Britishnewspaperarchive Reviews 

Since the launch of the new site around July 28th 2026, nothing works as it should.

I have been in touch with customer support via two routes pretty much every day since, with no resolution.

Cannot zoom in on articles, the clip and save is awful (it saves a blurry image that cannot be read), you cannot save to your previous bookmarks to keep all your articles for one subject in one place.

Even Customer Support cannot fix my account to restore my credits. I have asked for a copy of the Terms and Conditions that applied prior to July 28th, and advised that could take a long time as Customer Support don't have access to that and have to seek special permission first. Odd.

I'm convinced the occasional responses here from BNA is now generated by AI when the review is not complex, with no response at all if it is.

I'm only opening free articles now and I am not saving them to my account's workspace (I tried one) as I don't trust them to keep anything safe now.

On the matter of safety. I don't trust them to keep any data safe. Anyone else notice that if you navigate to the payment page, it's not secure? Be careful.

The new website makes it impossible to see at a glance the newspapers you are interested in have been updated. The only way is to check the newspapers that you are referencing everyday which means less time can be spent on looking at fresh sources. Sorry can not recommend this site to other family historians. Hopefully, they will take on board thie criticism and provide a user friendly website or at the very least revert to the old one.

They have ruined what was a simple, efficient website with a new cumbersome format. I will not be renewing my subscription.

Having paid for a yearly subscription since Jan 2021, this week I have found they have changed the website.
It is not user friendly. Searching for anything is time consuming and infuriating.
I have lost my bookmarked research, many hours of searches.They are now in a list that is indexed by publication date and who published with no other identifying text to determine who it relates too.
I requested a refund for what remains of my paid year to be told I was out of my cool off period. How is that for customer service!
I paid for a subscription based on originally being impressed whilst paying per view and feeling a subscription was worthwhile.
I don’t feel the new format is an improvement and isn’t what I subscribed too. There was no notice of these changes to consumers.
I intend to seek professional advice on this as it is not ‘as described’.

I have been using the archive for years (and paying the subscription fee), and I almost wept when I first tried to use the new site. But I told myself to calm down and give it a chance. 'It might not be as bad as you think it is', I said. I was talking rubbish.

I have sat squinting at the screen to see the pages that won't zoom in, waited while the site takes eight seconds to bring up the save as pdf option, searched for the same term in eleventy different ways and none of them worked, put everything in quotes and had them ignored, thumped my keyboard in frustration and fury so many times that I might need new keys, and I have come to the conclusion that, however bad it appeared at first, the site is a million times worse that I thought possible.

I am a professional researcher. I am in the middle of writing a book, and I had all of my bookmarks sorted so I could find what I needed. Now I have the saved newspaper pages but no way to know what's in them without opening each one; and the only way to find the relevant content is to read the whole page! Years of research that is useless now.

They have taken a site that worked and ruined it. And, more importantly, they have so negatively impacted the lives of those who depend on being able to use the site for research that many of us will miss deadlines, lose money, lose time, and possibly hair, given the amount of pulling mine is getting at the moment. They didn't just make a few changes; they stamped all over our work. They didn't just change the way the site works; they took away the results of research that we have already paid for.

They obviously didn't think about the site's actual users. I mean, how many of us want to click five buttons to do what used to take one click? Or wait ten seconds for what used to take less than one? And why move absolutely everything about, so nothing is familiar? You even have to click another button just to see what the newspaper's name and publication date are when you're viewing an individual newspaper page! Why in god's name is that not automatically displayed?

Ultimately, there's no point in an archive that you can't search properly. The site is not fit for purpose. It's certainly not what we have paid for.

For some reason I found after the recent upgrade that I couldn't access full text even though my subscription was up to date. I emailed Support and had a response 24 hours later. It appears I had managed to setup two conflicting accounts. Thank you, Vicky, for sorting this out quickly.

I’ve used this website both as a subscriber and non-subscriber for a number of years in order to research both personal and British history. Was one of the best research platforms around that only required a tiny amount of tinkering to make it perfect. So what on Earth have you done? It’s no good saying you can’t revert back because if you don’t you are going to lose many thousands of subscribers and new customers.

Why change something that was simple and very easy to use, very disappointed in the new format. I doubt very much if I will renew my subscription.

They have made something that was clear, intuitive and easy into something opaque, unwieldy and slower. Change for the sake of change- quite frustrating. They should change it back to its tried and tested formula. As it is, we have swapped a TGV for a steam-train.

The new update is awful

In the past I would have given this archive a 5 out of 5 star rating after subscribing since 2024. I had all my folders of information that I could easily access in the research for a book. Have come on to see they have updated the format.

At the moment I cant find my previously bookmarked articles. So hours of work wasted. If this is the format that is the future I don't currently see it worth while renewing my subscription.

You had a great product now you have an awful product that I would in its current form not suggest it to anyone.

Having used the BNA for years I am annoyed that all my notes related to various bookmarks are missing. This is critical because my local research relies on the details in my notes. Often column headings are broad i.e. council meeting, property for sale and auction sales. It is one specific entry within those general columns that I note.

Without them 6 months of research into a property is missing essential details.

The user interface is typical of a database, but because of the imperfections of OCR given old newsprint, does not suit my needs.

Very disappointed with the new Website, the old one was very easy to find a particular month and year of a newspaper. Not now though. There is no drop-down list of the years available for a particular newspaper, or if there is I cannot find it, before it was easy to click on year then month to search. I have now given up, hope there is an improvement soon.

The new webpage is simply ghastly. It used to be so easy and transparent, such a pleasure to use, to find articles on... it has changed into a reseacher's nightmare, it has become cumbersome and ineffective, a total disappointment. Why change what was so good to something that is just a disaster?

The new interface is now awful. It's too cumbersome, laborious to use. I've used this platform for years for my my research and only renewed for a full year 30 days ago.
If I wanted the inferior FMP search platform I would have subscribed through that. As it now stands, this platform is completely unusable for any quality research and unfortunately there's no other alternative - probably why they felt they could do what they want. I've requested a full refund as this isn't "as described" when I purchased.

I've used this site for many years, but am now very close to canceling my subscription. In short, they've unveiled a big update and largely broken it. They moved all the controls around to make them much less intuitive and convenient, but what's ever worse, they've messed up the search so that at least 1 in 3 articles you click on is nowhere to be found. Why the hell can't these people just LEAVE THINGS ALONE?

So disappointing, it was far easier to use previously.

Sophie was very helpful in answering my questions!

How to take your Trustpilot rating form 5 stars to 1? - Install a drop down menu for every refining search feature. Bye bye to the user friendly side bar! Nobody asked for this and subscribers are now stuck in drop down menu purgatory. I'm not happy about the "get used to it or f off" attitude of the people responsible for this horrrendous change.

The archive's new version is awful-I got 279 results for a search, most of which had nothing whatsoever to do with the person I sought.

Her middle initial was "M", and absurd results included every "Mc" or "Mac"

Did nobody test this fiasco?

WTAF - New system has obliterated, wiped out, decades of research findings, carefully saved under topics. NOT LEAST - a solid-FT-year of research on all 800+ people involved in a Victorian-era disaster, all carefully saved as references for a WIP book, now gone. DESTROYED. NO WARNING. BEYOND DEVASTATED is an understatement.