The internet is increasingly splitting into two information ecosystems \u2013 people who subscribe, and those who don\u2019t.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Vilnius, Lithuania, June 18, 2026.<\/strong> \u2013 A new analysis<\/u><\/a>, conducted by Oxylabs, a web intelligence company, reveals that around 60% of the platforms maintain a hard paywall, while 83%<\/u><\/a> of Americans have not paid for news in the past year. Those who pay for news and other subscriptions, spend an average of $219<\/u><\/a> per month \u2013 equivalent to more than eight hours of work at the median U.S. wage.\u00a0<\/p>\n With most of that spending going toward entertainment rather than news, and with news prices rising faster than other categories, staying informed through quality outlets is becoming a lower priority, or simply out of reach, for many.<\/p>\n \u201cFree resources on the open web are shrinking year by year. Publishers are adapting to real economic pressures, but the result is a widening gap between those who can afford quality information and those who can\u2019t. At the same time, through Project 4\u03b2 \u2013 our initiative supporting journalists and researchers \u2013 we\u2019re seeing bad actors exploit these shifts. They are spreading disinformation to fill the gaps left by quality journalism,\u201d said Denas Grybauskas, Chief Governance and Strategy Officer (CGSO) at Oxylabs.\u00a0<\/p>\n The research, which analyzed pricing and access models across 34 major news, education, and entertainment platforms, found that the cost of accessing information online has noticeably increased over the past several years, with average annual subscription prices rising over 17% between 2020 and 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n News subscriptions had the highest increases, with publications like The New York Times nearly doubling their monthly price from $18.47 to $32.59 during the studied period.\u00a0<\/p>\n Education platforms like Coursera Plus, Skillshare, and Udemy were the most expensive and volatile category, with subscriptions averaging $25.89 per month across the period. \u00a0<\/p>\n Entertainment, which in this research was included as an informal learning category, stayed at the opposite end: platforms like Netflix, and Apple Music cost an average of $9.39 per month, the lowest of the three categories and the most stable.<\/p>\n The Intersection of Information Access and Technological Progress<\/strong><\/p>\n The implications extend beyond household budgets. As more of the formerly open web moves behind paywalls and registration walls, the pool of publicly accessible data available to train AI systems, conduct independent research, and build next-generation digital tools is shrinking. This change is reshaping access at a critical moment in AI innovation, while consumers absorb the price.<\/p>\n At the same time publishers face challenges of their own. Google search traffic to news sites dropped 33%<\/u><\/a> globally last year, with AI-generated answers reducing the need to visit sources directly. For many outlets, paywalls have become one of the few ways to sustain journalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the subscribers and non-subscribers read is, increasingly, not the same thing. Essentially, they\u2019re operating in different information ecosystems, with different emphases and blind spots. That\u2019s the part of this trend we find most troubling. The open internet was meant to broaden access to reliable information, not stratify it by income. We believe the public web should remain something everyone can navigate, measure, and learn from \u2013 and that the data describing how it is changing should be available to anyone trying to understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n Even when the content is free, 74% of the platforms require account registration, which means it requires payment with personal data. Paying for a subscription does not mean ads don\u2019t interrupt access either \u2013 60% of platforms still show them to paying subscribers.<\/p>\n For consumers, there are ways to save money when it comes to accessing information behind paywalls. While an average American pays $16.70 per month for an individual plan, the introductory rate averages $4.21 per month and is the cheapest entry point.\u00a0<\/p>\n The full research report is available here<\/u><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n PR Contact\u00a0<\/strong> About the Expert\u00a0<\/strong> About the Oxylabs Research Team<\/strong> About Oxylabs<\/strong>
Zivile Kasparaviciute<\/u><\/a>\u00a0
Senior PR Manager at Oxylabs <\/p>\n
Denas Grybauskas<\/u><\/em><\/a> is a Chief Governance and Strategy Officer (CGSO) at Oxylabs, leading legal, risk management, ESG, and communication teams. He shares his knowledge with students and professors at numerous universities, such as the University of Michigan, and is a major voice of the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative (EWDCI). Grybauskas is a thought leader in the public data acquisition industry, regularly providing comments to the media, including <\/em>Forbes<\/u><\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Fast Company<\/u><\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Computer Weekly<\/u><\/em><\/a>, and niche podcasts such as <\/em>Temidy<\/u><\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
Oxylabs Research is the research and storytelling team at Oxylabs. We use ethical, compliant Oxylabs scraping tools to collect only publicly available web data \u2013 never private, paywalled, or personal data \u2013 and turn it into clear, timely insights that help everyone make sense of a fast\u2011changing technological, economic, and social reality. Our work is designed to support original reporting and analysis by journalists and to serve the broader public good. If you\u2019re working on a story or investigation and need reliable web data to back it up, get in touch at <\/em>press@oxylabs.io<\/u><\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
Established in 2015, Oxylabs is a web intelligence platform and premium proxy provider, enabling companies of all sizes to utilize the power of big data. Constant innovation, an extensive patent portfolio, and a focus on ethics have allowed Oxylabs to become a global leader in the web intelligence collection industry and forge close ties with dozens of Fortune Global 500 companies. Oxylabs was named Europe\u2019s fastest-growing web intelligence acquisition company in the Financial Times FT 1000 list for several consecutive years. For more information, please visit: <\/em>https:\/\/oxylabs.io\/<\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
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