About British Newspaper Archive

British Newspaper Archive promo codes and discount codes are listed above. What follows is what the archive holds, how access is sold, and which part of it a promo code applies to.

What the archive is

The British Newspaper Archive is a partnership between the British Library and Findmypast to digitise the Library's newspaper collection. Millions of pages are searchable, and the collection keeps growing as more titles are scanned.

Coverage began with material published before 1900, drawn from Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, York and county titles across the country, and has since been extended forward into the twentieth century.

What people use it for

Family history is the largest use by a wide margin. Birth, marriage and death notices, court reports, inquests, school prizes and local gossip place an ancestor somewhere on a date in a way a census return never can.

Beyond genealogy it serves local historians, people tracing the story of a house, journalists, students and anyone chasing something that never reached the national papers. Search runs on text recognised from the scanned page, so spelling variants and a date range are more reliable tools than an exact phrase.

How access is sold

Access is a subscription rather than a purchase, sold in periods of different lengths, with the longer commitments costing less per month. There is normally a lighter option for occasional use alongside full access.

That structure is what a code interacts with, so it pays to decide how long you actually need before applying one. Research of this kind takes longer than people expect, and a short subscription renewed twice is rarely the cheapest route.

Using a British Newspaper Archive promo code

Choose the subscription length, enter the promo code at the payment step and confirm the price before you subscribe. The search data here is unusually clear: promo code outruns every other wording by a wide margin, which is why this page is written around it.

Subscription services normally apply a code to the first term only, with renewal reverting to the standard rate, so note the renewal date when you sign up. Offers are also often limited to new subscribers, which matters if you have held an account before.