Hard Vs Soft Paywall: How Common Is Each?
Of 2,708 mobile paywall screens tracked by Lazyweb Research, 1,847 (68.2%) show no visible exit of any kind — the hard-paywall proxy — while the rest expose an X, a text link, or a restore-only escape [1]. 229 of 252 companies have at least one hard paywall screen [1]. Hard gates are the default pattern, but they coexist with soft variants inside the same apps [1][2].
1,847 of 2,708 mobile paywall screens (68.2%) show no visible exit — the hard-paywall default — Lazyweb Research, July 2026.
The split
Using a mutually exclusive taxonomy where a visible X takes precedence, 1,847 of 2,708 screens (68.2%) are hard paywalls with no visible exit [1]. The soft remainder breaks into a visible X/close button (517 screens), a 'Maybe later'-style text link (193 screens), and a restore-only escape (151 screens) [2]. So hard gates outnumber every soft pattern combined by roughly two to one.
Breakdown
| Pattern | Screens | Companies |
|---|---|---|
| No visible exit (hard) | 1,847 | 229 |
| Visible X / close button | 517 | 120 |
| 'Maybe later' text link | 193 | 62 |
| Restore-only escape | 151 | 56 |
Counts are mutually exclusive; a visible X outranks a text link on the same screen [2]. 229 of 252 companies ship at least one hard screen [1].
How to apply it and caveats
Hard being the majority (68.2%) is a fact about what shipped, not evidence it wins — this corpus never measured conversion lift [1]. Note the numerator gap: because a visible X takes precedence, the 68.2% hard figure and the 73.8% no-exit figure elsewhere differ slightly by classification rule [1]. All hard-paywall counts are upper bounds symmetrically — undetected close controls would move screens from hard to soft [1].
The numbers
| Stat | Computed from |
|---|---|
| 1,847 of 2,708 screens (68.2%) hard; 229 of 252 companies have one | hard_paywall_screens: 1,847/2,708 = 68.2% |
| X/close 517 | text link 193 | restore-only 151 | exit_type_taxonomy mutually exclusive branches |
Sources & citations
- [1] Lazyweb Research analysis of 2,708 paywall screens (mobile app corpus, 252 companies), July 2026. Hard-paywall proxy = no visible exit in extracted CTAs or vision descriptions; a lower bound on soft paywalls. ↩
- [2] Lazyweb Research analysis of 2,708 paywall screens (mobile app corpus, 252 companies), July 2026. Mutually exclusive exit taxonomy; visible X takes precedence over text link and restore-only. ↩
Source: Lazyweb Research — proprietary analysis of real, in-market app screens. Cite as Lazyweb Research, 2026-07-07.