Metered paywall

A paywall that lets readers see some articles, or part of each article, before asking them to subscribe.

Last updated September 28, 2026.

Definition

What Metered paywall means

A hard paywall shows nothing without a subscription. A metered paywall is softer: readers get a number of free articles a month, or the first paragraphs of each story, before a subscription prompt. Most large news sites use some form of it.

For anyone collecting articles, a metered story is incomplete by design: the headline, summary, and first paragraphs are public, the rest is not. Tools should say when text was cut off, so a truncated story is not mistaken for a short one.

Clair's Bloomberg, Reuters, and AP article endpoints return access, such as free or metered, and the Bloomberg and AP endpoints set body_truncated when only part of the story was shown.

In the data

How it appears in a response

GET /v1/article?engine=bloomberg_news&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2F2026-09-22%2Fapollo-caps-private-credit-fund-again-after-14-7-look-to-exit · article.access

"metered"

A Bloomberg story marked metered; its body_truncated is true. From a recorded Bloomberg News API response.

Subscribe to the API you need.

Each Clair API is its own monthly request quota. Unused requests expire. Every API has a free tier to try it.

Get API Key →Compare plans

Glossary