For news & magazines
Turn the tenth free article into a subscriber.
News apps run one funnel: a metered wall that samples readers, a steep intro offer that converts them — like the NYT’s “$1 a week for a year” — and an all-access bundle that keeps them. CashSDK ships all three from one integration, with paywalls you A/B over the air and revenue you can read the same afternoon you launch.
Metered walls · intro offers · all-access bundles — one SDK, both stores.
You've hit your free limit
You've read all 10 free articles this month
Subscribe to keep reading — every article, no meter.
Free articles this month10 / 10
Your free reads reset on the 1st.
Introductory offer
$1/ week for your first year
Unlimited access. Auto-renews at the standard rate — cancel anytime.
Subscribe
Cancel anytime · Auto-renews at standard rate
How the category prices
One funnel: acquire, convert, retain.
The top news apps sample readers behind a metered wall, convert them on a steep intro rate, and retain them inside an all-access bundle — each move targeting a different stage. Here is how the category really charges.
Acquire
The metered paywall
Let readers sample, then wall the rest. The meter — or a propensity model — decides who sees the wall and when.
- Industry median is ~5 free articles / month (Forbes 4, HBR 2, FT ~10)
- NYT pioneered it at 20/month (2011), cut to 10 (2012)
- Hard walls (WSJ) convert harder but shrink reach
- The category is shifting to dynamic / propensity walls (NYT, Hearst)
NYT · The Economist · Bloomberg · FT
Convert
Steep intro pricing
The wall converts on a first rate far below standard, then auto-renews at full price — the category's dominant lever.
- NYT “$1–4/week for a year”, then ~$25 every 4 weeks
- WSJ ~$1–2/week for the first year, then ~$38.99 / 4 weeks
- Bloomberg $1.99/mo for 3 months, then ~$34.99/mo
- The Economist: 1-week trial + ~50% off the first year
NYT · WSJ · Bloomberg · The Economist
Retain
All-access bundles
The retention play: fold news, puzzles, cooking, audio, and sports into one price so cancelling means losing all of it.
- NYT All Access = News + Cooking + Games + Wirecutter + The Athletic
- Apple News+ ($12.99/mo) bundles hundreds of magazines & papers
- Apple One Premier folds News+ in with Music, TV & Fitness+
- Medium ($5/mo) & Substack ($5/mo) monetize independent writers
NYT · Apple News+ · Medium · Substack
Market context only. Prices are representative US list prices for 2025–26; news intro rates rotate constantly and vary by region and promotion, so treat every figure as subject to change. App and product names are trademarks of their owners and are cited to describe the category, not affiliation. On the stores, news apps file under Google Play “News & Magazines” and Apple “News” / “Magazines & Newspapers.”
Paywall shapes
Every news paywall, rendered from our own components.
The metered wall, the intro-offer subscription, and the all-access bundle — the same primitives, themed for news. These are CashSDK's unbranded chrome, never a copy of any publisher's screen.
You've hit your free limit
You've read all 10 free articles this month
Subscribe to keep reading — every article, no meter.
Free articles this month10 / 10
Your free reads reset on the 1st.
Introductory offer
$1/ week for your first year
Unlimited access. Auto-renews at the standard rate — cancel anytime.
Subscribe
Cancel anytime · Auto-renews at standard rate
Metered wall
A soft meter counts free reads, then walls the rest — the acquisition trigger the whole category runs on.
Subscribe
Unlimited news, one intro rate
Every article, no meter
Puzzles, Cooking & Audio
Live blogs & newsletters
Read across all your devices
All AccessBEST VALUE
$1/ week · first year
then $25 every 4 weeks
Digital News
$4/ 4 weeks · 6 months
then $8 / week
Monthly
$1.99/ mo · first 3 months
then $34.99 / month
Start subscription
Cancel anytime · Auto-renews at standard rate
Intro-offer subscription
A steep first-year rate that auto-renews at standard — the news category's dominant conversion lever.
All Access
One subscription, everything included
News, puzzles, cooking, audio, and sports — billed once a year.
News & investigations
Games & puzzles
Cooking & recipes
Audio & narrated stories
Sports coverage
$325/ year · billed annually
Save $180 vs buying separately
Get All Access
Cancel anytime · Renews yearly
All-access bundle
News, puzzles, cooking, audio, and sports in one annual price — the retention play that makes cancelling hurt.
Why CashSDK fits news
One SDK for the whole news funnel.
Paywalls, experiments, intro offers, and validated receipts — the pieces a news app needs to sample, convert, and retain, without building billing infrastructure.
Paywalls you A/B over the air
Design the metered wall in the dashboard, publish it without an app release, and change the free-article count, copy, and price for any cohort instantly.
Paywall canvasEditing · live
Unlimited projects
Advanced analytics
Annual · $59.99SAVE 40%
Blocks
Hero image
Headline
Feature list
Plan picker
Experiment on the meter & price
Test free-article thresholds and intro rates as holdouts — measure conversion and revenue per reader, not vibes.
Learn moreIntro offers & trials
Model “$1/week for a year, then standard” and free trials once — CashSDK honors them natively on both stores and renews at the standard rate.
Learn moreValidated receipts
Every Apple and Google receipt is verified server-side into a clean entitlement — no receipt server to run.
Learn moreLocalized pricing, both stores
One catalog prices in local currency across the App Store and Google Play, with intro offers and trials honored natively.
Built for the whole funnel
Sample, convert, and retain from one integration.
0
Stages: metered wall, intro offer, bundle
0 SDK
iOS, Android, React Native & Flutter
0
Receipt servers to run
Ship a news paywall that converts
Metered walls, intro offers, all-access bundles, validated receipts, and localized pricing — in one SDK. Start free and ship your first paywall this afternoon.