YouTube Premium is about to get more expensive. It’s not happening in South Africa, or at least not right away. But pricing increases in the US are almost always followed by cost upgrades in other territories.
South Africa may already have had its turn, back in 2025, when the price escalated to R82/month. But American pricing is set to rise between R17 and R67 per subscription, and it’s not unreasonable to expect that Google might attempt similar customer-milking tactics elsewhere.
Paying a YouTube Premium
There doesn’t, at present, seem to be any specific reason for YouTube’s subscription fee to rise. The company isn’t adding more features or streams. Available functions also don’t appear to be altering. It’s just going to get pricier — perhaps to offset the cost of adding AI to the video streaming service.
That said, Premium in the States is quite a bit costlier than it is in South Africa. Subscribers also have access to a good deal more, which explains why SA pays around 85 bucks a month, and Americans shell out R235. Well, the Americans will continue to pay that for a couple more months, anyway. The cost of Premium will rise from R235 ($14) to R265 ($16). It’s not onerous, but a similar increase in South Africa will see ad-free YouTube rise into triple digits for the first time.
The service’s Family, Student, and Premium Lite plans are also going up, with YouTube Family rising by R66 ($4) a month. The increase is supposed to take effect from June this year. YouTube will be emailing affected subscribers 30 days before the pricing change.
Perhaps SA will get lucky and see a similar pricing gap to the previous one. 2025’s increase was the first since the service’s 2019 launch. But given how everything else in tech is getting more expensive, we expect Google to turn its attention to South African subscribers sooner rather than later.
