For 11 years I have read and contributed to Bangkok Post as pretty much my first-of-the-day web site. Now no more because as of this morning it has become available to all incuding existing members only on payment of a subscription.

Even the BBC in it's many world-wide iterations doesn't do that knowing full well that readership would fall away instantly. But BP is Thai and everyone knows how the Thai mind views the Farangs - they're packed to the brim with cash for the taking. Well, there are other news sites for the discerning farang seeking Thailand news in English, sites like Thaiger and The Nation and of course here.

So sadly I have to delete my BP membership if I can do so without first paying the upfront fee.

I guess I'll have to wear the "tight-fisted ol' curmudgeon" label on here now. I can live with that, at 80 on a UK pension which supports 2 families things get tight sometimes so paying for something available for free elsewhere is off the menu. So bye-bye Bangkok Post.

Will I be the only rat deserting that ship?

Edited August 16Aug 16 by cliveshep

Will I be the only rat deserting that ship?

Nope.....I'm close behind you.

38 minutes ago, cliveshep said:

For 11 years I have read and contributed to Bangkok Post as pretty much my first-of-the-day web site. Now no more because as of this morning it has become available to all incuding existing members only on payment of a subscription.

Even the BBC in it's many world-wide iterations doesn't do that knowing full well that readership would fall away instantly. But BP is Thai and everyone knows how the Thai mind views the Farangs - they're packed to the brim with cash for the taking. Well, there are other news sites for the discerning farang seeking Thailand news in English, sites like Thaiger and The Nation and of course here.

So sadly I have to delete my BP membership if I can do so without first paying the upfront fee.

I guess I'll have to wear the "tight-fisted ol' curmudgeon" label on here now. I can live with that, at 80 on a UK pension which supports 2 families things get tight sometimes so paying for something available for free elsewhere is off the menu. So bye-bye Bangkok Post.

Will I be the only rat deserting that ship?

Ok, but if you read it free for 11 years what exactly did you contribute?

Curious move by the Bangkok Post after all this time. They seem to think they have the same type of following and pull as some of the UK and USA newspapers behind pay walls.

Seems doomed to fail if The Nation, Khao Sod English, Thai Enquirer, etc., do not also make the same move as their free news is the same news as the BP paid for news.

We went from information that physically circulated through society, even when somebody else had paid for the copy.

Before, newspapers were available literally everywhere, waiting rooms, cafés, workplaces, someone always left one somewhere. Poor or rich, you could still get access sooner or later. Now everything is on a device, but if you do not pay, you are locked out.

And when you pay for premium access, you often get subscriptions from a variety of other magazines and news from the same owners and more or less the same political and economic line. It reminds me a little of when the Bible was only available in Latin, information was there, but not really for everyone. Now too many will be left with poor mans news from social media, and often alternative news for good and bad.

I still pay for a few when limited offers appears, but honestly, I do not think this development is all good.

7 minutes ago, Hummin said:

Poor or rich, you could still get access sooner or later.

Or parrot owner.🦜

3 minutes ago, VocalNeal said:

Or parrot owner.🦜

You got me off guard there 😅

The Bangkok post according to stock exchange dats has been losing readers and advertising income for a long time. This hefty financial demand to view footage will be the end of the BP as we know it.

2 minutes ago, Hummin said:

You got me off guard there 😅

Parrot owners can still buy Thai newspapers, although if one is a member at Makro they deliver reasonable substitutes.

I use then under motorbikes while tinkering.

4 hours ago, cliveshep said:

For 11 years I have read and contributed to Bangkok Post as pretty much my first-of-the-day web site. Now no more because as of this morning it has become available to all incuding existing members only on payment of a subscription.

Even the BBC in it's many world-wide iterations doesn't do that knowing full well that readership would fall away instantly. But BP is Thai and everyone knows how the Thai mind views the Farangs - they're packed to the brim with cash for the taking. Well, there are other news sites for the discerning farang seeking Thailand news in English, sites like Thaiger and The Nation and of course here.

So sadly I have to delete my BP membership if I can do so without first paying the upfront fee.

