How to Read The Seattle Times and Star Tribune Without a Subscription
The Seattle Times and the Minnesota Star Tribune are two of the strongest regional papers in the US, and both are metered. Here is how to read their stories in full for free.
Paywall behaviour last tested
The Seattle Times and the Minnesota Star Tribune are the papers that national outlets quote when a story breaks in the Pacific Northwest or the Upper Midwest. Both are family- or locally owned, both have won Pulitzers in the past decade, and both meter their websites. If you follow Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft, the Twin Cities or Minnesota politics from elsewhere, you have probably hit one of their subscription screens. This guide covers both.
How the Seattle Times paywall works
The Seattle Times has run a metered paywall since 2013. Non-subscribers get a limited number of free articles a month, tracked in a cookie, before the article body is hidden behind a subscription prompt. Public-safety coverage is sometimes exempt.
The paper delivers the full article in the page for search engines and applies the meter with a browser script. A crawler-style reader retrieves the whole text. In our latest test, an 860-word Seattle Times report on immigration arrests in Oregon loaded in full through Skip the Paywall.
How the Star Tribune paywall works
The Star Tribune uses the same model. Free reads are limited per month, the count lives in a cookie, and the text is present in the page for indexing. A 1,090-word Star Tribune story on Minneapolis school closures loaded completely in our test, all 43 paragraphs.
Read a story from either paper in full
- Copy the article link from seattletimes.com or startribune.com.
- 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.
US regional papers compared
We have tested the major metro dailies with the same method. At the time of writing:
- Work in full: Seattle Times, Star Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe.
- Bot challenge, cannot fetch: San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News.
- Geo-blocked outside the US: Chicago Tribune.
- Hard paywall: The Washington Post, which serves only a two-paragraph teaser.
The pattern is explained in our guide to metered versus hard paywalls.
Other approaches
- Library access. Both the Seattle Public Library and Hennepin County Library offer free digital access to their local paper with a library card, and many other libraries in Washington and Minnesota do the same.
- Private windows. Both meters are cookie-based and a private window resets them.
- E-editions. The print replicas are subscriber-only.
Support local news if you can
Regional papers have been hit hardest by the collapse of print advertising, and both of these rely on subscriptions to fund investigative teams that no one else would pay for. Introductory offers are usually a dollar a week or less.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from Seattle Times and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How many free articles do the Seattle Times and Star Tribune allow?
Neither paper publishes a fixed number and both adjust their meters over time. Most readers see the subscription prompt after a handful of articles in a month.
Can I read the Seattle Times free with a library card?
Yes. Seattle Public Library and King County Library System both provide free digital access to the Seattle Times for cardholders. Check your library website for the link.
Does the reader work on the Chicago Tribune?
It depends on where the request comes from. The Tribune blocks visitors outside the United States, so results vary. The Seattle Times, Star Tribune, LA Times and Boston Globe work consistently.