The State of Paywalls 2026
Based on 4,214 real attempts across 103 publications, RemovePaywall returned a readable article 66% of the time. Here's what the data says about which paywalls are hardest, which are readable, and how free tools actually fare in 2026.
The hardest paywalls
Lowest success — hard subscription walls and bot protection that no free tool beats without a public archive.
The most readable
Highest success — soft/metered walls where the article text is present and reader extraction clears it.
How paywalled articles get freed
Most paywalls leak the article text to the page; hard subscription walls don't.
Most-sought paywalled publications
The outlets readers most often try to read past.
Paywall reading is global
Demand for reading past paywalls, by visitor language.
Methodology
Figures are from RemovePaywall's own request logs in 2026 — real, anonymous attempts by real users. "Readable" means we returned a clean article (reader extraction) or a working archived/proxied copy. Per-site figures include only publications with at least 12 logged attempts. Numbers refresh continuously; hard subscription walls (e.g. Bloomberg, the FT, the WSJ) only come through when a public archive of the article exists.
Cite this report
Free to reuse and quote with a link back — CC-BY 4.0.
RemovePaywall (2026). “State of Paywalls 2026.” Retrieved 12 Sep 2026 from https://removepaywall.co/state-of-paywalls
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