HBO Max has now raised the price of its ad-free subscription by $1 to $15.99 per month. The price increase is already in effect so anyone attempting to sign up to the streaming service today will be signing up at the higher rate. At present, none of the other plan options appear to have been affected by the change.
Ever since launch, the main HBO Max plan has been priced at $14.99 per month. One of the benefits of this price is that it was the same as the cost of the standard HBO subscription. In other words, anyone thinking about signing up to HBO or HBO Max would get significantly more content for the same price with a Max subscription.
However, HBO Max has now increased the price of this plan by $1 per month. The new price is already in effect and can be seen when attempting to sign up through the HBO Max website or any of the platform apps. For those already signed up to the service, they can expect their monthly bill to increase by $1 on or after February 11th, with the exact date dependent on their individual billing cycle.
Interestingly, the price of the annual plan doesn’t appear to have been affected by this change and is still priced at $149.99 per year. Although signing up to the annual plan does require the full $149.99 to be paid in full, it does result in an average monthly price of $12.49.
Also, the ad-supported version of HBO Max hasn’t been affected by the price change either. Since HBO Max started offering a ‘with ads’ tier, the ad-supported plan has been priced at $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year. The ad-supported plan not only includes ads before and during shows, but also misses out on the option to download titles to watch offline, and the ability to stream select movies in 4K.
In reality, the ad duration and frequency is pretty good on HBO Max and especially when compared to ad-supported tiers from other streaming services and free services in general. As a result, whether it is now worth paying an extra $6 per month for the ad-free plan is even more questionable than before.
Still, for those that do want ad-free, or any of the other benefits that come with the more expensive plan, it may be worth considering the annual subscription before it also sees an increase in price.
