Which? Paywall: How to Read Which? Reviews and Best Buy Verdicts for Free

Which? is the UK's consumer organisation. It buys products anonymously, tests them in its own labs and publishes reviews, buying guides and Best Buy and Don't Buy verdicts across everything from air fryers and televisions to car seats and pensions. Much of its news and advice is free, but the reviews themselves, the test scores and the Best Buy recommendations are reserved for paying members. If you have searched for the best air fryer, landed on which.co.uk and found the verdict hidden behind a "Join Which?" box, this guide explains what is happening and how to read the full page.

How the Which? paywall works

Which? uses a membership paywall rather than a meter. News stories and general advice articles are open to everyone. Product reviews, comparison tables, test results and the Best Buy badge are for members, and on those pages the written verdict and scores are hidden behind a subscription prompt from the first visit, regardless of how many pages you have read before.

The gate is applied in the browser. Which? delivers the full text of the review in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then checks whether you are logged in as a member and hides the body if you are not. A crawler-style reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why this type of gate behaves differently from the server-side paywalls at the Financial Times or The Economist.

Our tests on 15 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:

• A 3,384-word Which? review of the best vitamin B12 supplements loaded in full, all 151 paragraphs.
• A 3,499-word Which? news feature on healthier crisp choices loaded in full, all 81 paragraphs.
• A 3,458-word Which? best air fryers 2026 buying guide loaded in full, all 103 paragraphs.
• A 1,221-word Which? guide to the best portable Bluetooth speakers loaded in full, all 60 paragraphs.
• A 699-word Which? review page for the LG 55NU900B6LA television loaded in full, all 59 paragraphs.

Read a Which? review in full

• Copy the page link. Which? buying guides look like which.co.uk/reviews/air-fryers/article/how-to-buy-the-best-air-fryer-xxxxxxxx, and individual product reviews look like which.co.uk/reviews/televisions/product-name.
• Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
• The page appears in a clean reader view with the headline, the written verdicts and the full text.

What comes through and what does not

Which? pages lean heavily on graphics. The written review, the pros and cons and the recommendations come through as text. Star ratings, score bars, comparison tables and the Best Buy and Don't Buy badges are images or interactive widgets, and some of them do not survive extraction into plain text. On a product review page you may see the verdict and the reasoning but not every individual score. If a particular number matters to you, the member version of the page is the only place it is guaranteed to appear.

Other approaches

• Libraries. Many UK public libraries carry Which? magazine in print and through PressReader, and some offer in-branch access to the website.
• Trial membership. Which? regularly offers a first month for a nominal fee, which is enough to research a single big purchase.
• Free content. Which? news, scam alerts, consumer-rights guides and most of its money advice are free without a membership.
• Shared access. A Which? membership covers a household, so a family member's login may already cover you.

Subscribe if you use it regularly

Which? is a charity-owned organisation that takes no advertising and buys every product it tests at retail price, which is exactly why its verdicts are trusted. That independence is paid for by members. If you check Which? before every significant purchase, a membership is a small cost against the mistakes it saves you, and it keeps the testing honest. Our full list of sites that work covers the rest of the British press.