Business Day (South Africa) Paywall: How to Read Business Day Articles for Free

Business Day is South Africa's financial daily, founded on 1 May 1985 and published from Parktown, Johannesburg, by Arena Holdings, the group that also owns the Sunday Times, TimesLIVE, the Sowetan and the Financial Mail magazine, and runs Business Day TV. For years its digital edition was branded BusinessLIVE; it now lives at businessday.co.za, and businesslive.co.za redirects there. Print sales were 12,907 a day in the last quarter of 2024, but far more people meet the paper online, and most of them meet its paywall, which dates from 2013. Despite the name it has nothing to do with Nigeria's BusinessDay. This guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full article.

How the Business Day paywall works

Business Day runs a freemium paywall. Some news is open, but the columns, the market and company analysis and most of the political reporting are marked Premium. A non-subscriber sees the headline and the opening paragraphs of a Premium story, then a subscribe panel. According to its subscription FAQ, Premium (digital only) costs R129 a month after a discounted first month, and Premium Plus, which adds the print paper and the Sunday Times, costs R369.

The gate is enforced in the browser. Arena delivers the full text in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then hides everything after the opening paragraphs behind the subscribe panel. A reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. It is the same system Arena uses on the Sunday Times and the Sowetan, both of which also load. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters.

Our tests on 29 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:

• A 1,142-word Business Day opinion column by Drew Haller on the millions who risk exclusion as Smart ID delays persist, published on 26 October 2026, loaded in full, all 24 paragraphs.
• An 840-word Business Day law report on the ANC's Constitutional Court victory and whether it may open a can of worms for the IEC loaded in full, all 29 paragraphs.

Read a Business Day article in full

• Copy the article link. Business Day links start with businessday.co.za followed by the section, such as /opinion/ or /national/, and the headline. Older businesslive.co.za links redirect to the new address and work too.
• Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
• The story appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and full text.

Other approaches

• Newsletters. Business Day sends free email briefings that summarise the day's stories and link to them.
• Library access. South African newspapers are carried on digital newspaper services that many public and university libraries offer free to members.
• Business Day TV. Much of the paper's markets coverage is discussed on air, and the channel's clips are free to watch.
• Related free sources. JSE SENS announcements, Reserve Bank statements, Treasury documents and court judgments are all published free, and Business Day's reporting can be checked against them.

How it compares with other South African papers

Within Arena, Business Day, the Sunday Times and the Sowetan all load in full. The Financial Mail does not work: three fm.co.za articles returned only 150 to 202-word extracts ending in the subscribe prompt in our 29 October 2026 tests, so Arena's weekly is not listed. Outside the group, the freemium News24 and the Mail & Guardian both load. The full list of sites that work is kept current.

Subscribe if you read it regularly

Business Day is the paper the South African markets, Treasury and boardrooms read, and its columnists and court reporters do work no free source replaces. If you read it every week, Premium at R129 a month after the discounted first month, according to its subscription FAQ, is the right way to keep that reporting going.