✔︎ Last updated on November 2nd, 2024
If you want to read the National Geographic magazine’s articles for free, read on. In this article, you will learn how to bypass the paywall on the Nat Geo’s website.
Subscription sites like National Geographic let you read a few articles for free, but if you want to dive deeper, they’ll nudge you to subscribe. That’s fair enough if you’re visiting regularly, but it’s a tough ask when you just want to check out that one interesting piece a friend sent over.
This happened to me recently! I was reading an interesting story, and just when it was getting good – bam, there was the paywall, asking to subscribe or a “free trial” that doesn’t always turn out to be so free after all.
I’m not exactly broke, but paying money just to read a single article is pushing it. So, I quickly shifted gears from reading to figuring out how to bypass the paywall.
Luckily, after a bit of experimenting, I found a way around it.
The trick is to prepend 12ft.io/ before the website’s name in the browser’s address bar.
To do this, click on the address bar of your browser (or press “Cmd + L” or “Ctrl + L” on Windows), type 12ft.io before the https:// and hit enter. (If somehow 12ft.io doesn’t work, try prepending removepaywall.com before the website’s name.)
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Your address bar should look something like this: 12ft.io/https://nationalgeographic.com/........
Your article should now be unblocked. Plus, any new article you click on will open with 12ft.io without any annoying popups. Keep in mind, though, some webpage elements, like images, might not show up, and the formatting could get a bit wonky, but that’s something you will have to adjust.
⚠️ Heads up: Paywalled sites are getting stricter with blocking bypassing services, so those tricks might not work by the time you try them. Also, the 12ft.io site isn’t always up, so if the trick fails, make sure 12ft.io isn’t down by checking clicking here.
Why and how does this work?
12ft.io is a free website that lets you bypass paywalls. It’s one of several options; another popular one is removepaywall.com.
How does the paywall removers work
When you look carefully, you’ll notice that articles on the website actually load completely on your browser before a paywall appears and blocks your access. This slight delay means the entire article is already on your device, but smart JavaScript code hides it and nudges you to sign up.
Paywall bypass tools work by turning off this JavaScript, so the blocking element never shows up, letting you read the article seamlessly. Websites that use this type of setup have what’s known as a “soft paywall” – the content is there, but hidden by code.
In contrast, “hard paywalls,” like those used by The New York Times and Medium.com, are much more rigid. Here, the server only sends over a snippet or a few paragraphs, and the full article is only accessible with a verified user ID and password, since the rest of the content isn’t on your browser at all.
Why don’t all websites use hard paywalls?
You might wonder, “If soft paywalls are so easy to get around, why use them at all?” The answer has a lot to do with visibility on search engines.
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If an article is completely locked behind a hard paywall, requiring a user ID and password, even Google can’t pick it up. And if Google can’t see it, that article might as well not exist on the web.
This puts websites in a tricky spot—they want people to subscribe, but they also need to stay visible. Soft paywalls offer a reasonable middle ground.
Typically, only sites with content valuable enough that readers are willing to pay up front tend to rely on stricter hard paywalls.
What about ethics?
Yes, reading paid content without paying for it is basically stealing, and there’s no morally sound reason to justify it. But paying a hefty price just to read a single article can feel unreasonable.
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If there were an option, like maybe £0.99 for five articles, it wouldn’t seem quite so steep.
Wrapping Up
And there you have it—now you know how to access the Nat Geo’s articles for free.
Remember, though, that paywall removers only bypass soft paywalls. So, if a site uses a hard paywall, there’s no way around it (unless, maybe, you try the Wayback Machine).