As expected from the European experience, today Netflix has raised prices for its two most expensive plans. The Standard plan now costs 12.99 euros, and the Premium 17.99 euros in this third price increase, after those of 2017 and 2019.
Whether it is expensive or not is a subjective question. Objectively, what we can see is that since the US platform landed in Spain in 2015, its Premium plan, the equivalent of what its competitors now offer (for 4K), has risen so much in price that now you can subscribe to three of their greatest rivals at the same time for less money.
The Netflix Premium plan came for 11.99 euros offering 4K content and four simultaneous reproductions. Since then, it has become more expensive by 6 euros. Behind the rise there are more factors than inflation, since 11.99 euros in 2015 is only 12.64 euros in 2021, not 17.99 euros.
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A year of Netflix costs more than a year of Prime, Disney + and HBO Max
With the new price of the Premium subscription, a year of Netflix costs 215.88 euros. A year of Prime Video, Disney + and HBO Max, its three great international rivals in our market today, comes out, in sum, for 263.64 euros.
However, if we take advantage of the discounts offered by Disney, Amazon and HBO when paying for annual subscriptions, the figure drops to 194.88 euros. That is, annually, watching Netflix in 4K is going to cost 21 euros more than being able to watch all the content of those three services.
Even without annual discounts, watching Netflix costs the same as Disney + and HBO Max combined each month
Paying annually, Watching HBO Max and Disney + at the same time (13.24 euros) costs only 25 cents more than watching Netflix’s Standard plan (12.99 euros), and the savings are even greater if one of these two is exchanged for Amazon Prime Video, whose subscription also has other Prime advantages. Also, keep in mind that the Standard plan offers HD resolution, while all the competitors mentioned have 4K HDR. If you are not interested in the annual plans because you can choose every 30 days, the monthly payment of HBO Max and Disney + (8.99 euros each) is equal to that of Netflix Premium.
Netflix’s spending on content has more than tripled since 2016, when the company spent $ 6 billion. This year, according to their financial results, they plan to spend 17,000 million. The price increases probably respond to this increase in spending.
In addition, after having joked and even promoted that it is shared with friends, now the company seems launched in the search of increasing revenue per user, and you are testing restricting credentials from being shared. If the money does not arrive via user growth (in the United States and Canada it is even losing a quarter), it can arrive by earning more per account.
At the user level, it is undoubtedly a good time to try to save by planning what content we are going to see month by month, which is a good way to be able to see “everything”, although not everything at once.