Telegram.hr Paywall: How to Read Telegram Articles for Free

Telegram.hr is a Croatian news site from Zagreb, the flagship of Telegram Media Grupa, founded in 2015 by the journalist Miran Pavić. It has nothing to do with the Telegram messaging app. The site is one of Croatia's most-read sources for politics, investigations and long-form writing, and its sports section, Telesport, publishes some of the best football columns in the country. Telegram introduced a metered paywall in 2021, one of the first in Croatia, and it has grown steadily since. Between April 2023 and April 2024 its subscriber numbers rose 66 per cent year on year, and in 2025 they grew by a further 54 per cent. Pluralis, the European media investment vehicle managed by MDIF, took a minority stake in 2023. A reader arriving from a shared link often meets the subscription prompt, so this guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full article. Telegram.hr is the first Croatian title on our list.

How the Telegram.hr paywall works

Telegram runs a metered paywall. Non-subscribers can open a limited number of articles before a prompt asks them to subscribe, and some pieces, Telesport in particular, are tied to the higher tier. On telegram.hr/pretplata on 25 October 2026 the Standard plan cost €7.99 a month for unlimited articles, the archive, newsletters and 10 gift articles a month, and the Premium plan cost €9.99 a month, adding Telesport and ad-free reading. Annual billing comes with a 24 per cent discount.

In our tests the full text was present in the page that Telegram's server sends, and the subscription box is applied afterwards in the browser. A reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters, and Telegram sits on the softer side of it.

Our tests on 25 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:

• A 1,363-word Telegram.hr Telesport column by Mihovil Topić on Hajduk Split's win over Thun and why it is an important step in the club's development loaded in full, all 26 paragraphs.
• A 1,310-word Telegram.hr Telesport column by Mihovil Topić on how Gonzalo García beat Ajax his own way loaded in full, all 25 paragraphs.
• A 632-word Telegram.hr politics and crime investigation by Denis Mahmutović on HNK Split turning down a cheaper offer to film a production, with the job going to a firm linked to an adviser of the mayor, loaded in full, all 8 paragraphs.

Three of three, including two long Telesport columns, the part of the site that the Premium tier is built around.

Read a Telegram.hr article in full

• Copy the article link. Telegram links look like telegram.hr/telesport/kolumne/ or telegram.hr/politika-kriminal/ followed by a slug. Links shared from Facebook carry a long fbclid parameter on the end, and the reader handled those as pasted.
• 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 Croatian, exactly as Telegram published it. If you want it in English, your browser's built-in translation works on the reader page in the normal way. When a publisher withholds the body on its server the reader can only show the preview, and it says so, but none of the Telegram articles we tested behaved that way.

Other approaches

• Gift articles. Every Standard and Premium subscriber gets 10 gift articles a month, so a friend who subscribes can send you a link that opens in full.
• Newsletters. Telegram publishes email newsletters that summarise its reporting, and subscribers get the full set as part of the plan.
• Private windows. A metered paywall counts articles in the browser, so a private window usually resets the count, though the Premium-only Telesport pieces stay closed.
• Public broadcaster. HRT, Croatia's public broadcaster, publishes its news free online and covers the same politics and football stories, usually in shorter form.

How it compares with other European titles

Telegram is the first Croatian site we have tested, so the closest comparisons are other independent European titles with similar paywalls. The Polish Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny loads in full, as does the Italian daily Il Foglio and the English-language Brussels Times. The full list of sites that work is kept current.

Subscribe if you read it regularly

Telegram is a small independent newsroom that funds investigations into local government and publishes columns nobody else in Croatia would run. If you read Telesport or its politics coverage every week, the Standard plan at €7.99 a month, or Premium at €9.99 with Telesport included, is the right way to keep that reporting going.