Leaky Paywall overview

Leaky Paywall is a WordPress-native subscription plugin. This overview covers what it does as of version 5.3.0 (October 2026), split into what's free in the core plugin and what comes with a paid plan or add-on. For the details on each release, see the release notes. For plans and prices, see pricing.

FREE: included in the core plugin

Cost: free to install, with a 10% revenue share on paid subscriptions. Free registrations cost nothing. Everything in this section is in the free Leaky Paywall plugin on WordPress.org.

List Builder registration wall

A registration wall instead of a popup. Readers get a free preview, then give an email address to keep reading. Across 12 publishers using a one-free-article meter, the registration wall converted 3.2-6.7% of readers. That's 2-7x what a typical popup gets you. Learn more about List Builder.
Metered free preview. You choose how many free articles readers get before the wall appears, and you can change it any time.
Email-only signup. Registration, login and password reset happen in one step. Existing subscribers are recognized and sent to log in.
Reader export. Export your registered readers, or send them to your email service through Zapier.
Upgrade prompts. Free subscribers who hit the paywall see an upgrade modal. Their account page also shows how long they've been reading with you and invites them to subscribe. Edit the heading, description and button text under Leaky Paywall > Settings > General. The prompt only shows when a paid level is available.

Restrictions and AI protection

Metered, hard and hybrid paywalls. Give readers a set number of free articles per day, week, month or year, set the meter to 0 for a hard paywall, or mix the two on one site.
Restriction Method: lock what you sell, keep the rest visible. Pick how restricted posts are checked under Leaky Paywall > Settings > Restrictions > Restriction Method (5.3.0 and later).
- Automatic (recommended): hard-locked posts (no free views, or paid levels only) are restricted on the server, so their full text never reaches the page and bots only see the teaser. Metered posts are checked in the browser, so the meter keeps working with page caching and those articles stay readable for search, social and AI search. Your cache needs to skip logged-in readers.
- JavaScript: every restricted post is checked in the browser. Works with page caching, but the full text of every post is in the page source.
- Server: every restricted post is checked on the server, so no restricted text reaches the page. Use it only on sites without page caching.
A metered post is readable by a bot whichever method you choose, because a bot always arrives as a first-time visitor with free articles left. If a post needs to stay away from bots and archive sites completely, give it a hard paywall. New installs start on Automatic. Existing sites keep their old behavior: the Restriction Method replaces the Alternative Restriction Handling checkbox (checked = JavaScript, unchecked = Server). Full details: Choosing a restriction method.
Restrict by post, category, tag, taxonomy or post type. Restrict or exempt content at any of those levels, or restrict individual blocks inside a post. The visibility setting on each post's edit screen overrides the global meter, so one article can be always free or paid-only. Changes take effect right away.
Search and AI search visibility. Turn on Search Engine Bot Bypass and Google, Bing and the other search engines get the full text of hard-locked posts so they can index them. That also lets those articles show up in Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Copilot. AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot are never let through. Leaky Paywall also adds structured data (JSON-LD) to paywalled articles so search engines know they're paywalled, not cloaked.
AI scraper blocking. AI/Bot Blocking Mode keeps scrapers out while the site stays open to human readers. Pair it with the Automatic or Server restriction method so hard-locked articles never leave your server, set your RSS feed to excerpts and add AI crawlers to robots.txt. Step-by-step: Blocking AI scrapers from your content.
Custom paywall messaging. Write your own subscribe and registration messages.

Subscription levels and payments

Multiple subscription levels. Create as many levels as you want, free or paid, with no upfront license cost. One-time payments work on the free plugin.
Stripe. Connect your account through Stripe Connect. Leaky Paywall switches from test mode to live mode automatically once setup is done. Readers can pay with cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfer (with a checkout note that ACH takes 3-5 days to clear) and many more.
Access after payment. Stripe signups and one-time purchases only get access once Stripe confirms the payment. Abandoned or failed payments stay pending.
Upgrades on the registration form. Existing free subscribers can upgrade using the card already on file.
Subscriber statuses. Every subscriber is Active, Trial, Pending, Pending Cancel, Past Due or Expired, each with its own colored badge in the admin.

Dashboard, emails and data

Publisher Dashboard. Revenue trends, new registrations, paid activity and top-performing content, right in the WordPress admin.
Transactions. Filter the Transactions screen by New Paid Subscription or Level Change to see signups and plan switches on their own.
Branded emails. Add your logo, accent color and footer text under Leaky Paywall > Settings > Emails, then send yourself a test. If you send fully designed HTML emails, you can turn the template off.
Payment receipts. Subscribers get a receipt for every payment. Resend any receipt from its transaction.
New subscriber alerts. The admin email groups subscriber details, payment, attribution (IP and UTM) and quick links to the subscriber and transaction records.
WordPress users. Subscribers are standard WordPress users with the "subscriber" role. Logins and password resets use WordPress's own user system, so there's no separate login for readers.
Import and export. Export subscribers to CSV (admin-only, deleted after download) and re-import them. The Import tool can remove the uploaded CSV from your Media Library when the import finishes.
Deactivation. Deactivating the plugin keeps your registered users and their data. Reactivate it and everything is back.

Developers and hosting

REST API. Full create, read, update and delete access to subscribers. Changes made through the API are labeled "API" in the subscriber's status log.
Hooks and filters. Leaky Paywall is built on WordPress hooks and filters, so developers can change how restrictions, registration and syncing behave.
Debug log. Turn on detailed logging under Leaky Paywall > Tools > Debug Log. Errors are always logged. Add LEAKY_PAYWALL_LOG_DIR to wp-config.php to store logs outside your website folder.
Caching. Leaky Paywall works with standard WordPress caching setups. On BigScoots hosting, the logged-in user cache gives each subscriber a private cached copy of your pages for faster loads.

