Yesterday, Netflix announced its first price hike in nearly two years. (Adam Sandler originals like Hubie Halloween don’t pay for themselves.) The new plans have changed to:
- An additional $1 for the standard plan, now $13.99/month
- An additional $2 for the premium plan (with 4K resolution and HDR image quality), now $17.99/month
- The basic plan stays the same, at $8.99/month
This price change will affect all current subscribers, so expect your monthly bill to increase in the following weeks if you have the standard or premium plan (the new prices are effective immediately for new subscribers). Netflix has also recently cancelled free trials.
Reevaluating your TV subscriptions
With the price increase, now might be a good time to take stock of your on-demand subscription TV services. The average household cable bill is $217.42 per month, per a DecisionData survey, but consumers are increasingly paying for subscription services, which includes streaming TV, for an average of $237 per month, according to the West Monroe. Considering that the average American has four TV streaming services the costs can add up.
Cord cutting might be saving you money on traditional cable TV, but that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily getting value for what you’re paying for with on-demand streaming services. Reevaluating your subscription services after they raise their prices is always a good rule of thumb. To know whether it’s really worth your money, ask yourself:
- Do I know the total cost of all of my TV subscriptions?
- How often do I use the streaming service?
- Which service do I use the least? When did I last use it?
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If you realize you’ve only watch half an episode of “The Floor Is Lava” in the last six months, maybe now is the time to cancel. (You can always resubscribe if you decide to finish the other half of that episode later).
Other streaming options
Here’s a shortlist of alternative major on-demand subscriptions services and their prices, which might help you prioritize or pare down your services (there’s endless array of niche-filling streaming options out there, too):
