Estadão Paywall: How to Read O Estado de S. Paulo Articles for Free

Estadão, formally O Estado de S. Paulo, is one of Brazil's oldest newspapers, published in São Paulo since 1875 and still controlled by the Mesquita family through Grupo Estado. It is known for its economic and political coverage, a strong line of columnists such as Eliane Cantanhêde, and the E-Investidor personal finance section, and its editorials are read closely in business and government. Like its São Paulo rival Folha, it meters its site, and a reader who follows a handful of links in a month soon runs into the subscription prompt. This guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full story.

How the Estadão paywall works

Estadão uses a metered paywall. Non-subscribers can open a limited number of articles each month before the text is cut off and replaced by an offer to subscribe, and the count is stored in a browser cookie. Some columns and investigations appear to be restricted from the first visit, though as far as we can tell most news reports start out metered.

The gate is applied in the browser. The site delivers the full article in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then checks your cookie and hides the body if you are over the limit. A crawler-style reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters.

Our tests on 17 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:

• A 548-word Estadão column by Eliane Cantanhêde on Flávio Bolsonaro slipping, the gap to Lula narrowing and the centrão sensing a turnaround loaded in full, all 18 paragraphs.
• A 1,709-word Estadão economy investigation into the owner of Banco Master editing the scripts of Gabriela Prioli videos sold as spontaneous opinion loaded in full, all 68 paragraphs.
• A 369-word Estadão economy item listing how each senator voted in both rounds on ending the 6x1 working week loaded in full, all 17 paragraphs.
• A 1,592-word Estadão report on Lula's spending tracker reaching R$ 269 billion after debt forgiveness for sole traders loaded in full, all 48 paragraphs.
• A fifth request, for an E-Investidor interview about the election and fiscal adjustment, was blocked by the site and returned no text.

So four of five Estadão requests went through. The site does sometimes refuse a request outright, and when that happens a retry a few minutes later usually works.

Read an Estadão article in full

• Copy the article link. Estadão links look like estadao.com.br/economia/headline-slug/ for news and estadao.com.br/politica/eliane-cantanhede/headline-slug/ for columns, with the section first and no date.
• 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. If you see an error instead, wait a little and try again.

The reader shows the article in Portuguese, exactly as Estadão published it. If you want it in English, your browser's built-in translation works on the reader page.

Other approaches

• Newsletters. Estadão sends free email newsletters, including a morning briefing and letters on politics, economics and investing, that summarise the day's stories and link to them.
• Library access. Estadão is carried by PressReader, which many public and university libraries offer free to members, so the print edition can often be read with a library login.
• Private windows. The meter lives in a cookie, so a private window resets it.
• Related free sources. Senate and Chamber of Deputies votes are published on the official congressional sites, and Agência Brasil, the state news agency, covers government and the economy for free.

How it compares with other Brazilian newspapers

Folha de S.Paulo, Estadão's São Paulo rival, loaded in full on every request in our 17 October 2026 tests, as did O Globo in Rio de Janeiro. Estadão is the only one of the three that blocked a request. Across the border, Clarín in Buenos Aires passed the same day. Valor Econômico, the Grupo Globo business daily, returned only short teasers on two of three tests and is not listed. The full list of sites that work is kept current.

Subscribe if you read it regularly

Estadão has kept a serious investigative and economics desk going for a century and a half, and digital subscriptions now pay for much of it. If you read its columnists or E-Investidor regularly, a subscription is the right way to keep that reporting going.