All three are paywalls — barriers that block content until someone pays. They differ in how much they block and when, which changes the balance between revenue and reach:
- Hard paywall — locks almost everything. Highest revenue pressure, lowest reach.
- Soft paywall — shows a teaser, then asks for payment. Balanced.
- Metered paywall — gives a few free items per month, then locks. Habit first, payment later.
The right choice depends on how unique your content is and how committed your audience already is.
Hard paywall
With a hard paywall, non-members see essentially nothing — a headline, a sentence, and a prompt to subscribe. There’s no free sample of the actual content.
Best for: content that’s genuinely unique or essential — specialized research, professional analysis, trade publications, or a devoted audience that already knows your value.
The trade-off: reach collapses. Search engines have little to index, social shares lead to a wall, and new visitors can’t sample your work before deciding. You’re trading discovery for revenue density. That works when people seek you out specifically; it fails when you still need to be found.
Example: a niche financial research service where every report is the product and subscribers already know exactly what they’re paying for.
Soft paywall
A soft paywall shows a teaser — the opening of an article, the first lesson, or a portion of your library — then asks the reader to subscribe to continue. The visitor gets a real taste before the ask.
Best for: creators, publishers, and membership sites that still need to grow. The teaser earns trust and gives search engines something to rank, while the wall converts the already-interested.
The trade-off: some readers get enough value from the free portion and don’t convert. In practice, that’s usually a fair price for the discovery and trust the teaser buys you. For most sites, soft is the safe default.
Example: a writer who publishes the first few paragraphs of every premium post, then invites readers to join right at the cliffhanger.
Metered paywall
A metered paywall lets visitors read a set number of items — say, three articles a month — for free, then locks further content until they subscribe. It’s the classic large-newspaper model.
Best for: high-volume publishers with a steady stream of content, where casual readers can build a habit before being asked to pay.
The trade-off: it’s the most complex to run. You have to count what each visitor has read, decide how to handle people who clear their cookies or browse privately, and tune the limit. For smaller sites, the engineering and edge cases rarely justify the gain over a soft paywall.
Example: a metro daily that gives you a few free reads a month so the paper stays part of your routine.
How to choose
A quick rule of thumb:
- Unique, essential content + committed audience → hard.
- Still growing, need discovery and trust → soft. (Most sites belong here.)
- High volume, want habit before payment, and can handle the complexity → metered.
You can also evolve: start soft to build an audience and search presence, then tighten toward a metered or hard model once people seek you out.
How Members Only approaches it
Members Only is well suited to hard and soft paywalls. You can lock your premium content behind a members-only model (hard), or pair it with teaser content that previews what’s inside and invites people to subscribe at the moment they’re hooked (soft) — the approach that converts best for most sites.
Next step
If you haven’t yet, start with the broader explainer in What Is a Paywall? To see a working soft/hard setup, look at the newspaper paywall use case and the Access Control docs.
Related terms: What Is a Paywall?, What Is Gated Content?, What Is a Membership Website?