WallHop lets you paste a link to read paywalled articles, as a 12ft.io replacement
WallHop is a web service for reading articles that sit behind a paywall. Its landing page puts the whole pitch in one line: paste a link, get the story, no paywall, no signup. The title of the post that introduced it frames it as a replacement for 12ft.io, which the title says is gone, so it is presented as a successor to the older tool. The page itself does not mention 12ft.io.
The page lists three ways to use it. The first is an iPhone Shortcut, reached at /shortcut, which lets you send any article to WallHop from the Share button. The second is a prefix method: put / in front of any URL, shown on the page as /https://… . The third is a pair of raw and API endpoints, shown as /raw/https://… and /api/https://… .
The page closes with a note that sets out the intended use. It says paywalls pay for journalism, and asks readers to subscribe to any paper or news site they read every day. WallHop, it says, is for the one-off article someone texts you from a site you will never visit again.
That is the extent of what the page offers. It is a short landing page: it describes the entry points but does not explain how the paywall is bypassed, which sites are supported, or what the API returns.
Key facts
- WallHop takes a pasted link and returns the article with no paywall and no signup, according to its landing page.
- Three ways in: an iPhone Shortcut from the Share button, a / prefix placed in front of any URL, and /raw/ and /api/ endpoints.
- The post title frames it as a replacement for 12ft.io, which the title says is gone; the page text does not mention 12ft.io.
- The page asks readers to subscribe to the paper or news site they read every day, and says WallHop is meant for one-off articles from sites you will never visit again.
Why it matters
Link-sharing is where paywalls bite hardest: someone texts you an article from a site you have no account with, and you hit a wall. WallHop targets exactly that case, and the title presents it as filling the gap left by 12ft.io, which the title says is gone. It is a small utility rather than a major release, but it shows the demand for a no-signup way to read a single paywalled story.
Who it affects
Readers who regularly receive one-off article links from sites they do not subscribe to are the target; the page describes WallHop as being for that situation. iPhone users get a Share-button Shortcut. Anyone who wants to script access can use the /raw/ and /api/ endpoints. The page also addresses news sites indirectly, stating that paywalls pay for journalism.
How to use it
Three routes are on the page. Paste a link into the site and read the story. On iPhone, add the Shortcut from /shortcut and send articles from the Share button. Or put / in front of any URL, in the form /https://… . For programmatic use, the page shows /raw/https://… and /api/https://… . No price, signup or account is mentioned; the page says no signup.
How solid is it
Thin. The evidence is a single landing page of a few lines, with a live tool behind it. The page does not say who built WallHop. No mechanism is given for how the paywall is bypassed or the article text retrieved, and the page does not say which sites are supported or whether it works on all paywalls. No information on pricing, rate limits, uptime or hosting is given, and the API format, parameters and response structure are not described. The 12ft.io comparison comes only from the post title.
Risks and caveats
The page does not say whether the project is open source, and gives no launch date or user numbers, so there is little to judge its longevity by; the tool it is compared to is described in the title as gone. No legal position on paywall circumvention is stated. The page itself acknowledges the tension: it says paywalls pay for journalism and asks users to subscribe to the outlets they read daily.
“Paywalls pay for journalism. If there’s a paper or news site you read every day, please subscribe to it.”
— WallHop landing page