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Netflix Standard Plan Gets $1 Price Hike

 & David Murphy Freelancer

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Bad news, new Netflix members. You're going to have to save a little more couch change—or have some friends contribute another buck to your monthly swear jar—in order to pay for Netflix.

Netflix has increased the price of its Standard subscription from $8.99 to $9.99 for new members, which allows two concurrent streams and HD streaming. If you want to save some cash, the $7.99 Basic package with no HD and one stream per account is still available, while four concurrent streams costs $11.99 per month.

Those who are already paying $8.99 per month will retain that price for 12 months.

"To continue adding more TV shows and movies including many Netflix original titles, we are modestly raising the price for some new members in the U.S., Canada and Latin America," Netflix said in a statement.

Netflix last increased its prices in 2014, when the price of a Standard account went from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. Some people are still paying $7.99 per month, though, since Netflix guaranteed that price for existing users for two years. Those customers will likely see their monthly fee increase to $9.99 in May 2016.

According to Bloomberg, Netflix has to deal with a not-so-insignificant amount of programming costs right now—about $4.3 billion or so over the next year, and $5 billion over the next three years.

Even at $10 per month, Netflix's two-stream plan is still cheaper than the competition: Hulu costs $12 monthly for its ad-free streaming service, HBO Now costs $15, and Showtime's streaming service costs $11 monthly.

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 5:30 p.m. ET with comment from Netflix.

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David Murphy

David Murphy

Freelancer

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month gig turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he later rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors. For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).

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