According to Deadline, Warner Bros. Discovery is increasing the price of the Discovery+ monthly subscription by one dollar more. The streaming service will now be $5.99 with ads and $9.99 for no ads for new subscribers. Current members will view the change on or after February 7 in their next billing cycle. The original news came from a Warner Bros. Discovery press release.
As stated by Deadline, many customers expressed they wanted a cheaper option for streaming content such as Evil Lives Here, Gold Rush, Home Town, Moonshiners and 90 Day: The Last Resort but did not want to pay triple the price with Warner Bros. and HBO media. Therefore, WBD made the decision to leave Discovery+ as is, a stand-alone digital streaming service. Previously, Discovery+ was merged with the previously-known HBO Max to create Max in 2023.
Although the company did not disclose specific subscriber numbers for Discovery+, WBD has claimed it has been profitable. Max increased their subscription pricing in June last year to $16.99, according to Mxdwn.In August 2024, Mxdwn reported that Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ changed from $7.99 month to $9.99 for the ad plan, and for the no-ad plan that started in October of last year, Disney raised it by $2, now being $15.99. Hulu’s ad subscription was also increased by $2 to $9.99 per month. The no-ad tier increased by $1 to $18.99 per month. The ESPN+ pricing resulted in $11.99 per month, a $1 increase. Paramount+ was also guilty of changing their prices from a $1 increase to $12.99 for ad-free content, and the ad plan went from $2 to $7.99 per Mxdwn. In 2023, Mxdwn reported that the Discovery+ plan with ads was $4.99, and the ad-free plan was $8.99. The original price of the ad-free plan of the streaming service was $6.99. Most of the price increases resulted from competition with linear pay-TV, which brought in more money and knowledge in marketing, as noted by Deadline.