Netflix Scraps Basic Ad-Free Plan in US and UK

Netflix’s $9.99 per month basic ad-free plan is no longer available for new and rejoining members living in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Reporting earnings on Wednesday, Netflix reiterated that it has already phased out its basic ad-free plan for new and rejoining members in Canada and that it is now doing the same in the U.S. and the U.K.

“We believe our entry prices in these countries – $6.99 in the U.S., £4.99 in the U.K., and $5.99 in Canada – provide great value to consumers given the breadth and quality of our catalog,” the company noted.

However, existing subscribers of the basic plan can keep their subscription provided they neither cancel nor change it. Those looking to downgrade their Netflix subscription to a cheaper ad-free plan, meanwhile, will no longer be able to.

With this change, Netflix now offers only three plans:

• $6.99 (£4.99) / month ad-supported plan
• $15.49 (£10.99) / month standard plan
• $19.99 (£15.99) / month premium plan

Netflix Cracks Down on Password-Sharing

Netflix is also leaning into its password-sharing crackdown, rolling out restrictions to nearly all the remaining countries worldwide where the platform operates.

Netflix said it added 5.9 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2023 after rolling out paid password sharing in over 100 countries.

However, the rest of the world will now be pushed into the fray, as the company will start emailing subscribers in these regions about the new restrictions.

In addition, Netflix confirmed it wouldn’t roll out new sub-account plans in many countries.

“In these markets, we’re not offering an extra member option given that we’ve recently cut prices in a good number of these countries (for example, Indonesia, Croatia, Kenya, and India), and penetration is still relatively low in many of them, so we have plenty of runway without creating additional complexity,” the streaming giant explained.

This means that people residing outside of a Netflix Household will have to create a new account for themselves or transfer their profile to another existing account where they live.