Netflix is putting its prices up from today in several key markets including the US, UK and France.
In the US, the most expensive plan, Premium, has risen from $19.99 to $22.99. If you already have the (no longer available to new customers) Basic plan subscription, that's going up from $9.99 a month to $11.99. The Standard and Standard With Adverts plans are staying at the same prices for now: $15.49 and $6.99 respectively.
Premium was already considerably more expensive than most rivals – Disney Plus has just risen to $14 without ads; Apple TV Plus is $6.99 and Prime Video is $8.99; Hulu (No Ads) is the outlier at $17.99, though many will have that in a bundle with Disney anyway.
In the UK, Netflix's Standard With Adverts remains at £4.99 per month and Standard at £10.99 per month. Basic, which again isn't available to new subscribers, has risen by £1 per month to £7.99, and Premium is now up £2 to £17.99 per month.
Netflix has cracked down on account sharing in all three locations affected. You can't add extra users to Basic or Standard With Adverts but you can add one extra user to Standard for $7.99 / £4.99 per month, and two users to Premium for the same price per person.
There are other key differences between the price tiers. Premium users are the only ones to get Ultra HD 4K streaming and Spatial Audio, and their plan enables them to stream to four devices simultaneously, to and download shows and movies to six devices. Standard is Full HD with two simultaneous streams and two downloads; Standard With Adverts is Full HD on two devices, but downloads aren't supported.
Speaking to investors, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters didn't rule out increases to other plans in the foreseeable future.
Netflix raises prices as its profits soar
Netflix isn't exactly short of cash right now. In the same earnings call, the company announced impressive results: revenues are up 8% year on year to $8.5 billion, and profits are up 20% to $1.6 billion. It added nearly 9 million new subscribers compared to industry predictions of 6 million, and credits its password sharing crackdown with helping drive new subscriptions. Ad-funded memberships are up 70%, and Netflix says that 30% of new subscriptions where the ad-funded tier is available have been for that service.
The earnings call also shed light on the recent restructuring of and layoffs in Netflix's animation division that we covered last week. As the New York Times reports, Netflix announce a new multi-year deal with Skydance Animation, whose current head is former Pixar boss John Lasseter. Skydance will produce animated movies for Netflix from 2024.
For users going through tough economic times, it may be hard to reconcile yet another streaming price hike with Netflix's very good financial results – not least because Netflix's two CEOs trousered over $100 million between them last year. New co-CEO Greg Peters, who took Reed Hastings' place earlier this year, is expected to take home a compensation package of $34.65 million.
If you recently discovered that you'll need to pay more per month to have your family in another location be able to access your account, and now the cost of your subscription is going up too? Well, we would understand if you were rethinking that sub.
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