YouTube raising prices on premium ad-free plans

YouTube is hiking the prices for its ad-free subscription plans.

The changes, which go into effect in June 2026, affect four tiers of the service, starting with the Premium Lite plan, which goes up $1 from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. This plan includes ad-free viewing on most plans but does not include ad-free access to YouTube Music.

The individual plan will increase $2 per month from $13.99 to $15.99. This plan includes ad-free YouTube Music Premium, background play and offline content downloading.

YouTube added the background play and offline viewer features to the Premium Lite plan for no extra cost back in February 2026. Although subscription prices cover a variety of costs, some users may see the latest increase as essentially negating the “free” nature of those additions.

In hindsight, it now appears likely that YouTube may have opted to add those features, which largely have only a significant per-use cost to YouTube, to make the plan appear to have more value while also getting users hooked on the new features, all while this latest price increase was likely already planned. 

The family version of the service, which allows up to six members of the same household to access the individual plan features, is going up $4 per month to $26.99.

YouTube is also raising the price of its student plan, which has identical features as the individual plan, but requires verification of student status, from $7.99 to $8.99, a $1 increase.

Meanwhile, the annual version of the individual plan, which requires an upfront payment, increases by $20 from $139.99 to $159.99 per year. That increase aligns with both of the increase of the monthly plan and the common model of pricing yearly subscriptions at 10 times the monthly plan, which essentially gives the user two free months in exchange for paying all at one time.

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YouTube Premium is separate from YouTube TV, which provides access to linear channels via an vMVPD model, though that service has seen its share of price increases. Both are owned by Google.

YouTube is also raising prices on standalone YouTube Music plans, increasing the individual version by $1 to $11.99 per month and the family plan $2 to $18.99 per month.

YouTube’s increase comes amid so-called “streamflation,” an ongoing trend that has seen many streaming plans increase in cost. In addition to price increases, consumers are also becoming increasingly sensitive to having to pay for multiple streamers in order to access all of the content they want to watch. 

In many scenarios, the cost of high-speed Internet access plus multiple streamers, including vMVPDs, has become more in-line with legacy cable plans that caused many cord-cutters to make the switch to streaming.

The overall effect of these price increases remains to be seen. With many everyday costs also rising, consumers may become more sensitive to price increases for entertainment. 

Meanwhile, after peak spending on production of original content earlier in the late 2010s and early 2020s, most streamers have contracted their production budgets by trimming the number of titles being produced and reducing budgets for those that are still being made. 

YouTube Premium plans remove “most” advertising from users’ viewing experiences. YouTube had long used advertising revenue as a way to monetize the YouTube platform, which started as a simple video sharing site. Since then, the brand has expanded its reach within the video category significantly.