Now I Am Updated

Netflix's ad-free Standard plan is now $19.99, its second US price rise in 16 months

Every US tier went up in late March. The ad-free Standard plan crossed $20 a year in cost - and the cheapest way to keep watching is now the ad tier at $8.99, less than half the price. Here is the annual maths.

By Sam Allcock ·

Netflix raised the price of every one of its US plans in late March, and the change has now worked through most subscribers’ billing cycles. If your bill went up this spring and you did not clock why, this is it - the second US increase in roughly 16 months.

What changed

The new prices took effect for new members on 26 March 2026, with existing members moved over on their individual billing dates in the following weeks. Across the tiers:

  • Standard with ads: $7.99 to $8.99
  • Standard, ad-free: $17.99 to $19.99
  • Premium, ad-free: $24.99 to $26.99

The extra-member add-on - the slot you pay for to share an account outside your household - rose too, from $6.99 to $7.99 for an ad slot and from $8.99 to $9.99 for an ad-free one. Netflix has described the increase as averaging around 11% across the range.

What it costs over a year

Monthly figures flatter a subscription. Annualised, the ad-free Standard plan now runs to $239.88 a year, up $24 from $215.88. Premium is $323.88 a year, up from $299.88. The ad tier, at $8.99, comes to $107.88 a year.

That last number is the one worth sitting with. The gap between the ad-free Standard plan and the ad-supported plan is now $11 a month, or $132 a year. Netflix has never made the price of watching without ads this stark: you are paying more than double for the same catalogue, minus the interruptions.

Why the ad tier keeps getting cheaper by comparison

This is not an accident of pricing. Streaming services now make money twice on an ad-supported viewer - once from the subscription, again from advertisers - so the economics push them to widen the gap and nudge you down onto the cheaper, ad-carrying plan. As CNBC put it when the ad-free Standard plan reached $20, streaming’s steady march back toward the price and shape of old cable television is getting harder to ignore.

For Netflix the logic is straightforward: content is expensive, and the company would rather you watch on the tier it can also sell ads against than lose you altogether.

The practical read

If you are on ad-free Standard purely out of habit, the decision in front of you is $132 a year for an ad-free experience. Plenty of people will happily pay it. The point is that it is now a conscious $132, not a rounding error, and Netflix has made the alternative - the $8.99 ad tier - the cheapest it has ever been in relative terms.

If you share your account across households, check the add-on line on your bill too: the extra-member slots went up in the same round, so a shared Premium account with one outside member now costs a little more than the sticker price suggests.

The one thing not worth doing is ignoring it. This is the second rise in under a year and a half, and the direction of travel - ad-free up, ad tier held down - is unlikely to reverse.

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