Netflix joins other streaming services in announcing price hikes on certain plans

The monthly subscription costs of certain Netflix plans in the U.S. and two other countries will go up, streaming giant revealed Wednesday afternoon as it put out its third-quarter earnings.

The price hikes in the U.S. will affect two of its options, with the Premium membership becoming $22.99 per month and the Basic one becoming $11.99, Netflix said in its third-quarter letter to shareholders. Those marked lifts of $2 and $3, respectively. 

In a move over the summer, Netflix pumped the brakes on the U.S. availability of the Basic membership without ads for new or returning subscribers. It said at the time that those already on it could stay “until you change plans or cancel your account.”

According to Netflix, its ad-supported plan, which charges $6.99 a month, and its Standard tier, which charges $15.49, hold at their current price levels in the U.S. 

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The ad-supported plan first became available in November. Globally, Netflix said it recorded a nearly 70% rise in subscribers to that option globally, compared to the prior quarter “with 30% of sign ups in our ads countries [being], on average, to our ads plan.” 

The streaming giant identified the U.K. and France as the other two countries that will see upped fees. For both, it will only apply higher prices to the Basic and Premium subscriptions. 

The changes in prices for the impacted tiers in the three countries became effective as of Wednesday, according to the company.

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“While we mostly paused price increases as we rolled out paid sharing, our overall approach remains the same – a range of prices and plans to meet a wide range of needs, and as we deliver more value to our members, we occasionally ask them to pay a bit more,” Netflix said, describing its starting prices as “extremely competitive with other streamers.”

Other companies with their own streaming platforms have been rolling out increases in the costs of their own subscriptions. Recently, for instance, Warner Bros. Discovery-owned Discovery+ did so for its ad-free plan in the U.S. and Canada.

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Netflix, which earlier this year started widely requiring users to pay to share accounts with people who don’t live in the same household, or to get their own, counted 247.15 million subscribers to its service around the world in the third quarter. In the same three-month period last year, it had 223.09 million, a 10.8% jump.

It produced $8.54 billion in third-quarter revenue and $1.68 billion in net income, both of which marked year-over-year increases.