YouTube Premium Is About To Cost You Up To $4 More Each Month

It has been a rough few months of price hikes, with Netflix recently raising prices on its plans, and now YouTube Premium subscribers are the next to take a hit. YouTube is increasing the cost of its subscription, and the changes will likely take effect starting with your next billing cycle. Google hasn't announced the price hike in a press release, but e-mails are rolling out to subscribers, and some are already seeing it when trying to upgrade to a Family plan.

Overall, the prices for YouTube Premium will be going up across the board, with Music Premium even being affected. The biggest price jump will come from YouTube Premium Family subscriptions, rising from $22.99 to $26.99 a month. Individual subscribers will see their monthly bill rise to $15.99 a month from $13.99, while Premium Lite users will now be charged $8.99 per month, instead of the previous $7.99 that the service launched with in 2025. Those who subscribe to YouTube Music Premium will also see their monthly price rise from $10.99 to $11.99.

Overall, the largest price increase is $4 on the Family plan. YouTube last raised prices on the Family plan in 2022, so it's not wholly unexpected to see the company increasing it almost four years later. Regular Premium subscriptions last saw the cost rise in 2023.

While the rising price of YouTube Premium is disappointing, especially since there hasn't been any significant value added to it recently, there are options for those who want to save a little money. For starters, if you don't subscribe to the Family plan, then downgrading to YouTube Premium Lite can save you some money each month. Lite gives you the basic ad-free features that regular Premium offers, as well as support for background play and video downloads.

You will lose access to YouTube Music and the Jump Ahead functionality that lets you easily skip the least-watched sections of videos, but if you don't care about all of that, you can easily save around $7 a month by switching. There are some other caveats to Premium Lite that YouTube outlines, which basically amount to the fact that Lite benefits work on "most" videos, excluding music content and YouTube Shorts. Additionally, you might see ads when browsing through for content on the web or in the app, but you shouldn't see them on longer-form videos.

While you could always use ad blockers, YouTube Premium has quickly become one of the best ways to get the most out of YouTube without being bogged down with ads. That's because YouTube has been on a bit of a crusade as it fights back against people using ad blockers on the site. It has tried to cut down on this by introducing options like Premium Lite and even putting some features into place behind the scenes that make it more difficult to use ad blockers on YouTube.

Google has even started to block AdBlock users in Google Chrome. Considering some of the reports, like YouTube testing unskippable 90-second ads and the fact that the company made your TV experience worse by pushing unskippable ads to the YouTube app on smart TVs at all, means having a Premium plan is a good way to avoid sitting through those without having to jump through extra hoops to try to block them outright.