YouTube Premium is more expensive starting today. Google raised the price of every plan tier in the United States as of April 10, 2026.
The problem for many is that Google did so without making any public announcement, sending subscribers a notification email only after the change was already visible on the website.
The individual plan is now $15.99 per month, up from $13.99.
The family plan has jumped from $22.99 to $26.99.
The annual plan moved from $139.99 to $159.99.
Premium Lite went from $7.99 to $8.99.
The student plan also went from $7.99 to $8.99.
If you subscribe through Apple rather than directly through YouTube’s website, your individual plan will cost $20.99 per month, five dollars more than the standard rate for the exact same service.
The change kicked off a wave of complaints on Reddit this morning, with multiple threads appearing before many subscribers had even received an email.
The threads were titled things like “Raising prices again, really?” and “Silent YouTube Premium price increase.” Both described the same experience.
The new prices were simply there, live on the platform, before YouTube said anything publicly about them.
Every Price That Changed And By How Much
The individual monthly was $13.99, now $15.99. That is a $2 increase, or about 14%.
The family plan was $22.99, now $26.99. That is a $4 increase, or about 17%.
The annual plan was $139.99, now $159.99. That is a $20 increase.
Premium Lite was $7.99, now $8.99. That is a $1 increase.
Student was $7.99, now $8.99. That is a $1 increase.
Apple billing, individual was $18.99, and is now $20.99. Same $2 increase applied on top of the existing Apple surcharge.
The change is already confirmed live on YouTube’s own pricing page and visible in Google’s search snippet for the Premium page. 9to5Google confirmed the new pricing and obtained a copy of the subscriber email, which reads:
“To continue delivering great service and features, we’re increasing your price to $15.99/month. We don’t make these decisions lightly, but this update will allow us to continue to improve Premium and support the creators and artists you watch on YouTube. You will see the change reflected on your June 7, 2026 billing date.”
The billing date detail is important. While the new prices are showing on the website today, the actual charge increase will not hit existing subscribers until their next billing cycle, with the June billing dates being the first to reflect the new amount.
YouTube had not issued a press release or public statement as of the time of writing.
Why Are There Two Different Prices?
The $5 gap between the standard $15.99 rate and the Apple-billed $20.99 rate comes down to one thing. Apple’s commission system.
When a subscription service uses Apple’s App Store billing infrastructure, Apple takes a 30% commission on the transaction.
This is sometimes called the Apple Tax. Rather than absorbing that cost, YouTube passes it directly to the subscriber.
If you signed up for YouTube Premium through an iPhone or iPad and never switched your billing to YouTube’s own website, you have always been paying more for the identical product.
Under the old pricing, the Apple-billed individual rate was $18.99 versus $13.99 through YouTube directly, a gap of exactly $5.
That same $5 gap continues at the new prices, putting the Apple-billed rate at $20.99.
The gap is not secret. YouTube’s own subscriber notification email highlights the difference and explicitly tells subscribers they can sign up on the website to pay the lower rate.
Android Authority notes that many subscribers are unaware this gap exists at all and have been overpaying for years.
If you currently pay through Apple and want the standard rate, the process is to cancel your existing subscription through the App Store, let it expire, and then resubscribe directly through YouTube’s website or the Android app.
That switch saves $5 per month, or $60 per year, for the same plan.
How This Compares To Previous Price Increases
The last time YouTube raised US prices was July 2023, when the individual plan went from $11.99 to $13.99.
That increase was handled differently. 9to5Google covered it at the time with a spokesperson statement and confirmed that subscribers received advance notice before the change took effect.
This time there was no public statement, no advance notice on YouTube’s blog or social channels, and no press release.
Subscribers either spotted the new prices on the website or received the email announcing the change as a fait accompli.
In October 2022, YouTube raised the family plan from $17.99 to $22.99, a $5 jump. The individual plan was untouched at that time.
Going further back, YouTube Premium launched in the United States in 2015 under the name YouTube Red, at $9.99 per month for individuals.
The price held at $9.99 through the 2018 rebrand to YouTube Premium. It stayed there until July 2023 when it moved to $13.99.
It is now at $15.99. That is a total increase of six dollars, or 60%, on the individual monthly plan over roughly eleven years.
The family plan has gone from $14.99 at launch to $26.99 today, an increase of $12.
What Is Included In Youtube Premium?
At the full $15.99 per month individual rate, YouTube Premium includes ad-free viewing across all YouTube videos, background play meaning audio continues when your screen is off or you switch to another app, offline downloads, picture-in-picture mode on mobile, the Jump Ahead feature that skips to the parts of a video most viewers fast-forward to, and a full YouTube Music Premium subscription bundled in.
YouTube Music by itself costs $10.99 per month for individual subscribers, so the bundling argument, that you are getting two services for the price of one, has some legitimacy depending on how much you use both.
Premium Lite at $8.99 strips that back to the essentials. You get ad-free viewing on most videos.
You do not get YouTube Music, background play, or offline downloads. For people who only use YouTube for watching videos and have no interest in the music side of the service, Lite is the more efficient option.
Are Other Companies Also Increasing Prices?
YouTube’s price increase is not happening in isolation. Netflix raised its prices by $2 earlier this year for the second time in less than two years.
Spotify has confirmed increases for 2026. The broader pattern across streaming and subscription services is one of incremental but persistent upward pressure on monthly costs, often with minimal notice and justification language that consistently cites improving the service and supporting creators.
The YouTube justification in its subscriber email, “this update will allow us to continue to improve Premium and support the creators and artists you watch on YouTube,” is structurally identical to the language most streaming services use when raising prices.
It does not specify what improvements are coming or how much of the increase goes to creators versus to YouTube’s own operations.
What subscribers can point to as tangible improvements in the recent period include the Jump Ahead feature and Premium Lite’s expansion to more countries.
YouTube has also been testing and rolling out AI-related features on the platform, some of which are available to Premium subscribers.
Whether those additions justify a $2 monthly increase on the individual plan is a calculation each subscriber will make differently.
What Can Subscribers Do?
If you are an existing subscriber and want to avoid the increase altogether, there is not a legitimate way to do that unless you cancel.
YouTube does allow subscribers to pause their membership for up to six months rather than cancelling outright, which could buy time if you want to think it over.
If you are on Apple billing and paying $20.99, switching to direct billing through YouTube’s website gets you to $15.99 immediately, a $5 per month saving on the same plan.
That switch involves cancelling through the App Store and resubscribing through YouTube directly.
The lower-tier option is Premium Lite at $8.99, which covers ad-free watching but drops YouTube Music, offline downloads, and background play.
YouTube Premium prices in Canada have not changed as of this writing. No announcement has been made about whether other markets will see similar increases.
