For the first time in three years, YouTube is hiking the subscription prices for its YouTube Premium plans, the streaming giant said Friday.
The core YouTube Premium plan will rise by $2 per month to $15.99, with the Music and Premium Lite plans rising by $1 per month to $11.99 and $8.99 respectively. The family plan is rising by $4 per month to $26.99, but allows for up to six people in the same household to have access.
YouTube Premium gives its subscribers a number of features, but the core elements are ad-free videos, background play (so users can listen to a video podcast or music video, for example), and offline downloads. It also gives access to other features.
Premium Lite, which launched a year ago, has some of the same features, though not all videos are ad-free. YouTube Music is the company’s music subscription service, which is competitive with Spotify and Apple Music.
“We’re updating the price for YouTube Premium plans in the US for the first time since 2023 to continue delivering a high-quality experience that supports creators and artists on YouTube,” a YouTube spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This change allows us to maintain the features our members value most: ad-free viewing, background play, and a massive library of 300M+ tracks on YouTube Music. We continue to offer several plans, ensuring subscribers can choose the option that works best for them.”
YouTube is the dominant streaming video platform (and by some measures the world’s largest media company), but its subscription business remains somewhat under-appreciated given the scale of its free service.
A year ago the company said that it had passed more than 125 million YouTube Premium and YouTube Music subscribers.
YouTube is far from the only streaming platform to raise subscription prices in recent months. In March Netflix raised the monthly prices for all its plans by $1-$2 per month, while Amazon Prime Video raised the cost to remove ads by $2 per month. Spotify raised the cost of its core plan to $12.99 in January.
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