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Free · No sign-up · Nothing stored

Read the article. Skip the paywall.

Paste a link, pick a service, and read the article through a free third-party archive or reader.

Open with

Not working? Try another service. Each one works on different sites.

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How it works

Three steps. No account.

  1. Copy the link

    Grab the article’s address from your browser bar or share menu.

  2. Paste it here

    Drop it into the field at the top of this page.

  3. Pick a service

    Click a button. The article opens on that service’s site in a new tab.

The services

Different tools for different sites

We don’t host anything. Each button sends your link to an independent service.

  • Archive.today

    Saves a snapshot of the page. Often the quickest way in on news sites.

  • Wayback Machine

    The Internet Archive’s calendar of every saved copy of the page. Pick a date with a working copy.

  • smry.ai

    A reader that tries to pull out the article text. When it can’t, it shows an AI summary instead.

  • Ghostarchive

    Another archive that makes fresh copies on request. A solid backup.

FAQ

Questions, answered

Yes, always. No account, no sign-up, no fees. If you’d like to help keep it running, you can support us on Ko-fi.

No. We don’t save, log or share the links you paste. There are no accounts and no database. Your link stays in your browser until you pick a service, and then it goes straight to that service.

The only thing the site remembers is which service you used last, on your own device. One note: if a link is part of the web address itself, as with the byepaywall.com/ shortcut or a byepaywall.com/?url= link, our host’s standard logs may record it. After your first visit, and in the installed app, ?url= links and shared links are kept on your device instead.

Some publishers block archives, some paywalls only load the article for subscribers, and some pages haven’t been archived yet. These services work best on sites with lighter paywalls. If one service doesn’t work, try another. Some articles just can’t be opened this way.

Start with Archive.today. It works on many news sites. For older articles, try Wayback Machine or Ghostarchive. smry.ai can give you a quick summary when nothing else works.

Yes. Type byepaywall.com/ in front of an article’s address, like byepaywall.com/https://www.nytimes.com/…, and this page opens with the link already filled in. Then just pick a service. Links like byepaywall.com/?url=… work too.

Yes. On Android, install the app and share links straight to it. On iPhone, add the byepaywall Shortcut to share links from any app. Here’s how.

byepaywall doesn’t host, copy or store any articles. It only links to independent third-party services, which have their own terms. You’re responsible for how you use them, and for following the laws where you live and the terms of the sites you read.

A note from us

Love a publication? Support it.

Good journalism takes time and money to make. If you keep coming back to the same outlet, consider subscribing. byepaywall is for the occasional article, not a replacement for supporting the writers you rely on.

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