Paramount+ UK Hikes Prices Across All Tiers

Streaming price increase season is upon us – and Paramount+ seems to be first in line this year, with a price increase across all of its tiers. 

The new prices are already live for anyone signing up today. Existing subscribers haven’t all been moved across yet, and the picture there is still forming.

Sky Cinema customers who get Paramount+ through their subscription will see a change too.

Here’s the full picture.

Paramount+ In The UK: A Quick Refresher

Paramount+ launched in the UK in 2022, bringing content from CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures and SHOWTIME under one subscription.

The library has never been the biggest, but it has some strong anchors: the modern Star Trek run, Yellowstone and its many spin-offs, Dexter and its own spin-offs, Landman, Lioness, and Paramount’s film catalogue.

For its first two years, there was just one plan – £6.99 a month, Full HD, two streams, no adverts. Simple enough.

That changed in November 2024, when Paramount+ split the service into three tiers, following the path Netflix and Disney+ had already taken. Here’s what each one gives you:

• Basic with Ads – Full HD quality, one device at a time, the full content library, with advert breaks.
• Standard – Full HD quality, two concurrent streams, no adverts. This is the direct descendant of that original single plan.
• Premium – 4K UHD with HDR10 and Dolby Vision, four concurrent streams, no adverts.

The 2024 change came with a price rise on Standard, but it also came with something to show for it – a cheaper entry point for people who don’t mind ads, and 4K for people who’d been asking for it since launch.

This one is different. Same tiers, same features, same everything – just more money.

The New Paramount+ Prices

Here’s what you’ll now pay, alongside what those plans cost until recently:

In percentage terms, Basic with Ads is up around 20%, Standard around 25%, and Premium around 18%.

Standard taking the biggest proportional hit is worth pausing on. That’s the tier most long-term subscribers are on, since it’s the one the original £6.99 plan turned into.

Those subscribers have watched that same plan go from £6.99 to £7.99 to £9.99 in under two years – a 43% rise for a product that hasn’t really changed.

The annual plans have gone up by the same proportions, which means the discount for paying upfront is unchanged. Standard’s annual plan works out at roughly nine months’ worth of the monthly price, same as before.

Paramount has simply moved every number up together.

When Will Existing Subscribers Pay More?

If you’re already subscribed, you may not be paying the new rates yet – and Paramount+ hasn’t publicly set out the timetable.

We do know some customers have started receiving notifications. Subscribers who get Paramount+ through their Three mobile account have been told their prices are going up from August 27, as spotted by ISPreview.

Whether that date applies across the board, or only to certain billing routes, isn’t clear. Annual subscribers will presumably stay on their current rate until renewal, as tends to be the case with these changes.

We’ve contacted Paramount for the full details and will update this article when we hear back.

What About Sky Cinema Customers?

If you get Paramount+ through Sky Cinema, the good news is that it’s still included at no extra cost – you continue to get the Basic with Ads tier for free.

The upgrade prices, however, have gone up.

Sky started offering these upgrades in May 2025, after months of complaints from Cinema subscribers who’d been quietly demoted to the ad-supported tier that January.

The deal was that you could pay a few pounds on top to get back to Standard, or go all the way to Premium.

Here’s how that’s changed:

• Standard: now £4/month extra, up from £3
• Premium: now £7/month extra, up from £6

The maths behind it hasn’t changed at all. Sky deducts the value of the free Basic tier from the tier you’re moving to – £5.99 plus £4 gets you to £9.99, and £5.99 plus £7 gets you to £12.99.

Sky is passing on the increase exactly, no more and no less.

Upgrades can be done through your Sky box or through Sky’s app or website.

How £12.99 Looks Against Everyone Else

At £5.99 a month, Paramount’s Basic with Ads now costs the same as Disney+ Standard with Ads, HBO Max Standard with Ads, and Netflix Standard with Ads.

At £9.99, Standard matches Disney+ Standard, HBO Max Standard, and Apple TV.

And at £12.99, Premium sits just £2 below Disney+ Premium and HBO Max Premium, both at £14.99, while undercutting Netflix Premium at £18.99.

The problem isn’t the numbers on their own – it’s what you get for them. Disney+ at £14.99 brings you Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, National Geographic, the FX and Hulu catalogue, LaLiga football and ESPN.

HBO Max at the same price brings The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Succession, The White Lotus and the Warner Bros. film library.

When Paramount+ introduced Premium at £10.99 in 2024, we noted it was putting itself up against services with considerably larger libraries. At £12.99, with HBO Max now in the UK too, that comparison has got harder rather than easier.

The annual plans are the exception, and they’re where the value case still holds. Premium at £115.99 a year works out at about £9.67 a month – one of the cheapest ways into a 4K, ad-free streaming service in the UK right now.

Standard at £88.99 comes to roughly £7.42 a month.

If you know you’re staying for the year, that’s a considerably better deal than the monthly price suggests.

Paramount Has Moved Before The Usual Season

Streaming price rises tend to cluster. Apple TV normally adjusts around September. Disney+ has gone in October or November two years running. Netflix has its own rhythm, usually following a US increase within weeks.

Paramount+ has arrived ahead of all of them this year – though Paramount+ left prices alone entirely in 2025.

Still, that’s an awkward moment to pick. Disney+ has spent this year going the other way – a no-strings promotion in April that cut all three tiers for three months, then a six-month saver in June that brought Premium down to £10.99 a month for anyone willing to commit – an offer that’s still running.

HBO Max, meanwhile, launched in March from £4.99 and is still in the phase where it needs to win people over rather than squeeze them.

And Netflix, despite raising US prices back in March, hasn’t put UK prices up this year at all – which, based on the pattern of previous years, is something of a surprise.

So Paramount+ is asking for more at precisely the moment its rivals are either discounting, establishing themselves, or holding steady.

But worry not – when the autumn increases arrive, Paramount+ won’t be on its own for long.

The Warner Bros. Discovery Deal In The Background

There’s also the much larger story running behind all of this.

Paramount Skydance, led by David Ellison, is attempting a $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery – the company behind HBO Max.

Earlier this month, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority cleared the deal on competition grounds, concluding that Netflix, Apple, Disney and Amazon Prime, along with BBC iPlayer and ITVX (which was bought by Sky’s owner), would provide enough competition after any merger.

Paramount won that bidding war after Netflix declined to raise its offer.

The deal isn’t happening any time soon, though. A coalition of 12 state attorneys general, led by California, sued in July to block it, and Paramount has agreed to hold off completion until June 1, 2027, or until those lawsuits are resolved.

Which leaves a curious situation for UK viewers. Paramount+ and HBO Max are currently priced within £2 of each other at the top end and compete directly for the same subscribers – and if this deal eventually completes, they’ll both belong to the same company.

Nothing about this price rise depends on that. But it does mean the competitive pressure keeping either service honest may not be permanent.

So What Should You Do?

If you’re on a monthly plan and you use Paramount+ regularly, the annual option is now considerably more attractive than it was. At an effective £9.67 a month for Premium, you would be paying less than the old monthly price for the same thing.

If you dip in and out – subscribing when a new Star Trek season lands, then cancelling – the monthly increase matters less than it looks. You’re paying £2 extra for the months you’re actually there.

And if you’re on Standard and mainly bothered about the ads, the gap between Basic with Ads at £5.99 and Standard at £9.99 is now £4 a month, or £48 a year, for advert-free viewing on one extra device.

That was a £3 gap before. Whether it’s worth it is a personal call, but it’s a bigger call than it used to be.

For more TV and streaming news, Sign up for our free newsletter.