Paramount Global has now confirmed that the cost of Paramount Plus will increase within the next few months. While the exact date that the price increase will take effect wasn’t provided, the cost of the increase was. As to be expected, those signed up to the ad-free Premium plan will be the most impacted. However, they will also be gaining additional content as well.
At present, Paramount Plus offers two main plans to choose from – Essential and Premium. The main difference between these two plans is the use of ads. Essential is an ad-supported plan and currently costs $4.99 per month. Premium is the ad-free option and currently costs $9.99 per month.
Soon, however, the cost of both plans will be increasing in both the US and in international markets. In the US, the Essential plan will increase by $1 to $5.99 per month while the cost of the Premium plan will increase by $2 to $11.99 per month. Paramount Global didn’t specific when the price increase will be applied but did say that it will be happening later in 2023.
In addition, Paramount Global confirmed that the price increase will apply to both new and existing users when it eventually goes live.
The price change is designed to arrive around the same time that Paramount Plus makes its big Showtime integration change. Over the past few months, Paramount Plus and Showtime have been slowly growing closer and it was already confirmed that the two would fully integrate through the introduction of a new ‘Paramount Plus with Showtime’ tier in 2023.
Due to this, the change in pricing won’t simply be a matter of the Premium plan costing more. Instead, subscribers to the Premium Paramount Plus with Showtime plan will be getting a lot more content than they were before, albeit at a higher monthly price.
For those currently paying separately for Paramount Plus and Showtime, as well as many of those that are currently bundling the two services together, they will likely see a decrease in their monthly cost. Furthermore, Paramount Global has indicated that limited-time deals and promotions will continue to be available to those signing up to the service for the first time.
The confirmation of the price increase came during the company’s latest earnings call (available to listen to here). The release of the company’s fourth quarter results confirmed Paramount Plus added 9.9 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2022, taking the overall total number of subscribers to almost 56 million.
