Pew: 83% of U.S. adults did not pay for news in past year

A new survey from Pew Research Center shows that a large majority of U.S. adults do not pay for online news, even though many encounter digital paywalls regularly.

According to the survey, conducted in March, 83% of respondents said they had not paid for news in the previous year through subscriptions, donations or memberships. Only 17% reported doing so.

Despite this, 74% of adults said they encounter paywalls at least occasionally when trying to access online news content. Of those, 38% said this happens often or extremely often.

When faced with a paywall, only 1% of respondents said they typically choose to pay for access. The most common response, cited by 53%, was to look for the information elsewhere. Another 32% said they usually give up on finding the information.

Among those who did not pay for news, 49% said the main reason was the availability of free alternatives. Another 32% said they were not interested enough to pay, while smaller shares cited cost (10%) and dissatisfaction with news quality (8%).

The survey also highlighted differences in payment behavior across demographic groups. Adults with college degrees were three times more likely than those with only a high school education to have paid for news—27% compared with 9%.

Political affiliation also played a role. About 21% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents paid for news, compared with 14% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

Age and income were also factors. Twenty-five percent of adults aged 65 and older reported paying for news, compared with 12% of those aged 18 to 29. Similarly, 30% of those in the highest income bracket paid for news, compared with 8% in the lowest bracket.

Advertisement

The Pew survey indicates that while digital paywalls are common, they are largely ineffective at converting most users into paying subscribers.

Survey data in this analysis come from Wave 165 of the “American Trends Panel,” Pew Research Center’s nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. The survey was conducted from March 10 to March 16, 2025. A total of 9,482 panelists responded out of 10,576 sampled, for a survey-level response rate of 90%. The cumulative response rate, accounting for nonresponse and attrition, is 3%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 1.4 percentage points. SSRS conducted the survey via online (n=9,231) and live telephone (n=251) interviews in English and Spanish.