Many streaming services have increased prices over the past few months, like Disney+ and Paramount+, and some of them have done it multiple times over the past two years. Netflix has been slowly increasing prices, and it also stopped offering its cheapest ad-free plan to new subscribers in the US and other countries. Now, Netflix's prices are going up once again.
Netflix announced a new round of pricing changes in its Q3 2023 financial results this week. Really, the only thing that's changing here right now is the fact that the Premium tier, which was previously $19.99, is going up to $22.99. All other tiers, however, remain the same price: Standard is $15.49, while Standard with ads is $6.99. In addition, adding an extra user to share your account with is going to be an extra $7.99 on top of your subscription, regardless of what tier you have.
In addition, if you happen to have the Basic tier (which you can't sign up for anymore, but existing subscribers can still keep it), you will see your monthly subscription go up to $11.99. So even if you're grandfathered from a plan that's not available anymore, you'll still have to pay more. The Basic plan was removed back in July, and while it doesn't look like it'll be taken away from users who already pay for it (at least for now), Netflix also doesn't look like it wants to reintroduce it anytime soon, has this to say about it in its latest earnings call:
This growth has been driven by improvements to our offering — including two streams, higher quality video and a programming slate that’s now essentially on par with our other plans — as well as the phasing out of our Basic plan for new and rejoining members in the US, the UK, Italy and Canada.
The good part is that if you're paying for Standard, you won't see a price hike for now, so you can just keep on binging your shows and movies as you've always done. Netflix might decide to increase these lower plans in the future, though.