Outside Magazine Paywall: How to Read Articles Without Outside+
Outside meters its features and asks you to join Outside+ after a few reads. Here is how the paywall works and how to read any Outside article in full without a membership.
Paywall behaviour last tested
Outside is the magazine for long trail reports, gear reviews and the kind of adventure writing that gets forwarded to the whole group chat before a trip. Its website is metered: read a few pieces and the next one fades out behind a prompt to join Outside+. This guide explains how the Outside paywall works and how to read a full article without a membership.
How the Outside paywall works
Outside uses a metered paywall tied to its Outside+ membership, which also covers the group's other titles such as Backpacker, Climbing and Trail Runner. Non-members can read a limited number of articles in a period, tracked in a browser cookie, before the membership prompt replaces the article body. Certain pieces, including some long features and gear guides, are marked as members-only regardless of the count. The allowance is not published and changes.
The gate is applied in the browser. The full article is delivered in the page HTML for search engines, and a script decides whether to show it. A crawler-style request never runs that script. In our test on 28 September 2026, a 681-word Outside adventure-travel piece on hiking in the Alps with rescue dogs loaded in full through Skip the Paywall, all 12 paragraphs.
Read an Outside article in full
- Copy the article link. Outside links look like outsideonline.com/section/subsection/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, text and inline images.
Tracking parameters on the end of the link, such as utm_medium, do not matter; the reader ignores them.
Other approaches
- Library access. Outside is available through PressReader and Libby at many public libraries, which gives you the print edition free with a library card.
- Private windows. The meter lives in cookies, so a private window resets the count. This works for metered pieces but not for those marked members-only.
- Newsletters. Outside's free newsletters link to a selection of stories that are often open when reached from the email.
- Outside+ trials. The membership is regularly offered with a free or discounted trial, and it includes the maps app and the other magazines in the group.
How it compares with other magazines
Outside behaves like the other magazine sites we have tested. National Geographic meters its travel and nature features the same way and loads in full, as does Wired. The difference between these and the titles that cannot be read is explained in our guide to metered versus hard paywalls.
Support the magazine if you read it often
Outside's trip reports and gear testing cost money to produce, and the membership is what funds them. Outside+ is inexpensive on introductory offers and bundles the group's other titles and its mapping app. If you read it every week or plan trips around it, that is the right way to keep it going.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from Outside and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How many free articles does Outside give you?
Outside does not publish the figure. Most readers see the Outside+ prompt after a handful of articles in a month, and some features are members-only from the first read.
Does Skip the Paywall work on members-only Outside articles?
In our testing the full text of Outside articles is present in the page and loads through the reader. If a particular piece comes back short, it is being served differently; paste it in and check.
Do Backpacker, Climbing and the other Outside titles work?
They share the Outside+ membership and platform, so they probably behave the same way, but we have only verified Outside itself. Paste an article into the reader to check.