The Epoch Times Paywall: How to Read Epoch Times Articles for Free
The Epoch Times puts most of its articles behind a subscription. How its paywall works, what the reader returns, and how to read a full Epoch Times story free.
Paywall behaviour last tested
The Epoch Times is a US-based newspaper and news site founded in 2000, with print editions in several countries and a large digital subscriber base. Unlike most American papers, it gates the majority of its online articles rather than a selection of premium pieces, so a link shared on social media or in a group chat very often opens to a subscription prompt. This guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full article.
How The Epoch Times paywall works
The Epoch Times uses a subscription paywall across most of its site. A visitor without a subscription sees the headline, the opening paragraphs and then a panel offering a trial or a subscription. A limited number of stories are left open as samples, and the paper also offers short promotional trials to new readers, but the default is that an article is locked from the first view.
The gate is applied in the browser. The paper publishes the full text of each article in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then hides the body for anyone without a subscriber login. A crawler-style reader that fetches the page the way a search engine does receives the whole article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why this distinction matters.
Our tests on 1 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:
- A 1,476-word Epoch Times opinion piece listing revelations from a published set of Anthony Fauci's diaries loaded in full, all 72 paragraphs.
- A 711-word Epoch Times health story on a sevenfold rise in a vomiting syndrome linked to cannabis loaded in full, all 25 paragraphs.
- A 515-word Epoch Times report on the State Department allowing online applications for first-time passports loaded in full, all 24 paragraphs.
Read an Epoch Times article in full
- Copy the article link. Epoch Times links look like theepochtimes.com/section/headline-slug-1234567.
- 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 body text.
Other approaches
- Trial offers. The paper runs frequent low-cost introductory trials for new subscribers, which give full access for the trial period.
- Free sample stories. Some articles are left open, and the paper's free newsletters link to them.
- Library access. The print edition is carried by PressReader in some US library systems, free with a library card.
- The e-paper. The page-by-page digital edition is subscriber-only and is not available through any reader.
How it compares with similar titles
The Epoch Times behaves like most of the US titles we have tested that apply their gate in the browser. The Washington Examiner and The Daily Beast both load in full in the same way. The difference is coverage: those two gate a fraction of their stories, while The Epoch Times gates most of them. The titles that do not work are the ones that block requests or serve only a teaser from the server, such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The full list of sites that work is kept up to date.
Subscribe if you read it regularly
The Epoch Times is funded mainly by its subscribers, and the gated model reflects that. If you read it daily, a subscription is the straightforward way to support the reporting you rely on, and the digital rate is lower than the print one.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from The Epoch Times and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
Are any Epoch Times articles free?
A small number are left open as samples and are linked from the free newsletters. Most articles show only the opening paragraphs to non-subscribers before a subscription panel appears.
Why does the reader work on The Epoch Times?
Because the full article is delivered in the page for search engines and hidden by a script in the browser. The reader fetches the page without running that script and so receives the complete text.
Does the reader work on The Wall Street Journal too?
No. The Journal enforces its paywall on the server and sends only a short teaser, so there is nothing more to extract. The Epoch Times sends the full article and loads in full.