YouTube is expanding its more affordable $7.99 per month Premium Lite subscription service with new features, including the ability to download videos for offline access and watch videos in the background even when the screen is off or you’re using other apps. These options were previously only available to customers on its full plan, which costs $13.99 per month.
The company said these additions were the result of user feedback, as customers in its pilot program shared that they wanted these specific features to make subscriptions more attractive.
Launched last March, YouTube Premium Lite introduced a lower-priced subscription tier that would remove ads from “most” videos on the platform, including those in popular industries such as gaming, fashion, beauty, cooking, news and more. However, ads will continue to appear for music content and music videos. In addition, customers on the Lite plan will not be able to access the ad-free YouTube Music app.
With the arrival of these new features, ad-free music content will now be the only reason to upgrade to a full Premium subscription. It will also likely make the Lite tier more attractive to customers who didn’t just want to pay for ad-free content, but also wanted additional upgrades.
The Lite subscription tier was first introduced in Thailand, Germany and Australia before coming to the US last year. It is now available in a number of other global markets, including Canada, Brazil, the UK, India, Mexico and other parts of Europe and Asia.
The YouTube subscription business is growing steadily. Combined with ads, YouTube’s total revenue will reach $60 billion in 2025, according to information parent Alphabet shared during its fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month.
The company also reported that YouTube’s ad revenue rose 9% to $11.38 billion in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, revenue for the “subscriptions, platforms and devices” group rose 17% to $13.6 billion in Q4, which the company attributed to strong growth in YouTube subscriptions, particularly YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.
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Alphabet reported more than 125 million YouTube Music and YouTube Premium users worldwide by March 2025. The company didn’t share an updated metric during its fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month, but said it now has more than 325 million paid subscriptions across consumer services, including YouTube Premium and others like Google One.