YouTube is expanding its more affordable Premium Lite $7.99 per month subscription service with new features, including the ability to download videos for offline access and watch videos in the background, even if the screen is off or you’re using other apps. These options were previously only available to its customers complete planwhich costs $13.99 per month.
The company said the additions were a result of user feedback, as customers in its pilot program shared that they wanted these specific features to make the subscription more attractive.
Launched last March, YouTube Premium Lite introduced a more modestly priced subscription tier that would remove ads from “more” videos on the platform, including those in popular industries such as gaming, fashion, beauty, cooking, news and more. However, ads will continue to appear on music content and music videos. Additionally, 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 the full Premium membership. It will also likely make the Lite tier more attractive to customers who didn’t just want to pay for ad-free content, but wanted other upgrades as well.
The Lite subscription level was first introduced in Thailand, Germany and Australia in the past come to the US last year. It is now available in many other world marketsincluding Canada, Brazil, UK, India, Mexico and other parts of Europe and Asia.
YouTube subscription activity is steadily increasing. Combined with advertising, YouTube’s total revenue will reach $60 billion in 2025, according to information shared by parent company Alphabet earlier this month during its fourth-quarter earnings call.
The company also reported that YouTube ad revenue rose 9% to $11.38 billion in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, revenue from the subscriptions, platforms and devices group rose 17% to $13.6 billion in the fourth quarter, 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 in March 2025. The company did not share an updated metric during its fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month, but said it now has more than 325 million paid subscriptions to consumer services, including YouTube Premium and others such as Google One.
