The short version: on April 10, 2026 Google raised YouTube Premium’s US prices — Individual from $13.99 to $15.99 a month when billed on the web, and Family from $22.99 to $26.99 (reported by USA Today on April 10 and Quartz on April 13, 2026). If you subscribe inside the iOS app, your Individual rate is now $20.99 (our App Store catalog check, August 29, 2026). Nothing about the product changed; only the invoice did.
Before and after
| Plan | Before (web) | After, April 10 2026 (web) | Through Apple, Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual | $13.99/mo | $15.99/mo | $20.99/mo |
| Family | $22.99/mo | $26.99/mo | $34.99/mo |
| Student | $7.99/mo | $8.99/mo | — |
| Annual Individual | $149.99/yr | $159.99/yr | — |
Web figures come from coverage of Google’s April 10, 2026 announcement (USA Today, Android Authority); the Apple column is our own dated App Store catalog verification. New subscribers paid the new amounts immediately; existing subscribers were migrated at their June 2026 renewal.
Who actually got hit
Individual and Family took the headline increases — $24 and $48 a year respectively on web billing. Student rose only a dollar, and Lite landed at $8.99. The quiet loser is anyone billed through Apple: the same April repricing pushed the App Store rate of Individual to $20.99, which is $5 more per month than the identical subscription bought at youtube.com — about $60 a year for zero extra features.
What you can do about it
- Check out on the web, not in the app. Cancel in the iOS app, resubscribe in a browser at youtube.com. Same account, same features, $60/year back. We explain why the two checkouts diverge in is YouTube Premium cheaper on iOS or web?, and the general playbook applies well beyond this one service — see how to avoid the Apple tax.
- Run the family math honestly. Web-billed Family is $26.99/month for up to five members of one household. At full occupancy that is under $5.40 per person — less than half the solo rate even after the hike. At four members it is ~$6.75 each; at three, exactly $9. The plan only wins if the seats actually fill.
- Downgrade to Lite ($8.99). You keep ad removal across video and Shorts, which for most subscribers is the entire point. You lose Music, background play, and downloads. If you never used those, paying $15.99 after the hike buys you nothing extra.
- Students stay cheap-ish: $8.99/month, verified yearly and capped at four years. If you qualify, the increase barely touches you.
- Or leave. At $15.99 × 12 ≈ $192/year, cancelling is a defensible answer, especially with desktop ad blockers free. Steps and pitfalls in how to cancel YouTube Premium — note that annual plans cannot be paused.
Honest context
This is Google’s second major US increase in recent memory, and the pattern is familiar from Netflix and Spotify: raise prices, add a cheaper stripped-down tier, and bet that inertia keeps most subscribers. The bet usually works. What changed in 2026 is that the spread between checkout routes now matters as much as the sticker price — the difference between web and Apple billing ($60/year) is bigger than this entire hike for Individual.
One thing we will not tell you: that moving countries fixes this. Nigeria’s Individual plan is $1.63 and India’s around $3 in our live country table, but getting those rates requires genuinely living there — payment methods, address checks, and terms of service all push back. Treat them as context for how much of the US price is regional pricing power, not as a loophole.
Every number on this page carries its source date; we recheck against the live table and update the figures above when Google moves again.