The best 12ft.io alternative in 2026
12ft.io (the "12ft Ladder") was taken offline in July 2025 after its host terminated the account under publisher pressure. If your old 12ft.io links stopped working, here is what to use instead.
What happened to 12ft.io?
12ft.io let you skip soft paywalls by requesting pages as a search-engine crawler. In July 2025 its hosting provider disabled it following a takedown effort by news publishers, and the service has not returned. Links of the form 12ft.io/proxy?q=… no longer resolve.
What to use instead
RemovePaywall is a free, no-login alternative. Instead of only spoofing a crawler, it extracts the clean article, then falls back through archive.today and the Wayback Machine, and finally a smart proxy — so it works on more sites than the old crawler trick, which most large publishers now block.
How it compares
12ft.io relied on a single technique (crawler spoofing) that big publishers have since closed off with reverse-DNS checks and bot protection. RemovePaywall is reader-first and archive-backed, which recovers articles the crawler trick can no longer reach, and shows a clean reading view rather than the raw page.
Free paywall tools compared (2026)
| Tool | How it works | No install | No login | Languages | Shows success rates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RemovePaywall | Reader-first extraction, then archive.today + Wayback, then a sandboxed proxy | Yes (web; optional extension) | Yes | 7 | Yes — live, per site |
| archive.today | Public archive lookup only | Yes | Yes | — | No |
| Bypass Paywall Reader | Aggregator — redirects you to archives (Wayback, archive.today, others) | Yes | Yes | 5 | No |
| Smry.ai | AI reader + article summaries | Yes (also an extension) | Free tier; Pro is paid | — | No |
| Bypass Paywalls Clean | Browser extension with per-site rules | No — sideload from GitHub | Yes | — | No |
RemovePaywall is the only option that's reader-first and archive-backed, works in 7 languages, and publishes live per-site success rates.
Live success rates
Unlike other tools, RemovePaywall shows how often it actually works, from real usage — recent examples: The New Yorker ~98% · WIRED ~98% · The Atlantic ~97% · Business Insider ~90% · The New York Times ~62%. See the full live list.
FAQ
Is 12ft.io coming back?
There is no sign of it returning — its host disabled it in 2025. Use an archive-backed reader like RemovePaywall instead.
What is the best free 12ft.io alternative?
RemovePaywall (reader + archive.today + Wayback + proxy) and archive.today itself are the most reliable free options in 2026.
Do I need to install anything?
No — paste an article URL on the homepage. There is nothing to install and no account.