Netflix really knows how to knock the winds out of everyone’s sails. The streaming giant announced on Wednesday that it would go ahead with raising prices on its Basic and Premium plans hiking the subscriptions up to $12 and $23 respectively.
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As Mashable‘s Sam Haysom reported earlier this month, Netflix originally planned the price hike for the months after the SAG-AFTRA strike had ended. However, after contract talks with SAG-AFTRA unexpectedly broke down because of the major Hollywood Studios, it seems Netflix couldn’t hold on the pulling the trigger any longer.
This means those who were grandfathered in on Netflix’s Basic plan—which the company killed earlier this year—will pay $12 now instead of $10. And for Premium subscribers, the price will go from an already absurd $20 to $23. In its earnings report, Netflix confirmed that it would keep the prices of its ad-supported tier and the Standard plan which sit at $6.99 and $15, respectively. The platform last raised prices in 2022 and has been doing so steadily since 2017.
“Our starting price is extremely competitive with other streamers and at $6.99 per month in the US, for example, it’s much less than the average price of a single movie ticket,” the company wrote in its earnings report.
While it’s sure to be an unpopular move, it seems Netflix won’t be phased by any rumblings of a backlash, and are looking to strike while the iron is hot. Thanks to its password-sharing crackdown, the platform is racking in more subscribers than ever, with over 247 million global subscribers. Memberships are up 10 percent since last year and the company’s ad-supported plan now accounts for 30 percent of all new sign-ups, according to Netflix’s SEC filings.
