Netflix Hikes Prices, Adds New ‘Extra Member with Ads’ Plan

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It’s a new year, and that means it’s time for yet another Netflix price increase. At least, it certainly seems that these are becoming nearly annual events.

To be fair, the streamer managed to avoid any outright price hikes in 2024. Although many Basic subscribers saw their costs increase as they were forced onto new plans, they also had the option to save a few bucks in exchange for some of their attention by opting for Netflix’s less expensive ad-supported tier.

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Still, since Netflix’s last price increase came in October 2023, it’s only been a little over a year. Before that, it raised prices in January 2022, so this latest round suggests that the bumps are getting more frequent, not less.

Netflix’s New Prices

While Netflix’s Standard plan managed to avoid a price increase the last time around, the company is raising the monthly fees for all its plans this time around — including the cheapest Standard with Ads plan for the first time. Here’s the new pricing for customers in the US:

  • Standard with Ads: $7.99 per month (up from $6.99)
  • Standard: $17.99 per month (up from $15.49)
  • Premium: $24.99 per month (up from $22.99).

The Standard plan saw its last increase in early 2022 when it went from $13.99 to $15.49. However, Netflix was a different place back then as it had yet to introduce its ad-supported plan, so the early 2022 tiers started at Basic for $9.99 (an increase from $8.99 in 2021), while Premium went from $17.99 to $19.99 that year.

In other words, after today’s price hikes, you’ll be paying the same for a Netflix Standard plan as you would have paid for Netflix Premium in 2021.

In July 2023, Netflix killed the Basic plan for new subscribers but grandfathered existing customers in, letting them keep it as long as they didn’t switch away from it. However, during its October 2023 price hikes, it raised the price of that Basic plan by $2 per month to $11.99 in what seemed to be a calculated move to encourage folks to voluntarily give up the Basic plan in favor of the $15.49 Standard or the $6.99 Standard with Ads, which had been upgraded from the Basic-level service earlier that year.

The reasoning was that a more advanced Standard with Ads plan that provided nearly all the features of the $15.49 Standard Plan, including 1080p viewing on two screens, would be more compelling than an $11.99 plan that limited viewers to 720p. However, when that didn’t work, it forced customers to pick a new plan or go away, leaving us with the three current plans.

Extra Member with Ads

Netflix Update on Sharing

The price hikes were announced in the company’s Q4 2024 earnings report, during which it boasted a record 19 million new subscribers and 16 percent revenue growth. While Netflix is happy to continue offering its Premium plan to those who are willing to pay for top-tier service, it’s the Standard with Ads that’s turning out to be the most popular among cost-conscious consumers, who are clearly willing to live with a few ads to save money.

As a result, Netflix wants to provide more ways for customers to get on board, so it’s adding the ability to add Extra Members with Ads:

In Q4, [our ads plan] accounted for over 55% of sign-ups in our ads countries and membership on our ads plan grew nearly 30% quarter over quarter. Today we are introducing an Extra Member with Ads offering in 10 of the 12 countries where we have an ads plan to give our members additional choice and flexibility.

Extra Member accounts were introduced with Netflix’s 2023 password-sharing crackdown as a way to let folks legitimately share their Netflix accounts with those outside of their households. Extra Members cost $8.99 per month in the US, and are billed to the primary account holder. The number of extra members you can add is based on your plan: Standard account holders get one, while Premium account holders can add two.

The extra members have their own Netflix accounts and profiles, but their viewing counts against the number of screens on the primary accounts, which is why these limits exist (a Netflix Standard user can only watch on two devices at a time, so adding two extra members would potentially deny the primary account holder access to Netflix when the others were using the service). Extra Members benefit from the

Netflix on iPad with AirPods Pro

As of today, subscribers can now add “Extra Member with Ads” plans for $6.99 per member. The limits are the same as for standard Extra Member plans, with the only difference presumably being that those folks will have to watch ads when sharing the primary Netflix membership.

Counterintuitively, you still can’t add any extra members to the Standard with Ads plan, even a slot for an Extra Member with Ads. Presumably, Netflix would rather those “extra members” get their own Standard with Ads plan for $1/month more.

In other words, Extra Members with Ads can only be added to those plans where the primary account holders don’t have to watch ads. This feels like a strange arrangement, but Netflix has suggested in the past that it makes more money from serving ads than it does from paying customers, which is why the Standard and Premium plans keep getting more price increases to make up for that difference. The company is likely hoping that more folks will save $2 per month and let folks outside of their household deal with the ads.



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