The price gap between ad-supported and ad-free subscription tiers for the largest global streamers has widened over time, as advertising and ad tiers become more vital to SVOD growth and consumers may be reaching a ceiling on what they’re willing to pay for streaming services.
The fresh findings come from Ampere Analysis, which also determined Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video have reined in the size of their respective price increases in recent years, potentially signaling consumer limits on streaming TV spending.
Per Ampere, average price increases across Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon have fallen from 24% bumps of the previous subscription price in 2023-2024 to 14% increase in 2025-2026.
In dollar terms, average price increase across plan tiers for the three providers have declined from $1.67 to $1.54 over the same period. Across the three-year period, the average individual price increase was $1.60 or equivalent to 17% of the previous price.
While all have decreased, price hikes across the three major streamers over the time period have varied.
Netflix’s price bumps remaining broadly stable over the past three years, per Ampere, while Disney+ has had the clearest shift towards more modest price increased. Amazon’s Prime Video has made the fewest price increases over the three-year period, which the firm believes likely reflects the broader role of a Prime subscription within the e-commerce giant’s retail business.
Still, Ampere takes this average price bump pull back as a signal that streamers are “moving closer to the limits of consumers’ willingness to pay, leaving less headroom for larger price increases in the future.”
This aligns with recent separate research, including Hub Entertainment Research which found consumers are paying closer attention to wallets and increasingly prioritizing price as a leading factor as they weigh the value of streaming TV services.
And potentially less headroom on raising SVOD prices in the future, coupled with other industry factors, could be impacting how different types of plans or tiers are priced.
Plan price gap widens as advertising becomes more key to growth
As prior analysis from PwC has shown, price increases from subscription streamers have become a regular part of the playbook – but the streaming video industry at large is competitive and maturing and subscriber growth in general is expected to slow, with advertising and ad tiers expected to be a key avenue and driver of future streaming service revenue growth.
Ampere’s own earlier research found that ad tiers are increasingly key to North American streaming service revenue. The firm estimates Ampere estimates that North American streaming ad-supported video tier revenue will exceed $45 billion this year and expects ad tiers to account for 54% total subscription streaming service revenues in the region by the end of 2026. That’s up from $12.2 billion in ad tier revenue in 2022.
With that in mind, major SVODs have employed larger price increases for ad-free tiers than ad-supported ones, as they seek to keep the latter attractively priced and build up ad tier subscriber bases needed to help secure not just subscription but advertising revenue.
According to Ampere, over the past three years ad-free tiers on the three SVODs have seen average price increase of $1.62 compared to $1.21 for ad-supported tiers.
In markets offering ad-supported tiers, the average price difference between those and ad-free plans has grown from $4.53 in August 2023-July 2024 to $5.35 in August 2025-July 2026 globally across the three streamers of Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Netflix.
In the U.S. the price gap is even more marked for some. For example, Netflix in the U.S. the price difference between the streamers’ Standard with Ads plan and the Standard ad-free tier for new subscribers grew from $8.50 in August 2023 to $11 in July 2026.
Ampere’s Jaanika Juntson, senior research manager, noted that declines in average price increases and the wider gap between plans come as streamers are diversifying how they monetize audiences.
“Advertising is an increasingly important revenue stream, reducing reliance on subscription pricing alone, while password-sharing crackdowns allow streamers to generate more value from existing audiences through extra member slots,” commented Juntson. “As streaming businesses mature, revenue growth is becoming less reliant on price increases, while intense competition is also making streamers increasingly mindful of how they are positioned against rivals.”
Price differences key for Netflix. Does it need to go further?
TVREV’s Alan Wolk has encouraged and written about the rationale behind this ad-free, ad-supported SVOD plan price gap notion or approach before.
He has also discussed the concept of “boiling the frog” where streamers started with artificially lower prices to build up their bases but must and do regularly make smaller price increases (particularly on ad-free plans) in a cadence and size that’s hoped to go largely unnoticed by subscribers.
In an April column on the topic written shortly after Amazon and Netflix both raised prices and further widened the gap between ad-free and ad-supported plans, the analyst said the stakes are much higher for Netflix which has had challenges getting people onto its plan with ads.
One of the influencing factors, per Wolk, was that the price difference between Netflix’s ad-free and ad-supported plans was not big enough before and still thinks it might need to be steeper.
“For someone who only planned to subscribe for a few months to watch a particular show, the price gap was not enough to make them consider the ad-supported product.
And while the SVOD’s new price gap— $20 for ad-free, $9 for ad-supported—may be enough to convince some people, my gut says they will need to make that gap considerably wider to get more people to throw in the ad-free towel. I’m thinking $25/month or even $30, especially if the $30 will get you things like 4K and extra streams that are in the current $27/month “Premium” tier,” he wrote.
However, the issue is not just one for Netflix, he noted.
“All of the SVOD services with ad-supported tiers are going to have to do some form of this in order to drive more viewers off of their ad-free service.,” Wolk continued.
Still, the analyst warned that price increases on ad-free plans can’t continue indefinitely before consumers hit their limit, which we’ve seen signal of in Ampere’s latest analysis and is part of the reason for the focus on advertising businesses as well as Wolk’s recommendation that all major SVODs launch some sort of completely free ad-supported tier.
“It lets you expand your ad-supported base. Promote your older programs. And provides an easy way to re-enroll former subscribers by offering them come-on deals,” he advised in April.
As streamers seek new ways to drive growth, including via advertising, a free tier or FAST service is something Netflix and most recently Disney have said they’re exploring or considering.