Elon Musk X raised prices for his ad-free Premium+ subscription to $22 per month, up from $16 previously (from $168 to $229 per year). TechCrunch reported. That's a 37.5 percent increase, the largest since Elon Musk acquired the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022.
One of the stated reasons for the upgrade is that Premium+ is now “completely ad-free,” with X claiming it's a “significant improvement” over the previous ad-free experience. Several other features are also promised. “Premium+ subscribers will receive higher priority support from @Premium, access to new features such as Radar (X's advanced search tool), and higher limits on our most advanced Grok AI models,” the company wrote in a post. man page article. X also promised that more subscription revenue would be shared with creators.
Premium+ prices are also rising by a similar amount in Europe, the UK, Canada and Australia. Existing monthly subscription users will keep their current rates until January 20, while prices for other tiers (Basic and Premium) will remain unchanged.
X first introduced a Premium+ subscription tier coming in October 2023, promising ad-free and time-honored subscriptions, as well as existing Premium perks like the blue tick. However, users quickly noticed that ads were appearing in other places in X (profiles, replies, Review, etc.). A further update in August 2024 promised to eliminate them too, but X said that users will still see “random branded content in less common places.” Now it looks like they too will be defeated.
X has as reported has lost 2.7 million active users in the past two months, while rival Bluesky has gained almost as many in that period. This has likely resulted in some loss of advertising revenue, which the platform may be hoping to offset by raising subscription prices.