The Ferret Paywall: How to Read Scottish Investigations for Free

The Ferret is Scotland's investigative journalism co-operative. Founded in 2015 and owned by its readers and journalists, it publishes long investigations into government, the environment, policing and defence that the daily papers rarely have the time for, and its fact-checking service is cited across Scottish politics. It is funded mainly by members, so most of its stories are metered for everyone else, and a link shared on social media often opens on a prompt to join. This guide explains how that gate works and how to read a full investigation.

How The Ferret paywall works

The Ferret uses a metered paywall. A non-member can read a limited number of stories a month, counted in a browser cookie, before the article body is replaced by an invitation to become a member. A few pieces, including fact checks and some public-interest stories, are left open. Members get unlimited access and a say in how the co-operative is run.

The gate is applied in the browser. The Ferret publishes the full text of each story in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then hides the body once a visitor is over the limit. A crawler-style reader that fetches the page without running the script receives the complete investigation. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that mechanism is what matters.

Our tests on 8 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:

• A 3,107-word Ferret investigation into a rapidly expanding anti-immigration network across Scotland and Northern Ireland loaded in full, all 51 paragraphs.
• A 1,479-word Ferret report naming the boss of an SNP-backed wind firm in a bribery scandal loaded in full, all 57 paragraphs.
• A 1,096-word Ferret story on pressure on the Ministry of Defence over a Trident balloon accident loaded in full, all 34 paragraphs.

Read a Ferret article in full

• Copy the article link. Ferret links look like theferret.scot/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

• The open stories. The Ferret deliberately leaves some pieces free, including its fact checks, so the story you want may already be open.
• Private windows. The meter lives in a cookie, so a private window resets it. The allowance is small, so this works for the occasional story only.
• Newsletters. The free weekly email summarises the latest investigations and links to them.
• Membership. Membership is priced low and sliding, with a reduced rate for people on low incomes, and includes a vote at the co-operative's meetings.

How it compares with other Scottish titles

The Ferret works in the same way as the Scottish dailies we have tested. The National and The Herald both meter in the browser and both load in full. The Scotsman, owned by a different group, blocks automated requests and does not work. The full list of sites that work is kept up to date.

Support the co-op if you read it regularly

The Ferret exists because a few thousand people in Scotland decided to pay for journalism that holds power to account, and its reporters answer to those members rather than to an owner. If you read it more than occasionally, joining is the right thing to do. It costs less than most newspaper subscriptions, and you get a say in what the co-operative investigates next.