Paying for YouTube not worth it even before new price hike

You don’t have to pay for YouTube to use it, but there’s no doubt about the benefits of doing so. YouTube Premium offers an ad-free experience, loads of useful time-saving features, and convenience boosts if you use it across multiple devices. Oh, and YouTube Music Premium is available, too. Clearly, Premium invites a “premium” experience compared to the free tier, but has paying for this privilege become a necessity?

My colleague Joe Maring argues in a recent piece that “free YouTube no longer makes any sense” given the platform’s rise of ad length and frequency, but do you agree? Or, better yet, what does your wallet think?

We ran a survey to see how many of our readers pay for YouTube in 2026; you can view the results below.

Over 2,900 readers voted on this poll, and an overwhelming majority is leaning towards one answer in particular. Around 65% of the vote, nearly two-thirds of respondents, “refuse to pay for YouTube.” Given the comments included in Joe’s article, plenty of readers are not giving Google any cash out of principle.

“YouTube has a better chance of seeing god than they do of me ever paying them for YouTube,” writes reader freejazz38.

Commenter jimfeatherstone1 offers a similar, albeit slightly less dramatic view.

I’ll tell you why I won’t pay. I’m tired of giving my money to these money grubbing snakes!

Then there’s the other non-ad-related issue plaguing YouTube: the quality of modern content. Reader diggydog01 comments:

Paid YouTube sucks too, you know. At the end of the day, all of the “content” their obsolete recommendations/search algorithms shove down your throat is just sponsored shill videos and often literal TV-style commercials – which still have the audacity to pack over half their runtime with additional in-video ad reads and self-promotion. It’s like paying to watch the Home Shopping Network, if the home shopping network stopped every 2 minutes to run extra commercials for other products in the middle of their infomercial.

Others opt for non-Premium fixes to these issues and skirt YouTube’s other annoyances by using third-party tools, such as ad-blocking apps and third-party YouTube apps. In a January survey, we found that a large share of respondents also preferred alternative apps to the official YouTube client.

However, not everyone sees YouTube Premium as a terrible investment. Notably, around 29% of respondents pay for YouTube Premium — that’s still a fairly large portion paying $13.99/month at the time we ran this survey. Like Joe, plenty of our readers see it as a worthy trade. Reader julius.paz writes:

YouTube Premium has been one of my best investments. I use it for everything: learning how to fix things, watching documentaries, and enjoying great movies. The ad-free experience is a game-changer and YouTube Music is my go-to in my man cave loft and during my driving. It’s a great way to stay informed and entertained without having to deal with the constant stress of the daily news and negativity. And like the famous phrase: “You’ll get what you pay for” and probably even worse if you don’t pay anything.

Commenter sonomasenior highlights that users can save by paying for the annual Premium subscription, stripping around $28 in yearly payments (at the time of this survey) from one’s bill.

Interestingly, just 3% of readers pay for YouTube Premium Lite, while another 3% are not paying for YouTube yet, but are “going to.”

Importantly, there has been a marked development in the YouTube Premium story since we ran our survey.

The company quietly announced last week a 14% price hike in the US for the standard Premium tier, raising the monthly fee from $13.99 to $15.99. This jumps to 17% for the family plan and 12.5% to the Lite tier. See the full breakdown in the table below.

Given this news landed after we published our survey, we want to know how many of you have perhaps changed your stance on YouTube Premium. Are you still planning to pay for it going forward? Be sure to express your views in the comments section, and vote in the poll below.

While I completely understand why some believe YouTube Premium is good value, I can’t warrant paying for a service that doesn’t largely improve my personal viewing experience. Yes, ad-blocking is a big plus, but I can easily get around it. And, even if I pay for Premium, I don’t get value-ads, like DeArrow for genuine, sanitized thumbnails and SponsorBlock, which keeps the meat of the video content in focus. Finally, despite my affection for the service, I don’t use YouTube Music and likely never will. The latest price increase is perhaps just the final nail in the coffin for my relationship with YouTube Premium.