The era of the free internet is over: In recent years,countless websites have added paywalls.
In that sense, paywalls aren’t a bad thingits wonderful to support journalism you find valuable.
If nothing else, I hope you support the websites that you read regularlyespecially your friendly local news outlet.
But sometimes you just need to get around a paywall quickly.
The methods discussed below are more robustand thus, more likely to work.
I’ll start with my favorite, which has served me well for the past year or so.
(This article is regularly updated as some methods stop working and others pop up.)
It’s a site that will create an archived version of any website you paste into the search bar.
The site will then begin generating the archived version, which usually only takes a few minutes.
The archived version will even automatically open up in a new tab.
I’ve only had this site fail me once or twice.
Still, if it doesn’t work, try the next option.
(Alternately, you could punch in https://12ft.io/ before the URL in your surfing app bar.)
The site will then show you the cached, unpaywalled version of the page.
If you get the access denied message, try another method on this list.
The service claims to work with “150+ websites.”
Side-loading extensionsis generally a no for me.
Once youve chosen your secondary online window, check out our guide todisabling JavaScript in various ones.
For academic articles, Unpaywall (Firefox,Chrome) is a good choice.
Essentially, youre editing the page to remove the banners that lock content behind a subscription.
Its a lot like opening the curtains to reveal the nice view outside your window.
Heres a neat GIF onRedditthat shows you how to get it done.
This extension used to be available for Firefox but has been removed from the Mozilla store.
There are plenty of these shortcuts, and they may all not work with all websites.
Get started by tryingAntiPaywall,Bypass Paywall,Paywall and Cookie Bypass, orUnpaywall.
(Not sure if your system has a news portal?
Ask your local librarian!)
