Snopes has reached 10,000 paying members!

Snopes has reached 10,000 paying members!

The business of publishing online has had many hits recently. Social media platforms have reduced how many visitors they send to sites, and they have largely shut out fact checkers. Visitors from search engines like Google have also declined with the move to AI answers. And to top it off, the amount of revenue earned per visitor from advertising has dropped due to browsers removing 3rd party cookies.

So, we had to find another way to fund our mission at Snopes.

We spent the last year working on our paid membership program and thankfully our community has come to the rescue. It is an amazing thing to see. As of last week, we’ve surpassed 10,000 paid members — that many people have decided Snopes’ fact-checking in today’s media climate is worth paying for.

Relying on search engines and social media to attract readers is incredibly stressful. If something doesn’t go viral on one of those platforms, a publisher can worry about making payroll. By relying less on those platforms and more on subscriptions to fund our operations, we can spend more time fact-checking stories that are likely to make an impact — rather than stories that have the highest chance of internet popularity.

We haven’t yet broken even with our finances. But if we can keep this growth going, we won’t be far off.

Please join our fact-checking mission by becoming a member. With AI becoming more sophisticated — making it more difficult for people to differentiate fake media from genuine news — fact-checking is more important than ever.

P.S. We are currently working on a dashboard for members to rate rumors they want our team to investigate. Every day hundreds of rumors are sent to Snopes' inbox and the most asked for topics will be added to rate them. In other words, members will be able to help us decide what claims we fact-check. Keep an eye out for more updates on this in the coming weeks.

— Chris Richmond, Snopes CEO

Some recent fact checks we are proud of:

Image claiming to show Renee Nicole Good's car aimed at ICE officer isn't what it seems

(Jan 9, 2026) Credible videos of the shooting showed the wheels of Good's car were turned away from the agent when she moved forward and he shot her.

Did Biden put $25M bounty on Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro? Here are the facts

(Jan 5, 2026) Donald Trump's first administration offered a $15 million reward for any information on Maduro in 2020. Biden's State Department increased it.

Democrats didn't shut down government to fund health care for 'illegal aliens.' Here's context

(Oct 3, 2025) Immigrants in the country illegally are not eligible for federal health care insurance plans. The Democrats' proposal does not change that.