Focus+ Paywall: How to Read Focus+ Articles for Free

Focus+ (focusplus.de) is the paid news site and app that Hubert Burda Media launched in 2024 for its Focus news-magazine brand. It is a separate product from Focus Online at focus.de, which stays free and ad-funded. Where Focus Online publishes a high volume of open news, Focus+ carries the magazine-style reporting, analysis and interviews that Burda wants paid for, and every article on the site is reserved for subscribers. A reader who follows a Focus+ link from a search result or a social feed therefore meets the subscription box straight away, with no free articles to use up first. This guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full article.

How the Focus+ paywall works

Focus+ runs a hard paywall in the sense that there is no meter: every page declares that it is not accessible for free, and there are no complimentary reads for first-time visitors. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls describes the two models, and from the reader's side Focus+ looks like the strict one.

Technically, though, the gate is softer than it appears. The article text is delivered in the page so that search engines can index it, and a Piano script then checks for a subscriber login and replaces the body with the subscription prompt. A reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article, which is why Focus+ works with Skip the Paywall despite having no free tier at all.

Our tests on 3 November 2026 through Skip the Paywall:

• A 1,275-word Focus+ business report "Weiterbildung für Arbeitslose: Der Staat zahlt Milliarden", on the billions the state spends on training for the unemployed, loaded in full, all 28 paragraphs.
• An 855-word Focus+ politics piece "Stadt der Königsmacher? Die arabischen Israelis haben von Netanjahus Spaltung genug" loaded in full, all 11 paragraphs.
• A 1,059-word Focus+ health report "Jetzt kommt die Fett-weg-Spritze", on fat-dissolving injections, loaded in full, all 24 paragraphs.

Read a Focus+ article in full

• Copy the article link. Focus+ links look like focusplus.de/wirtschaft/ followed by the headline slug and a numeric id, for example focusplus.de/wirtschaft/headline-slug-16001. Other sections sit under their own path in the same pattern.
• 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.

The reader shows the article in German, exactly as Focus+ published it. If you want it in English, your browser's built-in translation works on the reader page in the normal way.

Other approaches

• Focus Online. The free sister site at focus.de covers the same news agenda at much greater volume, and many stories that Focus+ treats in depth have a shorter open version there.
• Print subscribers. If you already take the Focus print magazine, Focus+ is included: the publisher gives print subscribers access free of charge using their subscriber ID.
• Private windows. These do not help here. There is no cookie-based meter to reset, because every Focus+ article is closed from the first visit.
• Related free sources. Much of the underlying material is public. The Bundesagentur für Arbeit publishes its own figures on training and labour-market spending, and Bundestag and ministry documents are free to read, so the facts behind a Focus+ report can often be checked directly.

How it compares with other German news sites

Focus+ is one of a handful of German-language subscription sites that pass our tests. Among the others that work are the weekly Der Freitag, the reader-funded Krautreporter, the Heidelberg regional Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung with its RNZ+ label, and the Berlin daily Berliner Zeitung. Across the border in Austria, Die Presse and Kurier both work too.

The big national titles are a different story. Spiegel+, Bild+, FAZ, Handelsblatt, Welt, Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung do not work: they return teasers or block the reader outright, so none of them has a how-to guide. Our page on sites that cannot be bypassed explains what to do instead, and the full list of sites that work is kept current.

Subscribe if you read it regularly

Focus+ exists because Burda decided the magazine's reporting should be paid for directly rather than through advertising. The launch offer is €1 for the first four weeks, after which the subscription costs €4.29 a week, billed every four weeks at €17.16. Focus print subscribers get it free with their subscriber ID. If you find yourself reading Focus+ every week, that is the right way to keep its journalists working.