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Depending on your subscription plan, the price hike adds up to an extra $24 or $36 you pay each year to the streaming service. Below, CNBC Select shares some ways to save on (and even benefit from) your Netflix subscription.

While you're unlikely to be happy about paying a higher monthly Netflix bill, it does mean you earn a bit more from that 6% cash back. Amex's cash back is earned in the form of Reward Dollars, which cardholders can then use as a statement credit to lower their credit card balance.

And with the U.S. Bank Cash+ Visa Signature Card, cardholders can choose to earn 5% cash back on two bonus categories each quarter, on their first $2,000 in combined eligible net purchases, then 1%. Television, internet and streaming services are counted as a bonus category and U.S. Bank's website lists Netflix as a sample qualifying merchant. Again, you can use this cash back to essentially lower your credit card bill.

T-Mobile has a "Netflix On Us" deal where qualifying cell phone plans get a free Netflix subscription. Those who aren't happy with their current cell phone provider should consider this benefit, which not only makes Netflix complimentary but also consolidates your streaming and cell phone bill.

Netflix allows you to pause your membership and come back to it. This can give you a break from the monthly subscription if you're looking to cut costs or if you're just not watching a particular show at the moment.

You just have to connect the bank account you use to pay your Netflix subscription to Experian Boost, and Experian will add your payments to your Experian credit file. Consumers can link positive payment data as far back as 24 months. Experian Boost also includes access to your FICO Score and Experian free credit monitoring that alerts you to changes on your credit report, such as new account openings in your name and balance updates.

Basic and Premium plan Netflix subscribers will now pay a little more each month for the streaming service. To help save on this cost, get a credit card that rewards streaming purchases, switch your phone plan to T-Mobile or take a pause on your subscription. And, while you're paying more for it, make sure that monthly Netflix bill is helping your credit with Experian Boost.

At CNBC Select, our mission is to provide our readers with high-quality service journalism and comprehensive consumer advice so they can make informed decisions with their money. Every personal finance article is based on rigorous reporting by our team of expert writers and editors with extensive knowledge of personal finance products. While CNBC Select earns a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links, we create all our content without input from our commercial team or any outside third parties, and we pride ourselves on our journalistic standards and ethics.

When Netflix transitioned to streaming, gradually leaving the DVD business behind, it became one of the greatest revenue-growth success stories in history. Netflix completely dominated the streaming market until its current rivals entered the market.

This is an example of the law of diminishing returns (or its equivalent, the law of increasing costs). Each additional dollar invested in advertising will have a worse marginal return than the previous dollar because it is probably directed at a subscriber who is more difficult to persuade.

Up to here, everything is fine for Netflix. However, as competitors HBO (with HBO Max), Amazon Prime (with Prime Video), Disney (with Disney+), and others enter the market, demand elasticity increases. With more substitutes, customers become more sensitive to changes in prices or content offered.

One of the problems for Netflix was that it was at the mercy of the large content distributors like HBO. It seemed that all the surplus was going to go to the owners of series and movies and that Netflix was going to take a loss.

At that point, Netflix decided to change its business from brokering content to creating content (or at least getting exclusive rights to new content). However, it is not at all easy to create winning content for an audience that is terribly critical, temperamental, and susceptible to short-term fads.

We know how much Netflix spends on producing a series. For example, the series Marco Polo cost $10 million per episode, so, before it discontinued the series, Netflix spent a total of $200 million on it. How much was this $200 million investment really worth? And what is the lifespan of a series?

This fits with the idea of economic calculation, in which accounting serves as a tool. This spontaneous order always evolves, and the way we treat investment in series and movies for accounting purposes is a good example of that.

The problem is that there is no capacity for increasing production. The streaming platforms with the most purchasing power, including Netflix, Amazon, Disney, and HBO, will demand greater film capacity. This does not include small producers of films and series, as these compete for the same resources with less purchasing power.