PAID: plans and add-ons

Cost: a monthly plan with a 5% to 0% revenue share, depending on the plan. Paid plans include everything in the free plugin plus the add-ons below. See pricing for what's in each plan.

Recurring subscriptions and retention

Recurring subscriptions. Daily, weekly, monthly and annual plans that renew automatically through Stripe.
Past Due grace period. Past Due subscribers keep access while Stripe retries the card. When they update their card on the My Account page, they're back to Active.
Plan changes. Subscribers can switch levels from their account page. Stripe updates the existing subscription with prorated billing, and the switch is logged as a Level Change transaction. Upgrading during a free trial starts billing right away.
Cancellation survey + Retention Offer. Save a paid subscriber at the moment they try to cancel. Subscribers who click Cancel see a short survey asking why they're leaving, then an optional "before you go" discount. Accepting applies a one-time Stripe discount to the next renewal and keeps the subscription active. Set it up under Leaky Paywall > Settings > Payments > Recurring Payments, using a Retention Offer coupon (it can't be used at signup).
Retention report. Leaky Paywall > Retention shows saves, offers shown, cancellations, the subscribers you saved and a breakdown of cancellation reasons. The Saves card on the dashboard links straight to it.
Resume Billing. Subscribers who cancelled but still have access see a Resume Billing button on their account page. One click restarts billing with no new card or checkout.

More ways to sell

Trials and coupons. Free or paid trials, and coupons for the first payment or every payment (100% off included).
Gift subscriptions.
Group, corporate and location-based subscriptions. Sell bulk seats to companies, or give everyone at a physical location (a library, school or office) access through its IP address, with no login needed. Group Accounts has its own tab under Leaky Paywall > Tools with a CSV export of every group and member, plus REST API endpoints for managing seats.
Premium archive access (Timewall). Lock older articles behind a premium level.
Double opt-in. Confirm new registrations by email before they're activated.
Ad-free for subscribers. Hide ads from paying readers with the Ad Dropper plugin. Ad Dropper 2.0 counts real and viewable impressions (bots filtered out), schedules ads by date, targets desktop or mobile, fires advertiser tracking tags from Campaign Manager 360 and exports reports to CSV.

Subscriber Insights and reporting

Subscriber Insights. Subscriber Insights is free with any paid monthly Leaky Paywall plan. It tracks what every logged-in reader does, free and paid: registrations, articles read, subscriptions, renewals, failed payments and cancellations. Then it tells you where to act first:
- Engaged free readers likely to pay: the free readers who keep coming back and hitting the paywall, ready for an offer.
- Paid subscribers going quiet: paid readers who've stopped reading for 30-60 days, so you can re-engage them before they cancel.
- Top content for paid subscribers: the articles your paying readers read most, and the ones that turn free readers into paid.
- Export by interest: export subscribers by the content categories they read, for targeted emails and offers.
- Failed payments to recover: who had a card fail this week.
You also get subscriber KPIs, revenue, net subscriber growth (are you growing, or just replacing churn?), a live activity feed, a profile for every reader and daily, weekly or monthly digest emails.
Campaign tracking and Reader Ratings. Leaky Paywall ties UTM codes from your email and social campaigns to paid conversions. Reader Ratings give every subscriber a 1-100 engagement score, so you can segment free and paid readers by how active they are.
Conversions by article. The Top Content cards on the dashboard show which articles converted readers. Click a conversion count to see the subscribers behind it, or download them as a CSV.
Attribution survey. Ask new subscribers how they found you.

Integrations and security

Integration blueprint. Our integration blueprint connects Leaky Paywall to any platform with an API, quickly. If your email service, CRM or circulation system isn't listed below, ask us.
Email and CRM sync. Mailchimp, Kit, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot and Salesforce, segmented by category, tag and subscription level.
Print circulation. SimpleCirc, Omeda, DarwinCX and others keep print and digital subscribers in sync.
Other gateways. PayPal, Authorize.net (with customer IP sent for fraud filtering), Xendit for Southeast Asia, and more through WooCommerce.
Incognito blocking. The IP Blocker add-on meters by IP address, so a private window doesn't reset the meter. It also has a strict mode.
Signup bot protection. reCAPTCHA and Turnstile on the signup form, including forms loaded after the page (like the quick register form and the List Builder wall).

Other products

Flowletter. Fully automated, custom-designed emails and newsletters from your WordPress content. Pick the articles, and Flowletter builds and sends the email through your own email service. Includes custom-designed email automations, FastPass auto-login and free, paid and cancelled segments synced automatically.
UniPress. Native iOS and Android apps that follow your paywall rules.
Reissue. Get 100 of your back issue PDFs into WordPress in minutes. Reissue splits each issue into articles and sends them to WordPress as draft posts, so your print archive becomes pages people find in search.
LocalCalendar. An AI-automated events calendar. It pulls in local events for you, so nobody's copying and pasting listings, and it builds traffic plus paid featured-event revenue.
Golden Ballot. Run your newspaper's "Best Of" contest from nominations to voting to published winners, with duplicate merging and fraud checks built in.

Support

Setup and strategy. Priority email support, Zoom calls, setup and migration help.

Want the highlights? Here are the 20 best Leaky Paywall features.