STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- If you are among the millions of Americans who lend their Netflix account information to various friends and family members, it’s about to start costing you.
On Tuesday, the popular streaming platform announced that it will start charging subscribers an additional fee to share their Netflix account with people living outside their household.
“We’ve landed on a thoughtful approach to monetize account sharing, and we’ll begin rolling this out more broadly starting in early 2023,” Netflix wrote in a letter to shareholders. “After listening to consumer feedback, we are going to offer the ability for borrowers to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for sharers to manage their devices more easily and to create sub-accounts (’extra member’), if they want to pay for family or friends.”
It’s currently unclear what the exact fee will be for each additional sub-account, though a piloted version of the feature launched earlier this year could offer some insight.
Netflix began testing the monetization strategy in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru — allowing users there to add sub-accounts for up to two people they don’t live with — each with their own profile, personalized recommendations, login and password — at a price of $2.99 each.
“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans,” Chengyi Long, director of product innovation at Netflix, wrote in a blog post about the test. “While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households — impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”
The new feature is not the first time that Netflix has attempted anti-sharing tactics to encourage new subscriptions and bolster revenue.
In 2021, the company launched a global test that displayed a warning message to duplicate users, signaling the need to verify who was watching. Suspected sharers were offered the option of receiving an email or text verification code to authenticate the log-in or sign up for a new Netflix account.
The additional account-sharing fee will come roughly one year after the company raised the prices for all of its available plans.
In January, Netflix increased the price of its monthly streaming subscription by $1 to $2 per month depending on a user’s plan.
The basic plan that allows for just one stream in standard definition rose to $9.99 per month, an increase of $1 per month.
The standard plan — which allows for two streams at the same time and HD streaming — went up from $13.99 to $15.49 per month in the United States.
The price of Netflix’s premium plan, which allows for four streams at a time and streaming in ultra HD, was increased from $17.99 to $19.99 per month.
