The rate hike affects the U.S., Canada, and parts of Latin America, and follows a similar increase in Europe in August. At the time, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings confirmed the prices of current subscriptions wouldn’t be changing this quarter and price increases would actually happen gradually over the next 10 years.
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A spokesperson for Netflix said that to continue adding additional movies and TV shows including many original titles of Netflix, the company is modestly increasing the price of a few new members in Canada, the US and Latin America. (Initial reports said October 2016, but others seem to only have a price guarantee until their current Netflix cycle is up.) You can take a look at the new pricing, below. However, the increase does affect those whose plan lets two persons use the subscription at the same time. Longtime customers who still pay $7.99 a month will hold onto that rate until at least May 2016. Still, the uptick makes Netflix more expensive than Amazon Prime, which breaks down to $8/month, and Hulu, whose standard streaming package is $8/month, though for $14 you can kill the ads. Still, Netflixs cost is comparable to the other subscription streaming services. That’s right, the $8.99/mo plan, which allows for HD streaming on two screens simultaneously, is now the $9.99/mo plan.
That window, however, appears to be closing soon, though there’s been no official word from Netflix on when to expect the change (or any comment about this new price hike for new customers).
Netflix reasoned that the fee increase comes as the service looks to expand its library of original and licensed content.
This is the second recent price increase of $1 this year.
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Netflix has yet to send official notifications to its subscribers, alerting them of the price increase, but is expected to do so shortly. The company has $4.3 billion in programming costs over the next year, and nearly $5 billion more for the following three years.
