The Monthly Paywall: How to Read The Monthly Essays and Articles for Free
The Monthly keeps its long essays on Australian politics, ideas and culture behind a Schwartz Media paywall. How the gate works and how to read a full essay.
Paywall behaviour last tested
The Monthly is the Australian magazine of politics, society and culture that Morry Schwartz launched in 2005 and that Schwartz Media still publishes from Melbourne alongside The Saturday Paper, the Quarterly Essay and the 7am podcast. It is built around the long essay: a 10,000-word piece on school wellbeing programmes or the balance of power in Asia is normal rather than exceptional, and between print issues the site runs a steady stream of shorter online pieces, columns and reviews. Its contributors include many of Australia's best-known writers, and the essays that circulate most widely, on politics, climate, technology and national identity, are the ones readers most often arrive at from social media or a search result, only to meet the subscription prompt. This guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full essay.
How The Monthly paywall works
The Monthly runs on the same subscriber paywall as its sister title The Saturday Paper. As far as we can tell a visitor can open a small number of pieces before the body of the next one is replaced by a subscription box, and the count is kept in a browser cookie. A subscription removes it.
The gate is applied in the browser. Schwartz Media delivers the full text of each essay in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then checks the cookie and hides the body if the allowance is used up. A reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete piece, however long it is. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters: The Monthly sits on the softer side of the line, while the big Australian dailies do not.
Our tests on 22 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:
- A 12,453-word Monthly essay by Russell Marks, The imperfect guru, which opens on a tour of a Catholic primary school's wellbeing wing in Adelaide's southern suburbs, loaded in full, all 134 paragraphs.
- A 6,927-word Monthly essay from the October 2026 issue, Tech, truth and the decline in democracy, loaded in full, all 91 paragraphs.
- A 3,466-word Monthly essay by Sam Roggeveen, Four forces, on the forces reshaping Asia and Australia's place in its region, loaded in full, all 46 paragraphs.
- A 1,626-word Monthly piece by Richard Flanagan, Grand theft automated, answering a Sydney Morning Herald column on AI data centres, loaded in full, all 35 paragraphs.
Read a Monthly article in full
- Copy the article link. Monthly links look like themonthly.com.au/author-name/2026-10-20/headline-slug for online pieces, or themonthly.com.au/october-2026/essays/headline-slug for essays from a print issue.
- Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
- The essay appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and the full text, which for the longest pieces means a very long page.
Other approaches
- Newsletters and podcasts. Schwartz Media sends free email newsletters that summarise and link to new Monthly pieces, and the 7am podcast, which draws on the same newsroom, is free.
- Library access. As far as we can tell The Monthly is carried on PressReader, which many Australian public libraries offer free to members; ask at your local branch.
- Private windows. The free allowance lives in a cookie, so a private window resets the count.
- Related free sources. Hansard, parliamentary committee reports and think-tank research such as the Lowy Institute's are published free, and many Monthly essays on policy and foreign affairs draw on them.
How it compares with other Australian titles
The Monthly runs on the same Schwartz Media paywall as The Saturday Paper, and the two behave identically through the reader. The regional dailies owned by Australian Community Media, covered in our guide to The Canberra Times and the Newcastle Herald, also work. The big national titles do not: The Australian and the other News Corp mastheads block the reader outright, and so do Nine's The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, which enforce their limits on the server and refuse automated requests. The full list of sites that work is kept current.
Subscribe if you read it regularly
The Monthly pays writers to spend months on a single essay, which is rare in Australian publishing. If you read it every issue, a subscription is the right way to keep that going, and it also brings the print magazine to Australian readers.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from The Monthly and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
Who publishes The Monthly?
Schwartz Media, the Melbourne company founded by Morry Schwartz, which also publishes The Saturday Paper, the Quarterly Essay and the 7am podcast. The Monthly and The Saturday Paper share the same subscription system.
Does the reader work on the long essays?
Yes. All four pieces in our 22 October 2026 tests loaded in full, including a 12,453-word essay that came through complete in all 134 paragraphs. The text is in the page and hidden by a script, which the reader does not run.
Does it work on The Australian or the Sydney Morning Herald?
No. The Australian and the other News Corp titles block the reader, and so do Nine's Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. The Monthly, The Saturday Paper and the ACM regional dailies such as The Canberra Times all work.