I guess I'll have to wear the "tight-fisted ol' curmudgeon" label on here now. I can live with that, at 80 on a UK pension which supports 2 families things get tight sometimes so paying for something available for free elsewhere is off the menu. So bye-bye Bangkok Post.

Will I be the only rat deserting that ship?

I ditched it years ago when it's journalistic standards disappeared. And all it did was carry newswire articles which you can find anywhere.

I was a subscriber for many many years. Wake up, cup of tea, read the Bangkok Post, go to work. I am surprised it is still going at all really as it offers nothing. This will definitely be the death knell.

Burin Kantabutra must be gutted.

What has changed? I am still able to access and read today's (16th Aug 2026 2pm Thai time) Bangkok Post online and I do not have a paid subscription.

4 hours ago, cliveshep said:

So sadly I have to delete my BP membership if I can do so without first paying the upfront fee.

Doesn't your BP membership have a finite expiry date?

9 minutes ago, saakura said:

What has changed? I am still able to access and read today's (16th Aug 2026 2pm Thai time) Bangkok Post online and I do not have a paid subscription.

Are you in Thailand at the moment, though?

For all the people who are dissatisfied with this decision : There are several companies offering a package of subscription of thousands of newspapers and magazines for a monthly fee. For example Pressreader, Readly and Magzter. The Bangkok Post is included in the first and last one. Just to let you know, Magzter is actually a very good deal to subscribe to the Bangkok Post, it is included in the yearly membership price of 1,500 Baht.

4 hours ago, saakura said:

What has changed? I am still able to access and read today's (16th Aug 2026 2pm Thai time) Bangkok Post online and I do not have a paid subscription.

Glad you posted that because I just checked and you are correct - the main page is available once again. However the Opinion section has been subscription only for a couple of days now and still is. Shame because today being Sunday I always looked forward to Roger Crutchley's articles. The Business section is also subscription but so what - I never read it anyway. The most important block for me is the opinion section.

Perhaps some genius realised that making it subscription only would kill it off for good and had a partial sea-change?

Edited August 16Aug 16 by cliveshep

Have no idea what you folks are on about here and over on the other thread, Bangkok Post is 100% accessible free of charge.

3 minutes ago, novacova said:

Have no idea what you folks are on about here and over on the other thread, Bangkok Post is 100% accessible free of charge.

Nope, wrong, see my post above yours, just checked again, Opinion is still blocked.

4 hours ago, OJAS said:

Doesn't your BP membership have a finite expiry date?

Nope!

9 minutes ago, novacova said:

Have no idea what you folks are on about here and over on the other thread, Bangkok Post is 100% accessible free of charge.

What other thread? Can you link please?

Bangkok Post has restricted certain articles to 'subscription only' on the App and website.
This mirrors many other newspapers around the world. I always thought that if you 'subscribed', then it would be ad-free; this is not the case with BP.
There are some other news outlets in Thailand that use English, so BP's loss as far as I'm concerned.

43 minutes ago, cliveshep said:

Nope, wrong, see my post above yours, just checked again, Opinion is still blocked.

Nope, wrong, see my post above yours, just checked again, Opinion is still open.

3 minutes ago, novacova said:

Nope, wrong, see my post above yours, just checked again, Opinion is still open.

Try clicking on an opinion piece, not just browsing the opinion section.

1 minute ago, josephbloggs said:

Try clicking on an opinion piece, not just browsing the opinion section.

Working just fine here…

Opinion is still blocked.

1 hour ago, novacova said:

Working just fine here…

You can see a preview of the article, the first paragraph or so. Scroll down and hit "see more" to read the full article and tell us what happens.

I just checked again: Some articles can be viewed for free, while others cannot. I can't see any pattern to which ones are free and which ones are paid.

I still receive a daily email newsletter from the Bangkok Post as of today, and it is still free. It provides a list of links to the Daily Roundup and Breaking News stories, and as far as I can tell, those top 10 daily stories are all still freely accessible. It seems that only certain sections and types of content are now behind a paywall.

