How we source: figures on this page come from the company’s own filings (SEC 10-K, 10-Q and earnings releases, or its annual report), with the period stated next to each number. Last refreshed October 2026. Our methodology.
In short
The New York Times makes most of its money from readers. In 2025 subscriptions brought in $1.95bn of its $2.82bnrevenue, with advertising adding $566.0m. It ended the year with about 12.78 million subscribers, 12.21 million of them digital-only.
Subscriptions earned $1.95bn in 2025, 69% of revenue. Digital-only subscriptions, sold as a bundle of news, The Athletic, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and Audio or as single products, earned $1.43bn, up 14.3%. Print subscriptions earned $516.4m, down 3.2%.
The New York Times revenue by fiscal year, FY2021 to FY2025, from the company's filings. Chart: The Business Engineer.
Advertising brought in $566.0m, up 11.8%. Digital advertising rose 20.0% to $410.6m as display impressions grew 19% and rates 6%. Affiliate, licensing and other revenue, including Wirecutter referrals and licensing deals with digital platforms, was $308.1m.
How the New York Times compares
Revenue has grown every year for five years, from $2.07bn in 2021 to $2.82bn in 2025. Subscription revenue grew from $1.36bn in 2021 to $1.95bn in 2025.
Bundle subscribers are worth more than single-product subscribers. Bundle and multiproduct ARPU was $12.67 per 28 days in 2025, against $3.47 for other single-product subscribers. Total digital-only ARPU was $9.68.
What changed in FY2025
Operating profit rose 22.9% to $431.6m and the operating margin widened to 15.3% from 13.6%. Net income rose 17.1% to $344.0m. The company added about 1.4 million digital-only subscribers.
The New York Times revenue by line, prior year against FY2025, as reported. Chart: The Business Engineer.
From the third quarter of 2025 it reports a single segment. It recorded $13.3m of costs on lawsuits over the use of its journalism to build generative-AI products. It aims to reach 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027.
What to watch
The company says generative AI has hurt, and will continue to hurt, its ability to attract audiences, subscribers, advertisers and licensees. Traffic also depends on referrals from search, social and AI platforms.
Print subscription and advertising revenue keep falling, and the company does not expect that to reverse. About 43% of its roughly 6,000 full-time-equivalent staff are unionised.
Frequently asked questions
How does the New York Times make money?
Mostly from subscriptions, which brought in $1.95bn of its $2.82bn revenue in 2025. Advertising added $566.0m and affiliate, licensing and other revenue $308.1m.
How many subscribers does the New York Times have?
About 12.78 million at the end of 2025, including about 12.21 million digital-only subscribers, of whom about 6.48 million had a bundle or several products.
How much does a digital subscriber pay the New York Times?
Total digital-only ARPU was $9.68 per 28-day billing cycle in 2025, up 2.7%. Bundle and multiproduct subscribers averaged $12.67.
Is the New York Times profitable?
Yes. Operating profit was $431.6m in 2025, a 15.3% margin, and net income was $344.0m. Free cash flow was $550.5m.
AI arrived at The New York Times as both an existential threat and a commercial weapon. On the threat side, generative search has begun absorbing headline-level queries that once drove referral traffic โ and the Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft over the unauthorized training use of millions of its articles, a case that could redefine how news value is priced in the AI era. Simultaneously, the Times has licensed its archive to Amazon for Alexa and signed a deal with Meta, turning its journalism into a recurring data-licensing revenue stream that sits outside the 50/20/18/12 mix.
Operationally, AI is reshaping the newsroom rather than replacing it. The Times uses machine learning for personalized recommendations, dynamic paywall thresholds, and churn prediction across its 11M+ digital subscribers, directly protecting the subscriptionflywheel that generates half of revenue. Its Games and Cooking verticals โ engines of bundled retention โ increasingly lean on algorithmic difficulty tuning and content surfacing to extend session time.
The strategic risk is that commoditized news becomes a free input for AI assistants, collapsing advertising and eroding switching costs. The opportunity is that original reporting, investigations, and proprietary products like Wordle become more valuable as AI floods the zone with synthetic content. Expect the Times to double down on premium bundles, tighten licensing terms, and position its brand as the verified human layer above the AI-generated noise.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
