The era of the free internet is long over: As the online ad market has collapsed in recent years, largely thanks to changes Google has made to forefront AI summaries, countless websites have added paywalls. This means if you want to read their articles, you have to sign up and pay a monthly subscription fee. Some sites have a “metered” paywall—meaning you can read a certain number of articles for free before they ask for money—and others have a hard paywall, where you’ll have to pay to read even one article.Paywalls are mostly a thing with news websites, largely because relying on advertising income alone isn’t a viable strategy anymore, forcing these companies to pursue direct revenue sources like monthly subscriptions. In that sense, paywalls aren't a bad thing—it’s wonderful to support journalism you find valuable. If nothing else, I hope you support the websites that you read regularly—especially your local news outlet.But sometimes, you just need to get around a paywall quickly. Maybe you've lost your password, haven’t saved it on your phone, are in a rush, or are strapped for cash and swear to yourself that you’ll subscribe later. If one of these exceptions applies, there are many ways to bypass paywalls on the internet—though not nearly as many as there used to be. Many once-reliable methods of bypassing paywalls have stopped working almost entirely (pour one out for pasting the headline into Google and opening the link in a private browsing window). The methods discussed below are more robust—and thus, more likely to work. I'll start with my favorite, which has served me well for the past few years. But a word of caution: You may be able to use one of these methods successfully today, but that could change in the future as websites clamp down on bypass methods. (This article is regularly updated as some methods stop working and others pop up.)Archive.today is the best, most reliable option for bypassing paywalls Credit: Screenshot by Joel Cunningham Archive.today is the fastest, most reliable way I've found to quickly bypass a paywall, and I've been using it successfully for years across a wide range of sites, even as other options have come and gone. It's a site that will create an archived version of any website you paste into the search bar. (Think of an archived version like taking a screenshot of any website, complete with a time stamp—a self-described “time capsule,” if you will.) Archive.today “saves a text and a graphical copy of the page for better accuracy” and gives you a short link to an unalterable record of any web page. Yes, yes—but as a bonus, you can often use this functionality to bypass a paywall and read an entire paywalled article without issue. Just paste your article link into the black “I want to search the archive for saved snapshots” bar, and you'll be taken to a page where you can view earlier archived versions. If the article you’re trying to bypass isn’t already archived, then put the URL into the red “My URL is alive and I want to archive its content” bar. The site will then begin generating the archived version, which usually only takes a few minutes. You'll be sent straight to this archived version once it's ready, and you can come back to it later by copying the new URL from your browser's nav bar.You can also add a browser extension to Chrome that will create a button in your browser toolbar you can click to instantly create an archived snapshot of any web page. The archived version will even automatically open up in a new tab.I've only had this site fail me once or twice. Usually, there's already an existing archived version for anything I want to read, but creating a new one only takes a minute or two. Still, if it doesn't work, try the next option.Another free, easy, AI-enhanced alternative to get around a paywallA newer tool I found while poking around "get around a paywall" Reddit, smry.ai is a tool that works similarly to Archive.today, in that it shows you a cached version of the article page (pulled, according to the developer, from either the Internet Wayback Machine or Google cache), which allows you to read the entire thing. What sets this one apart is AI integration: Click the purple "generate" button on the results page to get an AI-generated summary of the article's key points. In practice, I found the summaries to be more akin to social media posts than an outline (for example, a 7,000-word New York Magazine article about the recent assassination attempts on the life of former President Donald Trump was trimmed to a single short paragraph), but if you're just looking for the gist—or trying to decide if you want to read the entire article at all—it's a nice little addition.More complex solutions to your paywall problemsIf you're willing to try solutions that are a little more technical than a mere copy and paste, one of these options might work for you.Disable JavaScript in your browserSome websites use JavaScript to hide content behind paywalls, and you can circumvent those blocks by disabling JavaScript in your browser. Note that disabling JavaScript can (and will) break most websites—some may not let you view comments, while others may not load at all. But it’s worth trying if you just need to read the content of the post. Ideally, you’d use a separate browser for this so that you don’t have to keep enabling and disabling JavaScript. Once you’ve chosen your secondary browser, check out our guide to disabling JavaScript in various ones.Use a VPNSome paywalled sites, like The Washington Post, will let you read a limited number of articles for free each month, then throw up the wall once you've hit the limit. You can use a VPN to change up your IP address and trick the site into giving you more freebies. This method won't help you on sites that don't offer any free access, but it's worth trying, and will work with both paid and free VPNs.Edit a couple of elements on the webpageIf you understand a bit of HTML and CSS, you can edit elements using your browser to go past some paywalls. Essentially, you’re editing the page to remove the banners that lock content behind a subscription. It’s a lot like opening the curtains to reveal the nice view outside your window. It works with some websites, but others have added a hard block that reveals the article only if you’ve signed in with a paid account. Still, it’s worth trying once to see if it works:On any website, right-click the banner just below the last visible sentence of the article and select Inspect Element. This will open up a console where you can search for the offending elements and hide or change them. The exact element varies from site to site, but it’s often labeled display, paywall, or subscribe. Here’s a neat GIF on Reddit that shows you how to get it done.Use a paywall bypass shortcut on AndroidIf you are trying to read a paywalled article on an Android phone, you can get around it with the Bypass Paywalls Clean browser extension. This extension used to be available for Firefox but has been removed from the Mozilla store. However, you can add it to a different browser; Reddit users recommend trying the Kiwi browser.Use a paywall bypass shortcut on iPhoneThe last method on our list works only on iPhones: Apple’s free Shortcuts app lets you run automation routines on your iPhone, and its tools have been used to bypass paywalls on various websites. There are plenty of these shortcuts, and they may all not work with all websites. Get started by trying Bypass Paywall or Unpaywall. Two totally legal, ethical ways to get around paywallsCheck if your local library provides accessMany libraries offer access to paid magazine and newspaper subscriptions online. Typically you'll have to go to your library's website, log in with your card number or account details, and then access different publications indirectly, via the library's portal. (For example, if you live in Marin County, Calif., you can easily read the Washington Post for free.) There are too many library systems out there to count, so you may or may not be lucky enough to be in one that offers this perk, but it's worth a shot; since the library is paying the publication for the service, you don't even need to feel guilty. (Not sure if your system has a news portal? Ask your local librarian!)Ask a subscriber for a "gift article"This one isn't likely to be feasible often, but it's worth a shot for when you're trying to read that one paywalled article that's going viral: Many publications allow paid subscribers to "gift" a copy of a certain number of articles every month (The Washington Post and the New York Times each allow gifting 10 articles per month, for example). If you know your aunt subscribes to The New York Times, it can't hurt to ask if she's willing to gift you the occasional read.