These streaming service price hikes are getting out of control. Paramount Global is the latest offender, announcing on Monday plans to raise the price for most Paramount Plus subscriptions later this summer.
The cost of an ad-free Paramount Plus with Showtime subscription will increase by $1, from $11.99 to $12.99 per month. The new pricing is effective August 20 for new customers. Existing customers have a bit of a buffer and won't see the new rate appear on their bills until after September 20.
Also as of August 20, new subscribers to the Paramount Plus Essential plan, which has ads, will see the cost jump from $5.99 to $7.99 per month, a $2 increase. Existing subscribers are catching a break, though, and won't see any price increases for now.
Finally, subscribers with the legacy Paramount Plus Limited Commercial plan will see their rates increase by $1, to $7.99 per month, after August 20. While the plan has been discontinued, Paramount continues to offer it to subscribers with an active account who signed up while it was still available.
It's only been a year since the last Paramount Plus price hike, which coincided with the company's consolidation of its tiers into the ad-supported Paramount Plus Essential and ad-free Paramount Plus With Showtime. A third tier, Premium for $9.99, which removed ads and included CBS but not Showtime, also got the axe with the restructuring. As did the standalone Showtime streaming app, which, as the name implies, has been folded into the Paramount Plus with Showtime tier.
The rising cost of streaming
Unfortunately, the surge of price hikes from the best streaming services doesn't look like it's slowing anytime soon. Earlier this month, Max jacked up the subscription price of its ad-free tiers and annual plans. Just a few months before that, Peacock confirmed both its ad-free and ad-supported plans would cost an extra $2 a month beginning in July — just ahead of the Paris Summer Olympic Games.
Meanwhile, over on Netflix, last year the streamer replaced its basic $9.99/month subscription with the new Standard tier, which came with a hefty price hike for new subscribers at $15.49 per month. It also recently raised the price for its Premium plan by $3, from $19.99 to $22.99.
Paramount Plus's price hike comes after talks to merge the company with Skydance Media fell apart earlier this month. The streaming service had a strong start to the year, gaining 3.7 million subscribers and surpassing the 70-million subscriber mark in part thanks to CBS’s telecast of the Super Bowl on Paramount Plus. But it's still losing millions each year. Though Paramount's streaming losses shrank from $511 million this time last year to $490 million in the final quarter of 2023, the company told Wall Street the earliest it expects to start turning a profit in the U.S. is by the end of 2025.
In the meantime, subscribers will continue to foot the bill with increasing subscription costs. Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of reasons to subscribe to Paramount Plus, such as the live local CBS feed, NFL games and originals like the "Knuckles" spin-off, "1923" and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
Thankfully, the company makes it super easy to churn the service. It'll typically send subscribers who try to cancel incredible deals to stay. Case in point, I scored a month-long free Paramount Plus trial when I was about to cancel my subscription after the Super Bowl wrapped up.
