South Africa has been lucky when it comes to Netflix price increases. We’ve seen one uptick in costs since the service launched, dodging the January 2022 increase that much of the rest of its customers were nailed with. Will we be lucky again?
That… depends. The news that Netflix plans to hike costs isn’t new, but this time it’s come directly from the streamer. During the company’s recent financial results call, it announced that its Basic and Premium plans would increase, starting in the States.
Paying Netflix’s price
Those two plans will increase by $2 each (about forty bucks), climbing from $10/m to $12/m for the Basic plan and from $20/m to $23/m for the Premium plan. If you were to carry that logic over to South Africa, a theoretical price increase would see Basic go from R100/m to R120/m and Premium from R200/m to R220/m. Why? Because the company seems to be hiking costs based on local currency and not by a set amount. At least, that’s what the pending UK and France price increases suggest.
Netflix hasn’t made any plans for a South African price increase official but, based on Disney+’s recent increase and the company’s stated intention to hike costs because of the SAG-AFTRA strike, this country is ripe for a renegotiation on what streamed entertainment should cost. If there’s any consolation, it’s that there’s no change planned for the Standard plan or the company’s ad-supported tier, which we still don’t have here. It’s likely that our local Mobile tier would remain unaffected too.
