12ft Ladder
Effortlessly access paywalled articles by prepending 12ft.io/ to any URL. 12ft Ladder uses Google's cached versions to show you unblocked content, circumventing paywalls and offering immediate article access without subscriptions.
Cost / License
- Free
- Proprietary
Application type
Alerts
- Discontinued
Platforms
- Online
- iPhone
- iPad
The News/Media Alliance has successfully secured the takedown of notorious paywall bypass website 12ft.io (“12ft Ladder”).
Features
Properties
- Lightweight
- Privacy focused
Features
- Ad-free
- No registration required
- Paywall
Tags
- remove-paywall
- paywalls
12ft Ladder News & Activities
Recent News
- POX published news article about 12ft Ladder
News publishers secure takedown of popular 12ft Ladder paywall bypass websiteThe landscape for paywall circumvention has changed as the News/Media Alliance has announced it has...
Recent activities
- POX updated 12ft Ladder
- NotARealName732 liked 12ft Ladder
- LordMax rated 12ft Ladder
- LordMax liked 12ft Ladder
Featured in Lists
The ultimate list of apps/services for better Security, Privacy & Anonymity; Defense against Surveillance. What …
What is 12ft Ladder?
Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.
What?
Prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page, and we'll try our best to remove the paywall and get you access to the article.
Why?
I believe Google Adwords killed the web. Google Adwords incentivized sites to peddle SEO optimized garbage. Sites who aren't are forced to optimize for email capture so they can market directly to you. Search results now show "news", ads, and SEO spam instead of surfacing information.
You ought to be able to search something on Google and get an answer to your question without signing up for some newsletter. This is why I created 12ft.io.
How does it work?
The idea is pretty simple, news sites want Google to index their content so it shows up in search results. So they don't show a paywall to the Google crawler. We benefit from this because the Google crawler will cache a copy of the site every time it crawls it.
All we do is show you that cached, unpaywalled version of the page.
Official Links
There are no links for this app, or they've been disabled.
12ft Ladder information
Developed by
Thomas MillarLicensing
Proprietary and Free product.Alternatives
9 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
Comments and Reviews
Bypassing paywalls in a minimalist readable environment. Very fast and reliable.
I tried to read Wirecutter via 12ft. Unfortunately, the images did not render correctly.
Begs the question of "what's the point, and how many sites are like this?" after I discovered NY Times was disabled by the site.