What Is a Paywall? Types, Examples and Why News Sites Use Them
A plain-English explanation of what a paywall is, the difference between hard, metered and freemium paywalls, why newspapers adopted them, and what it means for readers.
Paywall behaviour last tested
A paywall is a system that restricts access to a website's content to people who have paid for it. On a news site, it usually means that an article is hidden behind a prompt asking you to subscribe. The word combines "pay" and "firewall", and it entered common use around 2010 when newspapers began charging for online news in earnest. This article explains the different kinds, why they exist and what they mean in practice for readers.
The three main types of paywall
Hard paywall
A hard paywall gives non-subscribers nothing beyond a headline and a short teaser. Every article, from the first one you open, requires a subscription. The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and The Economist run hard paywalls. They tend to be used by publications whose readers need the content for work and will pay for it.
Metered paywall
A metered paywall lets anyone read a set number of articles in a period, usually a month, and then asks for a subscription. The New York Times introduced the model in 2011, and it is now the most common approach among general newspapers and magazines. The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Time, Wired and hundreds of others use it. The idea is that casual readers can sample the journalism while heavy readers pay.
Freemium paywall
A freemium site keeps most of its content free and locks a subset, typically long reads, columnists, investigations or premium data. Business Insider, The Independent and The Verge work this way. Locked articles usually carry a small lock or "premium" label.
There are also registration walls, which ask you to create a free account rather than pay, and dynamic paywalls, which use data about your reading habits to decide when to show the subscription prompt. Both are variations on the metered idea.
Why news sites use paywalls
Newspapers used to make most of their money from advertising, especially classified ads. The internet destroyed that market: classifieds moved to free sites, and display advertising online pays a fraction of what print advertising did, with most of it going to Google and Meta rather than publishers. By the late 2000s many newsrooms were shrinking fast.
Paywalls were the response. If readers would pay for the paper on the newsstand, the reasoning went, they would pay for it online. The New York Times' metered paywall proved the model could work at scale, and within a decade most serious newspapers and magazines had followed. Today subscriptions are the largest source of revenue for many of them.
How paywalls work technically
This is where the types differ in a way that matters to readers. A hard paywall is enforced on the publisher's server: the article text is never sent to a visitor who is not logged in. A metered or freemium paywall is usually enforced in the browser: the server sends the full article so that search engines can index it, and a script on the page hides it after counting your visits in a cookie.
That difference is why some paywalls can be read around and others cannot. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls goes into detail, and our list of sites that work shows which is which.
Are paywalls good or bad?
Both, depending on where you stand. For publishers, paywalls have funded newsrooms that advertising alone could no longer support, and the quality of the best-subscribed papers has arguably improved. For readers, the cost of following the news across several outlets has risen sharply, and there is a real concern that reliable journalism is becoming something only people who can afford several subscriptions get, while misinformation stays free.
Our own position, stated on every page of this site, is that reader tools are reasonable for the occasional article and that anyone who reads a publication daily should subscribe to it. Our post on the legal and ethical questions covers this in more depth.
Common paywall terms
- Meter: the count of free articles you have used in a period.
- Gift link: a link a subscriber can share that opens an article for anyone.
- Registration wall: a requirement to create a free account, without paying.
- Premium or subscriber-only: content locked from the first view on a freemium site.
- Reader mode: a browser feature that reformats a page as plain text; not the same as bypassing a paywall.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from The New Yorker and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
What does paywall mean?
A paywall is a restriction that limits access to online content to people who have paid, usually through a subscription. On news sites it appears as a prompt to subscribe in place of the article.
What is the difference between a hard and a soft paywall?
A hard paywall locks every article from the first view. A soft or metered paywall allows a number of free articles per month before asking for a subscription. Freemium sites lock only selected articles.
Which was the first newspaper with a paywall?
The Wall Street Journal charged for online access from 1996, making it the earliest major example. The Times in London went fully paywalled in 2010, and The New York Times introduced the metered model in 2011.