noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A system that restricts access to content with a purchase or a paid subscription. informal

   "The premium content on this website is behind a paywall."

2. 2
   A mechanism used to limit access to only paying users wordnet

Verb

1. 1
   To restrict access to (a website or other resource) by means of a paywall. informal, transitive

Example

More examples

"I can't read the article because of the paywall."

Etymology

From pay + wall, by analogy with firewall.

Related phrases

hard paywallsoft paywall

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.