Streaming giant Netflix will ask some of its UK subscribers to pay more as the company reports further overall growth in subscribers.
- Password sharing crackdown has helped Netflix gain 8.8 million new subscribers.
- But Netflix has now increased prices on its Basic and Premium plans by more than the rate of inflation.
In a letter to investors, accompanying Netflix’s latest financial results, the company confirmed the UK would be among three countries where prices are going up again.
Subscribers in the UK, France and the USA will face higher prices on some plans, although the price of the popular standard plan will remain frozen.
It comes as the company reported an 8.8 million increase in the number of subscribers globally in the last three months. Netflix says numbers have been boosted following a crackdown on password sharing. Technically, the crackdown has achieved its purpose of ensuring more users pay for the content they’re accessing.
UK Netflix price rises in detail
In the summer, Netflix stopped new customers from signing up to its basic plan – but existing subscribers were allowed to stay in the plan. They’re among the users now being asked to stump up extra. The legacy basic plan will now cost 14% extra as the price goes up from £6.99 to £7.99 a month.
For Premium subscribers, a 12.5% increase from £15.99 to £17.99 applies.
In both cases, price increases are more than the UK CPI rate of inflation (announced as 6.7% on Wednesday). It’s also more than the inflation plus 3.9% formula used by a growing number of telecoms and pay TV companies for price rises.
Some Netflix plans frozen in price
However, there’s some good news. Standard with Ads and Standard Plans will remain at their current prices.
Where prices have changed, these apply immediately to new customers and will be passed on to existing customers within the next 30 days.
The company last increased prices in March 2022 and introduced a new, cheaper ad-tier later that year.
▶️ Overview: Netflix subscription options UK – October 2023
Standard with ads (originally launched as “Basic with ads” last year)
- £4.99 a month
- 1080p picture quality
- no downloads
- your date of birth will be used for advert personalisation purposes
- add one out-of-household user for a fee
- watch on two devices simultaneously
Basic (existing customers only)
- £7.99 a month (⬆️ 14.3%)
- no ads
- watch on one device
- not available to new or rejoining subscribers.
Standard
- £10.99 a month
- 1080p picture quality
- downloads allowed
- no ads
- add one extra out-of-household user for a fee
- watch on two devices simultaneously
Premium
- £17.99 a month (⬆️12.5%)
- 4K UHD picture quality
- High Dynamic Range (HDR) support
- downloads allowed
- no ads
- add two out-of-household users for a fee
- watch on up to four devices simultaneously