YouTube Premium Gets a Price Hike: Here’s the New Damage
A9 STUDIO / Shutterstock
Toggle Dark Mode
Although Netflix is the first service that comes to mind when people think of streaming price hikes, it’s far from the only one. While other mainstream players like Disney+ and HBO Max are on the same annual cycle, it seems that even YouTube is joining in on the “fun.”
Starting today, new subscribers will now pay $15.99 per month for YouTube Premium — a $2 hike from the $13.99 that’s been the standard for the past three years. Existing subscribers are getting a slight reprieve, with the new prices coming into effect during the June billing cycle.
The changes appear to affect only US YouTube Premium subscribers, who have begun receiving e-mails this week notifying them of the exact billing date when they can expect to begin paying the new price, which is already live on the YouTube Premium sign-up page.
To continue delivering great service and features, we’re increasing your price to $15.99/month. We don’t make these decisions lightly, but this update will allow us to continue to improve Premium and support the creators and artists you watch on YouTube.
The company’s other plans aren’t being left out of the increases either, with $1 to $4 bumps across the board. Here’s the breakdown:
| Plan | Old Price (2023) | New Price (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | $13.99 | $15.99 |
| Family | $22.99 | $26.99 |
| Student | $7.99 | $8.99 |
| Lite | $7.99 | $8.99 |
| Music | $10.99 | $11.99 |
YouTube has held the line on pricing better than the more traditional streaming giants, with today’s increase being only the second we’ve seen since the service launched in 2018. YouTube Premium last went up in July 2023 by a similar $2 per month, going to $13.99 from its launch price of $11.99. While there was technically a more affordable ad-free YouTube experience before 2018, which was then known as YouTube Red, that’s an imperfect comparison as YouTube rolled in YouTube Music when it launched YouTube Premium — and that remains the case.
While YouTube Music Premium still exists as a standalone package, it sits in an awkward spot at only $2 less than YouTube Premium, which is a very worthwhile jump for anyone who watches more than a handful of YouTube videos each month.
Still, one thing that YouTube lacked in 2023 was the new YouTube Premium Lite plan, which launched in the US early last year. Today’s increases might lead some to take a closer look at what that plan offers for only $8.99 per month.
After all, if your primary reason for YouTube Premium is to skip the ads, YouTube Premium Lite will give you most of that for less than 60 percent of the monthly cost. You’ll still have to sit through ads on music videos — the same ones that free users see — but you’ll enjoy an ad-free experience on almost everything else you watch, with the notable exceptions being YouTube Shorts and while searching and browsing through YouTube.
However, beyond avoiding ads on music videos, stepping down to YouTube Premium Lite will also mean giving up offline downloads and background play. That also includes picture-in-picture on the iPhone and iPad, which will work the same way it does for free users. You also won’t get access to YouTube Music, since even the standalone plan for that is more expensive than YouTube Premium Lite.
If the new price hikes are a bit steep, you can also simply cancel or even just pause your YouTube Premium membership for up to six months while you decide.
