If you pay to keep ads out of your YouTube experience, keep an eye on your monthly bill.
The Google-owned streaming service quietly announced today that it would be raising prices across its plans in an email to U.S. subscribers.
Individual YouTube Premium subscribers will soon pay $15.99 a month, a two dollar increase from the previous price of $13.99. For family plan subscribers, pricing will jump all the way from $22.99 to $26.99. YouTube Premium Lite subscribers will pay $8.99 a month, up from $7.99.
The change to YouTube Premium plans, which will go into effect at the end of May, is the second time that the price of YouTube Premium has ballooned in the last three years. YouTube raised prices on its individual premium plans in July 2023, boosting them to $13.99 from $11.99. The year prior, YouTube increased pricing on its family plans from $17.99 monthly to $22.99, a 27% increase.
Paying a couple bucks more a month isn’t terrible but it starts to feel a lot worse when you remember that you were paying $11.99—four dollars less—just three years ago. Those pricing increases certainly outstrip inflation during the same time period, but both will be taking a bite out of your wallet well into 2026.
In the email to existing subscribers, YouTube said that its desire to pay creators more was part of the reasoning behind the rising prices. “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 wrote.
While the creator economics of YouTube remain much more sound than most other social platforms, we look forward to seeing more cash from its subscriber base make its way into the pockets of the people who make YouTube an enduring destination for interesting videos about the fall of the Roman empire, how to fix your dishwasher, and what it sounds like when you brush a cotton ball on a $10,000 mic shaped like a human head.
Streaming prices all go up, together
What seems more likely is that YouTube is following suit with other streaming companies as they collectively stretch prices as far as they can go to find the absolute maximum that users will pay before calling it quits. Over the last year, Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Paramount Plus, Spotify, HBO Max, and Disney all raised prices for streaming subscriptions.
Given the hefty price of YouTube Premium these days, we wouldn’t be surprised to see more existing YouTube Premium subscribers explore the platform’s relatively new, less feature-rich Premium Lite tier. Premium Lite reduces ads on “most non-music content” (but doesn’t do away with them entirely) and allows users to download most videos and play them in the background, just like the normal premium tier. Premium Lite subscribers still see ads on YouTube Shorts, YouTube Music, and when they search and browse.
For heavy YouTube consumers, present author included, paying for YouTube Premium on a monthly basis is basically non-negotiable. Premium subscribers get unlimited ad free video across YouTube and YouTube Music, offline downloads and background play for mobile devices. The service now boasts 125 million paying members, which is actually pretty impressive when you compare to the 325 million people who subscribe to Netflix, a much more traditional streaming video platform—and one that also just raised its monthly prices by two dollars.