com)

You should see a page like this:

If you scroll down, you will see the following:

Click the download link. Accept the Firefox permission popups that appear.

Customize. You can customize the browser extension. If you have other existing logins, make sure you deselect these news sites as this add-on will log you out of them.