The Baltimore Banner Paywall: How to Read Banner Articles for Free
The Baltimore Banner gives non-subscribers a few free stories before locking the site. How its metered paywall works and how to read a full Banner article.
Paywall behaviour last tested
The Baltimore Banner is the rare success story in American local news. Launched in 2022 as a nonprofit digital newsroom, it has built one of the largest local reporting staffs in the country and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2025 for its investigation of Baltimore's overdose crisis. It is also, by design, a subscription product. The Banner gives visitors a small number of free stories before locking the site, and its readers paste links to us often. This guide explains how its paywall works and how to read a story in full.
How the Banner paywall works
The Banner uses a metered paywall. A non-subscriber can open a limited number of articles a month, tracked in a browser cookie, after which the article body is replaced by a subscription prompt. The allowance has varied since launch and is not published.
The Banner runs on Arc XP, the publishing platform built by The Washington Post and used by many large newsrooms. Unlike the Post, which enforces its paywall on the server and sends only a teaser, the Banner delivers the full article in the page for search engines and applies the gate in the browser. A crawler-style reader receives the complete text.
Our tests on 29 September 2026 through Skip the Paywall:
- A 1,204-word Banner investigation into a cluster of suicides at Fort Meade loaded in full, all 40 paragraphs.
- An 866-word Banner health story on preventive surgery at Maryland hospitals loaded in full, all 28 paragraphs.
- A 386-word Banner food story on a new bagel shop loaded in full, all 14 paragraphs.
Read a Baltimore Banner article in full
- Copy the article link. Banner links look like thebanner.com/section/topic/headline-slug-ID/, often with sharing parameters attached from the Banner app.
- Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article. The sharing parameters do not matter.
- The story appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and body text.
Other approaches
- Library access. Enoch Pratt Free Library offers Baltimore city residents free digital access to the Banner with a library card, and several Maryland county systems have followed.
- Newsletters. The Banner's free morning newsletter carries a full briefing and links to the day's stories.
- Private windows. The meter is cookie-based, so a private window resets it.
- Discounted subscriptions. As a nonprofit, the Banner runs frequent low-cost introductory offers and a reduced rate for students and educators.
Baltimore and mid-Atlantic papers compared
The Banner's traditional rival, The Baltimore Sun, changed hands in 2024 and we have not confirmed it either way. Further afield, The Philadelphia Inquirer loads in full and so does The Boston Globe, another metered nonprofit-adjacent newsroom. The Washington Post, which is also built on Arc XP, does not work because it enforces its paywall on the server. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls covers the difference.
Subscribe if you read it regularly
The Banner exists because Baltimore readers decided to fund local journalism directly. If it is a regular read, a subscription is the honest way to keep it going, and it is cheaper than most metro papers.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from The Baltimore Banner and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How many free articles does The Baltimore Banner allow?
The Banner does not publish a fixed allowance and has changed it since launch. Most readers see the subscription prompt after a few stories in a month.
Is The Baltimore Banner a nonprofit?
Yes. It was founded in 2022 by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism and is funded by subscriptions, philanthropy and advertising.
Does the reader work on The Washington Post too?
No. The Post uses the same publishing platform as the Banner but enforces its paywall on the server, so only a short teaser is available. The Banner sends the full article and loads in full.