YouTube Premium Just Got More Expensive — Is Your Family's Plan Still Worth It?

YouTube Premium quietly raised its prices again this April — and if you've got a family plan, you're now paying £26.99 a month instead of £22.99. That's nearly £49 more per year for the same service you had last month.

It's the third streaming price hike of 2026, following Netflix in March and Prime Video before that. At some point, the cumulative effect on your household budget stops being a minor inconvenience and starts being a real decision worth making.

Here's how to think through it.

What Actually Changed

YouTube raised prices across every tier in April 2026:

The family plan increase hurts most — especially if you're already splitting multiple streaming costs across the household. £26.99 is now competitive with a full Netflix Standard subscription, which at least gives you TV shows and films alongside the ad-free YouTube experience.

The Honest Question: Is Anyone Actually Using It?

This is the question most families skip. Before you decide what to do, spend five minutes checking who in your household actually benefits from Premium's core features:

Ad-free viewing. The main reason most people pay. If your family watches a lot of YouTube — tutorials, cooking channels, kids' content — ads genuinely interrupt the experience. If it's occasional background music or the odd video, you'll barely notice them.

Background play. YouTube keeps playing when your phone screen is off. Useful if you use it for music or podcasts on the go. If your family has separate Spotify or Apple Music plans, this feature probably duplicates something you're already paying for.

YouTube Music included. The family plan includes YouTube Music for all members. But again — if everyone's already on Spotify Family or Apple Music, this is a benefit nobody's using.

Offline downloads. Handy for travel or areas with poor signal. A real perk for some families, irrelevant for others.

The honest answer for a lot of households is that one or two people use Premium regularly, while the other family members barely touch it.

Three Options Worth Considering

1. Stay on the Family Plan — But Make It Earn Its Keep

If you have 4–6 people actually using ad-free YouTube, £26.99 split between you works out at under £4.50 per person per month. That's genuinely good value compared to individual plans.

The key is making sure everyone's account is actually linked to the family group. SubManager's family sharing view is useful here — you can see the subscription cost alongside everything else your household is paying for, which makes it easier to have a conversation about whether it's pulling its weight.

2. Downgrade to Premium Lite

At £8.99/month for an individual or scaling down from family, Premium Lite removes ads from YouTube but drops background play, downloads, and YouTube Music. If the main frustration in your house is ad interruptions — especially on kids' content — this might be a simpler, cheaper fix.

3. Cancel and Go Free

Yes, YouTube with ads is still free. For families who mainly use YouTube casually — not daily, not for long sessions — going back to the free tier is a perfectly reasonable choice. The ads are more frequent than they used to be, but they're manageable.

If you cancel, SubManager will log it and you'll be able to track the monthly saving against the rest of your subscriptions. Small savings add up quickly when streaming services keep raising prices.

The Bigger Picture: Subscription Creep in 2026

YouTube Premium isn't the only one. Between January and April 2026 alone:

• Netflix Standard went from £17.99 to £19.99
• Prime Video ad-free tier went from £2.99 to £4.99
• YouTube Premium Family went from £22.99 to £26.99

If your family subscribes to all three, you're now paying roughly £12 more per month than you were at the start of the year — without any new features to show for it.

This is exactly the kind of gradual creep that SubManager's price alerts are designed to catch. When a charge amount changes, you get notified before the billing cycle so you can make a deliberate decision rather than just absorbing the increase on autopilot.

What We'd Do

If your family uses YouTube heavily (daily, for multiple members), the Family Plan at £26.99 is still reasonable. But it's worth reviewing every six months — the value calculation changes as services add and remove features.

If only one or two people watch regularly, downgrade to individual plans or cancel entirely. The £48 annual increase is a good enough reason to take 10 minutes to check.

And if you haven't reviewed your full subscription stack recently, April is a good time. Three major streaming price hikes in three months is a prompt worth taking seriously.

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SubManager helps your family track all subscriptions in one place — including price alerts when charges change. Available on iOS, Android, and web at submanager.ch.