In news that is probably not all that surprising, Netflix may be planning a price rise in the near future.
The streaming giant is looking to increase the cost of its ad-free service once the SAG-AFTRA strike comes to an end, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
The current cost of Netflix's standard membership – the cheapest tier without ads – is $15.49. The last time prices were put up was at the beginning of 2022. If we look at the history of Netflix's price increases for this tier, though, an increase around now fits a familiar pattern. Netflix increased its prices in October 2017, January 2019, October 2020, and January 2022 — so we probably could have expected another rise around October 2023.
The size of the increase isn't known, and Netflix hasn't commented. But again, we can probably hazard a pretty good guess based on historic increases. The last three jumps for a standard membership fell between $1 and $2, for instance ($2 in January 2019 was the most this tier has ever increased by), with the last increase in 2022 being for an extra $1.5 a month.
We don't know when the price rise will be announced, but the WSJ report says "a few months" after the strike ends, and negotiations for that are still ongoing — so we may not see it come into effect until the new year.
