Netflix has made another price change, this time discontinuing its cheapest ad-free plan in the US and UK

The Basic plan previously offered ad-free streaming for $9.99. While it is no longer offered as an option to new subscribers, existing users of the plan can keep the service until they cancel or switch to another pricing plan. Netflix discontinued its Basic plan in Canada last month. At the time, it seemed inevitable that Netflix would roll out the price change to other regions.

Currently, when new subscribers visit the Netflix sign-up page, they are presented with only three options: the $6.99 ad-supported standard plan, the $15.49 ad-free standard tier, and the $19.99 ad-free premium plan.

By eliminating the basic plan, Netflix is encouraging subscribers who want an ad-free experience to subscribe to the more expensive plan. Alternatively, they can fall back to the ad-supported option launched six months ago, which as of May had about 5 million monthly active users worldwide. The company states that the average revenue generated by these subscribers is higher than that of the standard plan

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Netflix has been trying to improve its earnings since its disastrous Q1 2022 results. To that end, Netflix introduced lower-priced ad-supported plans and cracked down on password sharing to increase subscribers. In our experience, the latter has worked. And Netflix may confirm it in its July 19 quarterly earnings report. Analysts expect the company to gain 1.8 million new subscribers, pushing total users to 234.5 million.