How to Read The Herald (Scotland) Without a Subscription
The Herald in Glasgow meters its website and locks its columnists and long reads. Here is how the Herald paywall works and how to read any story in full for free.
Paywall behaviour last tested
The Herald, published in Glasgow since 1783, is the oldest national newspaper in the world still in print and the paper most closely read on Scottish politics, Holyrood and the independence debate. Its website, heraldscotland.com, runs a metered paywall that locks columnists, analysis and long reads after a few free views. This guide explains how to read the full article.
How the Herald paywall works
The Herald is owned by Newsquest, which runs the same paywall across more than a hundred British local titles. It is a metered paywall: readers without a subscription get a small number of free articles a month, tracked in a cookie, before the article body is replaced with a subscription offer. Some articles are marked "premium" and locked from the first view.
The full article is delivered in the page so that search engines can index it, and the paywall is applied by a script in the browser. A crawler-style reader gets the complete text. In our latest test, a 1,000-word Herald report on a Skye ferry dispute loaded in full through Skip the Paywall, all 32 paragraphs.
Read a Herald article in full
- Copy the article link. Herald links look like heraldscotland.com/news/12345678.headline-slug/.
- Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
- The article appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and body.
Other Newsquest papers
Because Newsquest uses one platform across its group, the same steps work on its other Scottish and English titles, including The National, the Glasgow Times, the Evening Times archive, the Northern Echo, the Oxford Mail and the Bournemouth Echo. If a link ends in a number followed by a headline slug, it is almost certainly a Newsquest site.
What about The Scotsman?
The Herald's Edinburgh rival, The Scotsman, is owned by National World and uses a different platform. In our testing, The Scotsman's site refused automated requests, so the reader could not fetch its articles. The Herald is currently the more reliable Scottish national to read this way, alongside the Scottish edition of The Times.
Other approaches
- Library access. Scottish public libraries commonly offer The Herald through PressReader, free with a library card.
- Private windows. The meter is cookie-based and a private window resets it on heraldscotland.com.
Support the paper if you read it often
The Herald's digital subscription is inexpensive, and Newsquest runs frequent introductory offers. Scottish journalism has fewer funders than it used to, and if The Herald is your daily read, subscribing is the direct way to keep it going.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from The Herald (Scotland) and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How many free Herald articles can I read a month?
Newsquest does not publish the figure and adjusts it periodically. Most readers see the subscription prompt after a handful of articles, and premium-flagged pieces are locked from the first view.
Does this work on The National and the Glasgow Times?
Yes. Both are Newsquest titles on the same platform as The Herald, so their articles load in the same way.
Does Skip the Paywall work on The Scotsman?
Not at the moment. The Scotsman refuses automated requests, so the reader cannot fetch its pages. The Herald and The Times work for Scottish news.