How to Read the New York Daily News Without a Subscription
The New York Daily News meters its website and hides stories after a few free reads. How the Daily News paywall works and how to read any article in full.
Paywall behaviour last tested
The New York Daily News is the city's tabloid of record: the paper that broke the Son of Sam letters, coined "Ford to City: Drop Dead" and still covers the NYPD, City Hall, the subway and the Yankees, Mets, Giants and Jets with a local intensity the national papers do not match. Its newsroom is far smaller than it was, but its website remains one of the most-read local news sources in New York, and since 2021 it has been owned by the same hedge-fund-backed chain, MediaNews Group, that runs The Denver Post and The Mercury News. That ownership brought a metered paywall. This guide explains how it works and how to read a full story.
How the Daily News paywall works
The Daily News uses a metered paywall. Non-subscribers get a limited number of free articles a month, counted in a browser cookie, after which the article body is replaced with a subscription prompt. The paper does not publish the exact allowance and, like its MediaNews sister titles, has tightened it over time.
The paywall runs on the platform shared by every MediaNews paper, and it behaves the same way on all of them: the full article is delivered in the page so search engines can index it, and a script in your browser applies the gate. A crawler-style reader retrieves the whole text. In our test on 28 September 2026, an 819-word Daily News story on the NYPD commissioner speaking at a Manhattan synagogue loaded in full through Skip the Paywall, all 23 paragraphs.
Read a Daily News story in full
- Copy the article link. Daily News links look like nydailynews.com/2026/09/28/headline-slug/.
- 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
- Library access. The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library all offer free access to the Daily News through their digital newspaper services with a library card.
- Private windows. The meter is cookie-based, so a private window resets it.
- The e-edition. The print replica is subscriber-only and not available through any reader tool.
US regional papers compared
The Daily News is one of several MediaNews Group papers that load in full through the reader. Its sister titles, including The Mercury News, Denver Post and Pioneer Press and the San Diego Union-Tribune, use the same platform and behave identically. More broadly, at the time of writing:
- Work in full: the Daily News, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and the Seattle Times and Star Tribune.
- Blocked: The New York Times refuses automated requests, as do the Gannett and USA Today Network papers.
- Teaser only: The Washington Post.
The full list is in every site you can read for free, and metered versus hard paywalls explains why some sites cannot be read.
Support the paper if you read it often
The Daily News has lost most of its staff over the past decade, and what remains depends on digital subscriptions. Introductory offers are usually a dollar a week or less. If it is your daily paper, that is the right way to keep it going.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from New York Daily News and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How many free articles does the New York Daily News allow?
The Daily News does not publish the number and adjusts it periodically. Most readers see the subscription prompt after a handful of stories in a month.
Can I read the Daily News for free with a library card?
Yes. The New York, Brooklyn and Queens public library systems provide free access to the Daily News through their digital newspaper services.
Does Skip the Paywall work on the New York Post?
The New York Post does not have a paywall, so you can read it directly. The reader will still give you a clean, ad-free version of a Post article if you want one.