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