With over 200 million subscribers worldwide, Netflix is easily winning the streaming wars. But as The A.V. Club queries, when you have about as many customers as you can possibly get, how do you keep showing the shareholders the growth they’re so obsessed with? One option: raise prices.
And that’s what Netflix will be doing for its subscribers in the U.S. and Canada over the coming months, raises monthly subscription prices by $1 or $2 depending on the tier. Here’s how it breaks down:
- Netflix Premium (4k content, four screens at once): $18 to $20 per month
- Netflix Standard (HD content, two screen at once): $14 to $15.50 per month
- Netflix Basic (no HD content, one screen at a time): $9 to $10 per month
Netflix prices vs other streaming services
And for reference, here’s how the other players in the streaming wars are priced out right now:
- Apple TV+: $5 per month
- Disney+: $8 per month
- Paramount+: 10$ per month
- Hulu: $13 per month
- HBO Max: $15 per month
And keep in mind that Hulu and HBO Max also offer ad-supported plans for less money.
So the standard Netflix plan is now on par with HBO Max, which has always been the priciest of the streaming services. Although the original goal of “cord cutting” was to make it so people could save money on cable subscriptions, if price creep continues like this there may not be much difference. Maybe cable will eventually come back in vogue as it becomes the cheaper option, and we’ll do this dance again.
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