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Magnhild Mongolo
With a vast library of TV shows, movies, and original programming, Netflix is one of our picks for the best streaming services you can sign up for. But like its competitors, the price of Netflix varies depending on which subscription tier and features you choose.
Netflix pricing starts at $7 a month, but following a Netflix price hike in October 2023, you now have to pay $23 a month to get the best video quality without ads. And due to Netflix's recent crackdown on password sharing, it now costs an additional $8 a month to add an extra user to your account in the US. The fee will only apply to users who live outside of an account holder's household.
It also costs more to add another user to a subscription plan. Standard and Premium subscriptions are the only plans that offer extra member additions. Standard allows one extra member slot for $8 a month. Premium offers up to two extra member slots for $8 each monthly.
Quick tip: If you're interested in other streaming options, check out our guides to the best music streaming services and the top services to watch free movies online. And if you need a new media player to access your favorite services with, check out our guide to the best streaming devices.
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.
In 2023, Netflix lost customers. During the second quarter of the year, the company reported a loss of approximately 970,000 subscribers. This was the largest quarterly subscriber loss that Netflix experienced since it launched. The good news for Netflix is that this loss was less severe than expected. Netflix had initially projected that it was going to lose 2 million following unexpected growth caused by the pandemic.
During the early phase of the pandemic in 2020, Netflix gained nearly 26 million subscribers in the first half of the year. Following this explosion, a readjustment was always expected and the fact that it lost 1 million fewer subscribers than predicted actually demonstrates impressive retention.
Yes, Netflix content is different in every country. This is due to licensing restrictions. As such, you may find that when you travel abroad on vacation, you can no longer stream some TV shows and movies. This is one of the reasons why we recommend you use a VPN to securely access your Netflix account as normal.
While Netflix did used to offer free trials, this is unfortunately no longer the case. Its cheapest plan is Standard with ads which costs $6.99 a month in the US (prices vary by country). The Netflix password-sharing crackdown means that getting free Netflix from a friend or family member is no longer on the table either.
With the exception of the basic tier, all Netflix plans support at least two devices at a time. So you may be able to get Netflix for free if you live with someone who is happy to share their subscription.
Yes. If you are an expat or somebody who is living abroad for work or studying, you can easily take advantage of cheaper Netflix prices back home. As you already have a valid payment method in your home country, it is extremely easy for you to connect to a VPN server in your home country to purchase a cheaper subscription.
For this reason, it is a good idea to check the difference in cost between where you are now and your home country. If you are visiting the UK, the US, or some other country where Netflix is expensive, the savings could be pretty decent. Netflix might require a local form of payment.
The only caveat to all of this is that using a VPN to buy a cheaper Netflix subscription is technically against the terms of service. So, doing so, even if you are only living abroad because of your studies is technically a breach. For this reason, you should remember that you always use a VPN at your own risk and Netflix withholds the right to cancel an account if it believes its policies were breached.
New data from CivicScience find that among all current Netflix users and those likely to subscribe, 29% would subscribe to an ad-free plan (either by continuing to subscribe or starting a new subscription), such as Netflix Standard or Premium plans. However, 39% say they would cancel their subscription if a price hike took effect.
Continued inflation is taking a toll on the financial health and economic confidence of consumers, which has been reflected in the volatility of the streaming market this year. Consumers are cutting down on the number of services they use due to cost, according to CivicScience data. Ongoing monthly tracking shows that 33% of U.S. adults have reduced or plan to reduce spending on streaming subscriptions, up from 28% in January. Additionally, the monthly percentage of those with four or more streaming subscriptions fell from September to October, continuing a decline seen throughout the year.
Price concerns are certainly top-of-mind for current Netflix ad-free plan subscribers. More than a third express increased price sensitivity over the last year, more so than those who subscribe to the ads-based plan.
With its contracts and fees, cable TV is nowhere near cheap. The alternative is a suite of streaming services, but paying for multiple subscriptions -- or even a live TV streaming service like DirecTV Stream -- could also rival your cable bill. According to a 2023 report from Leichtman Research Group, 83% of US households have at least one streaming service, with over 50% of us subscribing to four or more.
These days, you can sever the cord completely and solely use streaming services like Hulu, Disney Plus or YouTube TV. You can also keep satellite or cable TV as your main dish while subscribing to a couple of streaming platforms on the side. There's also the option to watch 100% of what you want on cable TV only.
All those choices can quickly become overwhelming, but don't worry. Here, we do the math to break down how you can save money in most parts of the US with the best combination of cable, streaming and internet. (You can also find out how much you can save shopping at Costco compared with a regular supermarket, and if it's cheaper to buy Xbox Game Pass or individual games.)
To compare the price savings between streaming and cable, we started with monthly cable costs across a handful of US cities. While streaming service pricing is the same no matter where you live, we crunched numbers for major cable companies in New York, San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta, Kansas and Michigan. Here's what we found using a representative provider from each city.
If those numbers seem low at first sniff, that's because they don't include taxes and fees, which make up a significant part of monthly costs for cable. They differ based on location, equipment and service type (like regional sports networks), so it wasn't possible to accurately include them in the prices above. Additionally, we made these calculations using rates for basic internet, which ranges from 200 Mbps to 400 Mbps for most cities featured this graph.
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