Production studios are delighted with the boom in film investments (I imagine UFM Film School is too), but the question is how sustainable this race to create more and more film content will be in a context of unprecedented rivalry.

At the end of 2021, the interest rate Netflix was paying was the lowest in the last five years. The drop in interest paid by Netflix came even though its debt increased from $5.5 billion to more than $13 billion in that same period. The really uncomfortable thing for the streaming giant is that if it were incredibly profitable, this debt would not have been necessary.

It is very likely that these big investments in film content will not translate to greater revenue for the companies making the investments. The only thing that is happening, for the time being, is that production costs are increasing as companies seek to attract customers in an increasingly competitive market. It is very possible that the greater investments in content will not translate to more and better series and movies.

Legal notice: the analysis contained in this article is the exclusive work of its author, the assertions made are not necessarily shared nor are they the official position of the Francisco Marroqun University.

Olav Dirkmaat is professor in economics at the Business School of Universidad Francisco Marroqun. Before, he was VP at Nxchange and precious metals analyst at GoldRepublic. He has a PhD in Economics from the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. He has a master in Austrian Economics from the same university, as well as a master in Marketing Strategy from the VU University in Amsterdam. He is also the translator of Human Action of Ludwig von Mises into Dutch. He has a passion for investing, and manages funds for relatives, looking for investment opportunities in markets that are extremely over- or undervalued.

Netflix is also making basic plans unavailable to new customers in several countries, including the UK and US. Basic plans in those countries have now been replaced with standard subscriptions with ads. Ad-supported plans are much more affordable, costing 4.99 per month in the UK and $6.99 per month in the US.

Please note: the prices included in our study are the base price as advertised by Netflix. They do not include the various taxes and other charges users may face. We are aware that several countries, including Argentina, have these charges but our study focuses on the price charged by Netflix.

Second, we evaluated the cost per month in each country and how these shape up against others (based on current exchange rates at the time of writing). We have also analyzed the 13 countries with ad-based subscriptions (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Guernsey, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, South Korea, UK, and US) separately to see how these plans compare.

At the other end of the scale are a number of African and European countries and Fiji where none of their plans are cost-effective, despite recent library growth across the majority of these countries. This is due to extortionate monthly costs (Liechtenstein and Switzerland) or library sizes that are more than three times below average (Zambia, Seychelles, Uganda).

The homeland of Netflix itself, the US, also features as one of the least cost-effective countries across all of its plans. This is, again, due to its average library size and above-average monthly costs. It ranks as the eleventh, twenty-first, and seventeenth least cost-effective country for its basic, standard, and premium plans respectively.

One of the biggest advantages of streaming platforms over standard TV channels is their lack of adverts. So are the cheaper plans with ads on Netflix worth it? And do they offer the best value for money when we compare them to basic plans without ads from around the world?

It probably goes without saying that all 13 countries save a reasonable amount of money per title when opting for the standard plan with ads. But as the above table demonstrates, some get a better deal than others.

One of the most expensive countries, Guernsey, saves the most per title when choosing the standard with ads plan (saving nearly $0.0018 per title), while Brazil (which boasts the most cost-effective standard with ads plan) saves a fourth of what Guernsey users do.

Here we can compare all of the countries Netflix is available in (245 in total) to see which countries pay the most and least for their subscriptions on a cost-per-month basis. We can also see just how the recent price hikes and cuts have affected these costs.

The basic subscription tier lets you stream content in 720p HD on one device at a time. Both standard plans (with ads and ad-free) support 1080p full HD streaming and up to two devices at once. Only a premium subscription allows you to watch Netflix in 4K UHD on four supported devices at a time.

Netflix discontinued the Basic plan in some countries (including the US and the UK) as part of its efforts to adapt to the latest market trends and enhance its service model. The strategy is aimed at simplifying the subscription offerings and encouraging users to opt for other plans like Standard with ads or Premium, which provide more features or content. Obviously, these plans bring more financial gain to the company too.

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