# Financial Times subscription

32 Hacker News commenters recommended Financial Times subscription and 19 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 2 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** People recommend it for solid, well-researched reporting and factual news. Common caveats: small print font, a difficult paywall and high cost.

## Why people recommend it

- Solid, well-researched reporting (7 comments): "has shocked me many times over on the quality of its reporting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46891624)) "They both seem to still have solid journalism." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48621025)) "Both are well written and well researched" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49090887))
- Strong finance and markets coverage (4 comments): "Don't Bloomberg & FT have a number of well-written, informative articles every month?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49391538)) "There's a ton of good coverage of the precious metals run up in FT this past week." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46831491)) "FT explicitly noted that OpenAI has $billions in cash on hand" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527776))
- Factual news without sensationalism (3 comments): "I've found that they have incentives to keep their news as close to just presenting the pure information as possible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795221)) "the small remaining group of people who actively don't want to be lied to" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829189)) "it's aimed at people who have a financial interest in accurate news" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48426708))
- Used alongside other news sources (3 comments): "my main news sources are an amalgam of Reuters, BBC World Service, Al Jazeera English, Financial Times" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237411)) "I find the Week and the Financial Times to be significantly better." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089432)) "my favorite news sources for the war is, oddly enough, FT" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47695378))

## What people warn about

- Font too small to read (4 comments): "the micro font has gotten too difficult to read" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45853985)) "But the font is so small - I gave it up." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49317482)) "the font got too small to enjoy it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828236))
- Paywall and ad problems (5 comments): "makes me accept cookies from their 46 “technology” (advertising) partners before showing me that the article is behind a paywall anyway" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49783341)) "Financial times does as well for me on certain browsers but not others. Pretty annoying." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46270605)) "the FTs boundary defeats my usual archive.is wall jumping" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281206))
- Expensive for what it offers (2 comments): "that was nice to have a physical newspaper, but it was too expensive in the end" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46897168)) "540$ for your first year to read FT!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043785))
- Biased or opinion-heavy reporting (4 comments): "They should stick to facts. This just sounds like sour grapes and these articles are useless rants." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48511023)) "Thank their nonlibertarian (anti-liberal?) opinion pieces that never fail to squeeze a giggle" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48230641)) "the worst offenders: Wall Street Journal, Financial Times (FT) and Bloomberg most notably" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46879512))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [The Information](https://hackerapproved.com/p/information.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Financial Times subscription", https://hackerapproved.com/p/financial-times/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).