archive.is/archive.ph the one mentioned in the main post and one that is most effective out of all the options
12ft Ladder - What I like about 12ft.io is that once it gets rid of the paywall, it makes sure the website stays as the mobile site (if you're using your phone), whilst archive.ph uses the desktop form by default. However, 12ft.io does not work as well as archive.ph
Remove Paywall - Even more limited than 12ft.io, but it's another alternative. As the site says, make sure to add RemovePaywall.com/ ahead of the URL if you want to copy the unpaywalled link.
Chip - The most limited option out of all four, I think. Another disadvantage is that I don't think you can copy the unpaywalled version's link, unlike the others.
Archive.is is useful, for sure. Another option that I have used for a long time is BypassPaywalls. It works on Firefox, as well as Chromium based browsers. https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
Just as a side note (and I'm not advocating for anything, I just think it's good for people to think things through and have the full picture), the reason why many publications went to a subscription model is that so many people started using ad blockers. The publications have staff who want to be paid for the job they do, and other expenses like server infrastructure. They used to pay for all of that by selling ads on their sites, but then people found ways to avoid seeing ads, so the advertisers didn't want to pay for them anymore.
So the publications had a choice between shutting their doors or charging a subscription, and many chose the latter. Now people are using techniques like this to avoid the subscriptions. The publications will either have to figure out a more effective paywall, come up with a different business model, or go out of business.
On Firefox, usually reader mode ignores paywalls. It is also nice for showing pages in a standard format, ignoring the styles of the site, which is nice for sites with crap layouts.
A lot of articles load all of the content before the paywall, so another easy (but kind of scuffed) option is to just stop the page from loading after the content has loaded but before the paywall has
A lot of paywalls disappear when you turn off javascript. I use a plugin that adds a button to quickly toggle javascript for specific web pages. It works for a large percentage of paywalled articles. On the few paywalled sites where I actually use javascript, it is easy to just turn it back on again when needed. The plugin I use is JavaScript Switcher, but there are others out there.
There's also txtify.it, which bypasses paywalls and reduces the content down to plaintext. It looks like butt in Chrome (due to Chrome's poor handling of plaintext sites), but Firefox does a better job. Works like 12ft.io, just replace the https:// at the start of your URL with txtify.it/
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