Netflix Quietly Removes The Cheapest Ad-free Plan In The US

Netflix Inc. NFLX has quietly nuked the cheapest ad-free plan in the US. The ‘Basic' plan is no longer available for subscription in the US, and only three subscription tiers are live on the Netflix website.

What Happened: Netflix has killed the ‘Basic' plan in the US. It was the cheapest ad-free subscription plan, at $9.99 per month. As a result, only three plans are available now – ‘Standard with ads', ‘Standard', and ‘Premium'.

See Also: ‘You Could Publish A Book’: Elon Musk Says Twitter Will Soon Let Users Publish Articles

The ‘Basic' plan was available for a long time – it was also the cheapest one before Netflix added the ad-supported tier at a lower price.

New or rejoining subscribers now have to choose between the ad-supported plan or the more expensive ‘Standard' and ‘Premium' plans, starting at $15.49 per month.

Not Surprising: Netflix killing its cheapest ad-free subscription plan is not surprising. Since January this year, The streaming giant has been encouraging new users to subscribe to the ad-supported plan or the more expensive ‘Standard' and ‘Premium' plans.

Users could still get the ‘Basic' plan until now by clicking on the "Want more options? See all plans" link while subscribing.

However, that option is gone, too. Netflix' has also removed details of the ‘Basic' plan from its support pages, confirming that it is no longer available.

Earlier in June, Netflix removed the ‘Basic' plan in Canada, too, in a bid to upsell its more expensive plans or push users to its ad-supported tier.

The decision to kill the ‘Basic' plan also coincides with the company's June quarter earnings which are scheduled to be published on July 19.

Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link.

Read Next: Marc Andreessen Thinks Repeating This Nuclear Power Mistake Will Be Catastrophic For AI