I’m not really sure how anybody can complain about that. At the end of the day, the Bangkok Post is a business, and businesses need revenue and profits to survive.

Keep in mind that the Bangkok Post was established in 1946, but it didn’t have an online presence until 1996. For the first 50 years of its existence, if you wanted to read the newspaper on a daily basis, you had to buy a physical copy of the printed newspaper. Then, when the Internet came along, some of its content became available online for free. The full newspaper in digital/e-paper form came later, in 2006.

Somehow, though, once newspapers started putting news online for free, people began to regard free online access as the normal thing, as if the newspaper had no costs involved in producing it. There are paid journalists, editors, photographers, correspondents, printing and publication costs, offices, technology, and all the other expenses involved in running a newspaper.

And compared with other major newspapers, the Bangkok Post subscription isn’t particularly expensive. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, for example, are more than double what the Bangkok Post is now charging monthly for full digital access.

Personally, I’m not bothered by the Bangkok Post putting some of its content behind a paywall. Some publications are entirely paywalled and give you nothing for free, like the two I mentioned. So if the Bangkok Post continues to give me the daily top 10 stories through the free newsletter, then I have nothing to complain about. If I want the full publication, I can pay for it. That seems more than fair.

If you don’t want to pay, that’s perfectly fine too. You simply accept what they’re willing to provide for free, which still seems like quite a bit. I don’t see anything unfair about that.

Just because the Bangkok Post provided most or all of its online content for free for many years doesn’t mean it can necessarily continue doing so indefinitely. Perhaps advertising revenue isn’t enough anymore. Perhaps costs have increased. Perhaps they were faced with a choice between introducing paid subscriptions and cutting back on journalists, departments, and coverage. Maybe the subscription model will work, and maybe it won’t. Who knows?

I suspect they didn’t make the decision lightly. Personally, I think it’s worth looking at it from both sides of the coin rather than assuming that the newspaper is simply trying to squeeze money out of its readers. Maybe they simply had no choice.

If you don’t want to subscribe, fair enough. But I don’t think the Bangkok Post is doing anything particularly unreasonable by asking people to pay something if they want the full commercial product. As I mentioned, I won’t be paying for a subscription, but I’m perfectly happy with what they are still willing to offer free of charge.

Thb99 for the first month, thb299 for every month thereafter.

Thanks but no thanks.

The only once a week post I will miss is Sunday Roger Crutchley's pithy articles and I'm not paying 300 baht to read those! I did click on and scroll down on the 1st six opinion articles - every one is behind the paywall!

30 minutes ago, cliveshep said:

Thb99 for the first month, thb299 for every month thereafter.

Thanks but no thanks.

The only once a week post I will miss is Sunday Roger Crutchley's pithy articles and I'm not paying 300 baht to read those! I did click on and scroll down on the 1st six opinion articles - every one is behind the paywall!

It’s hard to imagine Bangkok Post is going to be heartbroken by your departure from this love affair. It’s not as though you were paying them anything to begin with and have now decided to take your business elsewhere.

Perhaps you are exactly the type of reader they were hoping to part ways with. After all, they gave you their content for free for 11 years and have now decided they would like to charge for some of it. You have every right to say no, but it’s difficult to see what the complaint actually is.

The romantic interest seems to have been rather one sided. You got their content for free, they got your readership, and now they have decided they would prefer some money as well. You can certainly have a moan about it, but expecting sympathy because a newspaper has stopped giving you something for nothing is perhaps asking a bit much.

13 hours ago, novacova said:

Nope, wrong, see my post above yours, just checked again, Opinion is still open.

Just clicked on today's editorial "'Por Thip' scam must go" (Please credit and share this article with others using this link: https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/3302892/por-thip-scam-must-go. View our policies at http://goo.gl/9HgTd and http://goo.gl/ou6Ip. © Bangkok Post PCL. All rights reserved.) [Moderator - please delete if illegal].

The article heading and first paragraph are visible - the rest of the article is behind a paywall, Tried 3 web browsers - same result.