Netflix raised prices on all three of its U.S. subscription tiers Thursday, marking the second price increase in just over a year and pushing the standard ad-free plan past $19 for the first time.
The new prices are effective immediately for new subscribers. Existing members will receive an email notification at least one month before the increases are applied to their accounts and will see the updated rates roll out over the coming months.
Here is exactly where every plan now sits.
What’s The New Price?
The ad-supported Standard plan, the cheapest way to access Netflix, goes from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. That is a $1 increase, or roughly 13%.
The Standard plan without ads goes from $17.99 to $19.99 per month, a $2 jump that crosses the psychologically significant $20 threshold for a plan that most people still think of as the middle option.
The Premium plan, which offers 4K resolution and up to four simultaneous streams, goes from $24.99 to $26.99 per month. Also a $2 increase.
Extra member pricing also moved. Adding a non-household user to an ad-supported plan now costs $6.99, up from $5.99. Adding an extra viewer to an ad-free plan now costs $9.99, up from $8.99.
Across the three tiers, the average increase works out to roughly 11%. According to TD Cowen analysts in a research note issued Thursday, the new prices will push Netflix’s average revenue per subscriber in the U.S./Canada region up approximately 6% year-over-year in 2026.
What Has Netflix Said About The Price Increase?
The company’s official explanation was brief and familiar. “As we deliver more value to our members, we are updating our prices to enable us to reinvest in quality entertainment and improve their experience,” Netflix said in a statement to Variety.
Netflix did not get more specific in its public communications. It did not announce new programming alongside the price increase or offer any subscriber-facing promotion to soften the impact.
The prices simply went up, posted quietly to the company’s website, confirmed by the company when outlets reached out.
How Did It Get So Expensive?
This is the second time in just over a year that Netflix has raised prices across all its tiers.
The previous increase came in January 2025, the first time in three years that the Standard plan had gone up.
Before that, the last major U.S. price increase was in October 2023, when Standard moved from $11.99 to $15.49 and Premium went from $19.99 to $22.99.
To put that in context, a Standard Netflix subscription cost $9.99 before the October 2023 increase.
After Thursday’s hike, it costs $19.99. That is a doubling of the mid-tier price in roughly two and a half years.
The price history of the ad-supported tier is its own story. Netflix launched the ad-supported plan in late 2022 at $6.99 per month, positioning it explicitly as the affordable entry point the company was offering in lieu of what had been a cheaper Basic tier.
The Basic tier was subsequently phased out, unavailable to new and rejoining members by summer 2023, fully discontinued for existing members by mid-2024.
As of January 2025, the ad-supported plan rose to $7.99. As of Thursday, it is $8.99.
The plan that was marketed as the low-cost alternative has now been increased twice in under two years, while the Basic plan it effectively replaced no longer exists.
The Business Logic Behind The Increase
Netflix is 325 million paid subscribers strong, that figure is from the company’s Q4 2025 earnings report in January 2026.
Revenue for the full year 2025 came in at $45.2 billion, up 16% year-over-year, with an operating margin of 29.5%.
Those are not the numbers of a company in distress. They are the numbers of a company that has concluded it has pricing power and intends to use it.
The January earnings call was explicit about what the company planned for 2026. Netflix said it expects full-year 2026 revenue of $50.7 billion to $51.7 billion, which would represent 12-14% growth year-over-year.
The company projected a “rough doubling of ad revenue in 2026” compared to the prior year, ad revenue hit more than $1.5 billion in 2025, up more than 2.5 times from 2024.
Netflix said it expects to spend $20 billion on content in 2026, up from $18 billion in 2025.
Netflix CFO Spence Neumann, speaking earlier this month at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, described the key revenue drivers for 2026 as “pricing, membership growth, and ad revenue.”
Pricing was listed first. The Thursday announcement was, in that sense, exactly what the company had been telegraphing.
The Warner Bros. Context
The price increase also arrives about a month after Netflix walked away from what would have been one of the most transformative acquisitions in media history.
Netflix had been in advanced negotiations to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of HBO, CNN, and dozens of other major properties, before Paramount Skydance made a competing offer of $31 per share that the WBD board ultimately deemed superior.
Netflix declined to match the price, and the deal collapsed in late February.
The breakup fee Netflix received for walking away was $2.8 billion, paid by Paramount Skydance as a condition of its competing deal.
Netflix CFO Spence Neumann addressed the outcome directly at the Morgan Stanley conference. “Now we move forward, and we move forward with $2.8 billion in our pocket that we didn’t have a few weeks ago,” he said.
The co-CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, were more measured, “We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”
Walking away from Warner Bros. means Netflix does not gain HBO’s library, CNN’s news operation, or any of the other WBD assets that would have significantly expanded its content portfolio.
It does mean Netflix has $2.8 billion it did not have before, which it has repeatedly said it will deploy toward its own content and business.
What Has Netflix Been Building?
Part of Netflix’s pitch for the higher prices is a content and platform slate that is genuinely broader than it was two or three years ago.
The company has expanded aggressively into live events, it streamed the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight in 2024, launched live NFL Christmas games, and on Wednesday night it streamed MLB Opening Night, with the New York Yankees playing the San Francisco Giants in the 2026 season opener.
Live sports is becoming a meaningful part of the offering.
The company has also rolled out video podcasts on the platform, launched a short-form video feature, and announced plans to revamp its mobile app.
These are incremental additions rather than transformative ones, and subscribers deciding whether to absorb a $2 monthly increase may weigh them differently. But they represent a genuine broadening of what Netflix is beyond scripted drama and film.
The $20 billion content budget for 2026 is meant to fund that breadth — including returning series like Bridgerton Season 4, One Piece Season 2, and a continued push into international content and live programming.
What Analysts Are Watching
The Citi analyst Jason Bazinet, in a March 18 note before the Thursday announcement, put Netflix on track for a potential additional price hike as soon as October 2026, based on the company’s historical cadence.
He wrote that the company had previously held off on increases while pursuing the Warner Bros. acquisition, but that with the deal off, “We see no reason Netflix can’t raise prices.”
He also calculated that a 5% increase in average revenue per user would translate into a Netflix stock gain of up to 6%.
Whether subscribers agree that the value justifies the new prices is the relevant open question.
Netflix has demonstrated repeatedly over the past three years that it can raise prices without losing meaningful subscriber numbers, it added roughly 19 million paid subscribers in 2025 even after the January increase that year.
The 325 million subscriber base suggests the company’s calculation is correct: most people who are on Netflix will stay on Netflix even at higher prices, because the alternatives involve either switching to a different service, stacking multiple cheaper services, or simply going without.
What Thursday’s announcement confirmed is that the floor has moved. The cheapest way to access Netflix without ads is now $19.99 per month.
The premium 4K experience is approaching $30. The ad-supported option exists at $8.99, but it now costs more than the ad-free Standard plan cost in early 2023, when it was $9.99 without ads.
The price increases will be applied to existing subscribers with at least one month’s notice by email. New members pay the new prices starting today.
