It has taken a while, but Netflix has finally put its UK prices up. The new prices went live around September 3, and they apply to new subscribers straight away.
If you are already a subscriber, you will keep paying your current rate until your next billing date, at which point the new price kicks in.
What is notable this time is not just that prices have gone up – we have come to expect that – but how long it took, and which tier bore the brunt of it.
The Wait After The US Increase
Netflix raised its US prices back in March. Normally, that is the starting gun. The US goes first, and the UK follows within a few weeks – that is exactly how it played out in early 2025, when the American increase in January was matched here by early February.
This year broke the pattern. The US hike landed on March 26, and the UK stayed put for almost half a year.
That is an unusually long gap by Netflix’s standards, and for a while it looked like UK subscribers might get through the year untouched.
That is not how it ended up, of course. When Paramount+ raised its UK prices in August, we noted that it would not be on its own for long once the autumn increases started rolling in.
Netflix has now joined the queue.
The New Netflix UK Prices
Here is what you will now pay, alongside what each plan cost until this week:
| Plan | Old price | New price | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard with Ads | £5.99 | £7.99 | +£2 |
| Standard | £12.99 | £13.99 | +£1 |
| Premium | £18.99 | £20.99 | +£2 |
| Extra Member (with ads) | £4.99 | £5.99 | +£1 |
| Extra Member (without ads) | £5.99 | £6.99 | +£1 |
Some providers (like Sky and Virgin Media) bundle Netflix in with their TV packages, and let you pay to upgrade to higher tiers. Those upgrade prices will likely soon follow and cost more as well.
What Each Netflix Tier Gives You
If you are weighing up whether to stay put, downgrade or walk away, here is what each plan actually includes at the new prices:
Standard with Ads (£7.99/month)
- Full HD (1080p) streaming
- Up to two devices at once
- Most of Netflix’s content library, with some exclusions due to licensing
- Several minutes of adverts per hour
- Downloads on one device
Standard (£13.99/month)
- Full HD (1080p) streaming
- Up to two devices at once
- No adverts
- Full content library
- Downloads on two devices
- Option to add one extra member: £5.99/month with ads or £6.99/month without
Premium (£20.99/month)
- Ultra HD (4K) and HDR where available
- Up to four devices at once
- No adverts
- Full content library
- Downloads on up to six devices
- Spatial audio
- Option to add up to two extra members: £5.99 each/month with ads or £6.99 each/month without
The Ads Tier Takes The Biggest Hit
The odd one out here is the ad-supported plan. Standard with Ads has jumped from £5.99 to £7.99 – a £2 rise, and by some distance the largest increase in percentage terms of any tier, at around a third more than before.
That is a surprising place for Netflix to push hardest. The ad-supported tier is supposed to be the industry’s favourite child right now.
It is the cheap way in that gets people through the door, and it comes with a second revenue stream on top of the subscription fee, since Netflix is also selling the adverts you sit through.
You would expect a company to keep that tier as tempting as possible, not slap the biggest rise on it.
Instead, the entry point has climbed £2 in one go, while the ad-free Standard plan – the one many long-term subscribers are on – got off lightest with a £1 rise to £13.99.
One side effect is that the gap between watching adverts and not watching them has narrowed. It now costs £6 a month to jump from Standard with Ads to full Standard, down from £7 before. Whether that makes going ad-free more tempting or simply makes the cheap plan feel less cheap is a matter of perspective.
Premium Is Becoming A Rich Person’s Pleasure
At the top of the range, Premium has gone up £2 to £20.99 a month. That is £251.88 a year for one streaming service.
Premium has quietly turned into a luxury item. It is the only way to get 4K and HDR on Netflix, along with spatial audio and four simultaneous streams, and Netflix clearly knows the people who want those things will pay for them.
Every year the top tier drifts a little further away from everything else, and at £20.99 it is now comfortably the most expensive mainstream streaming plan in the UK.
If you have a big 4K telly and a household of people all watching at once, there is no cheaper route to it on Netflix. But the days when Premium felt like a mild upgrade are long gone.
How Netflix Compares To Everyone Else
Netflix was already the priciest of the major services, and this increase stretches that lead further.
At the entry level, £7.99 for Standard with Ads now sits well above the £5.99 that Paramount+, Disney+ and HBO Max all charge for their own ad-supported plans.
Netflix has broken away from the pack at the bottom just as clearly as it has at the top.
In the middle, Standard at £13.99 is a few pounds above the £9.99 that Paramount+, Disney+, HBO Max and Apple TV charge for their comparable ad-free tiers.
And at the top, Premium at £20.99 towers over the £14.99 that Disney+ and HBO Max charge for their own Premium plans – a full £6 more.
Paramount+ Premium, at £12.99, is not even in the same conversation.
The argument Netflix would make is the one it always makes: that it offers more than the others, so it charges more than the others. Whether that stacks up depends entirely on what you actually watch.
Disney+ at £14.99 brings Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and a pile of sport. HBO Max at the same price has the entire HBO back catalogue and the Warner films.
For many households, the question is no longer whether Netflix is worth it in isolation, but whether it is worth the premium it now charges at every tier over the next service down.
The Rest Will Not Be Far Behind
Netflix may be the biggest name to raise UK prices this autumn, but it will not be the last.
Apple TV is the obvious one to watch. It raised its own prices in the US only recently but has so far left its UK pricing alone, holding at £9.99 a month.
If Netflix’s long delay this year taught us anything, it is that a US increase does not always cross the Atlantic on schedule – but it usually crosses eventually.
Disney+ tends to move around November, so it is very likely next in line, even after a year of running discounts rather than increases.
HBO Max is the wildcard – it only launched here in March, so we simply do not have a pattern to go on yet.
And Amazon still has its Prime Video Ultra tier waiting in the wings, which it has rolled out in the US but not yet brought to the UK.
In other words, if you are a UK streaming subscriber, this is unlikely to be the last price change you hear about before the year is out.
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Wow, over 30% increase for the basic tier. I watched aqua man and the lost kingdom and the last hour had an ad every 10mins, it killed the film but I accept it because the price was ok. Now it’s not and that level of ads v the price is unacceptable. I’ll be moving on.
And with that, my Netflix account is cancelled. Been with them for 10 years and never thought I’d quit as there’s a lot of good stuff on there, but I simply can’t justify the cost any more.
Maybe I’ll dip back into Paramount or Disney for a couple of months. Catch up on what I missed this year.
I think there’s going to have to be something very special on Netflix before I’ll sign up again, even if just for a month or two.