Netflix Quietly Axes Its Cheapest Ad-Free Plan

Netflix just discontinued its cheapest subscription tier without ads, meaning that users will now have to choose between watching advertisements or paying even more for their content. The streamer had four plans up until now – Standard with Ads, Basic, Standard and Premium. As of this week, customers in the U.S. and the U.K. can no longer sign up for the Basic plan, which cost $9.99 per month.

Netflix rolled out this change without much fanfare and without changing any existing customers' plans. According to a report by Variety, the Basic plan is no longer available "for new or rejoining members," however, existing customers on the Basic plan will be able to keep it until they cancel their subscription or change plans. Once they leave it, they won't be able to get it back. Netflix reportedly dropped the Basic plan in Canada last month, but it's not clear if it will be removed in the rest of the world too.

The Basic plan had a cost of $9.99 per month in the U.S. – a nice stepping stone between the Standard with Ads plan at $6.99 per month and the Standard plan at $15.49 per month. Both subscriptions are also available on an annual basis at a slight savings. In addition to ads, there are a few key differences between them – the Standard tier comes with offline downloads and the ability to add one extra household to the plan for $7.99 under Netflix's new password-sharing rules.

According to Variety, the purpose for discontinuing the Basic tier is not to goad customers into paying more for Standard, but actually to drop them down to Standard with Ads. The company introduced its first ad-supported tier in November and is apparently seeing more profit from that option than from the Basic plan. It also led to a massive influx of new subscribers.

Find fans and gain an audience to now just oh it didn’t do good in 1 week, oh it’s done for and now this.

— Yosuf (@YosufP22) July 19, 2023

Customers wishing to skip the ads may be tempted to coordinate with a friend to split the cost of a Standard plan with one additional household – a cost of $23.48 per month in total. Split in half, that's still a bit more than the Basic plan was, but both users would have the features from Standard, including 1080p video resolution and offline downloads.

The major downside to this strategy is the simultaneous screen limit. The Standard plan only allows two screens to be playing at the same time, and that's counting both households. More than two people across two households might run into problems with this arrangement. Unsurprisingly, fans are furious at Netflix for changes like these.