How to Bypass Online Paywalls with Incognito Mode or Private Browsing?

Many of us have the habit of reading useful articles on online publication websites. Many reputed publication sites have built paywalls that put a limit to the number of free articles you can read or access on that website. Once you cross the limit for your articles, you can opt for a paid publication service (premium service) to continue reading large number of articles. For regular readers, it makes sense to pay for the subscription service. It is strongly recommended to readers who regularly access publications sites to pay for the subscription and enjoy premium services.

Subscription to New York Times

However, many times you just arrive at such a website to check out just one article and you get stopped by the paywall system of some online websites. Now, it is time-consuming and frustrating to under the paywall process for reading just one article on a website. It is during such situations that you think about how to get around online paywalls?

In this article, we shall check out tips to overcome online paywalls while reading one-off article on some popular publication websites. We shall go through ways by which private browsing or incognito mode can prove useful for such a bypass of paywalls.

Tips to use private browsing mode for accessing publication sites occasionally


There were several loopholes earlier in online paywalls of websites. However, many of them have been fixed. Now, if you want to access the publication website articles once in a while, you can try out different options like clearing your cookies or using VPN for access. It may or may not work for you.

Till recently, it was possible to search for a particular article headlines in Google search engine and visit the article URL through Google search results. It is a very good way of being able to get your one-off article access need fulfilled for some websites.

Another popular and reliable way is to access such websites through private browsing option of your internet browser. The private browsing option is available for most modern day browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, etc.

Chrome Incognito Window

It works well because private browsing mode doesn’t store any of your browsing history or cookies. Hence, it may not be possible for certain websites to avoid getting their paywalls bypassed. It is a known thing to everyone and nothing has been done about it yet. So, if such standard browser features can allow you to access your choice of articles once in while, you are bound to use it. For Google Chrome, this private browsing option is available as the “New Incognito Window” option which you can select from the top right side of the browser.

Incognito Window Mode Google Chrome

Similarly, for Safari, Opera and Firefox, this option is available as “New private window” option which allows you to browse internet privately.

Opera New Private Window option

However, I always recommend paying for the quality services provided by publication websites. If you are a one-off article reader, please use Google search engine. If Google allows you access, it means you are not breaking any rules. Similarly, the day is not far when all publication sites fix their paywall issue with private browsing modes.

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