Here's What You Actually Get For Your Money With A Meta One Subscription

Meta recently announced its push into subscriptions, as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram now have a Plus tier. In addition to that, the company started to test a solution for Meta AI users, including businesses and creators, under the brand Meta One. According to the company's head of product, Naomi Gleit, Meta One will give users the ability to ask more complex questions, get more room to work with the company's AI, and interact with its artificial intelligence products by using phones, computers, or Meta AR glasses.

At present, the company is testing two plans in Singapore, Guatemala, and Bolivia, Meta One Plus, which is available for $7.99/month, and Meta One Premium for $19.99/month. Even though they have the same base features, the Premium plan adds more complex models, like a Deep Thinking mode, in addition to an expanded range of AI video and image generation abilities on Meta apps.

On top of that, the company is offering two other plans for creators and businesses in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Thailand, and Bangladesh. With the Meta One Essential plan, which costs $14.99/month, users get the Verified badge, protection against impersonators, and the ability to link to more platforms online. With the Meta One Advanced Plan, which costs $49.99/month, users get algorithm priority and more chances for people to interact with their brand. Read on for further details about each subscription tier, but the bottom line is that most users operating within the Meta ecosystem will likely be fine without them for now.

Right now, Meta is still testing its four different plans in select markets. If you've been using Meta AI on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and more, you can still keep using it, but if you become a hardcore user, then you might need to consider subscribing to Meta's One platform to get access to improved models and a bigger number of tokens.

The second test subscription focused on creators and businesses seems more interesting for those who want to improve their presence online and avoid impersonators. For $49.99/month, they'll get a big "Follow" button, their posts will appear on top of other people's feeds, and they can ensure their brand is seen by more people. That said, it's currently unclear if Meta will start to make other businesses and creators' reach smaller as a way to force them to go all-in with a subscription. While neither of those tiers are ridiculously expensive, they also might become a barrier for those on the verge of trying to build an online career as a creator, but who don't don't have the money to commit to those extra perks.

In these cases, the new Meta Plus subscriptions might start to make more sense, as they're cheaper, and can help users get more out of Meta's popular apps like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.

Instagram and Facebook Plus cost $3.99/monthly, and WhatsApp Plus costs $2.99/monthly. With the Facebook and Instagram versions, users have deeper access into Story views, the ability to create different Close Friends-like lists, spotlight content, extend a story for longer than 24 hours, and more. While this doesn't offer a Verified badge, which Meta is still offering as a standalone subscription, in addition to other perks to protect your account, this could be a great first step for small content creators trying to build their presence online, especially because they can customize their profile bios, the app icons, add additional profile pins, and more.

For WhatsApp, Meta is following what Telegram already does on its platform, like offering more themes, ringtones, the ability to pin more chats, premium stickers, and so on. While none of these functions are must have even for heavy users of the platform, it's possible that some functionalities, like pinning more chats, could be worth it for small businesses.

That said, it seems Meta is trying to understand what people might actually be wanting to have and how it can increase revenue, as users continue quitting social media apps and try to avoid having their data collected by companies. AI has been a big push for Meta, and it seems they're finally looking to make that effort profitable. However, for most of us, these subscriptions are definitely a pass.