UPDATE 5/24: Netflix reveals more details about account sharing, including limits on just how many people you can add to your account, and how it plans to monitor accounts for freeloaders.
Original Story:
If you want to continue sharing your Netflix account in the US, don’t expect it to be cheap.
Netflix today revealed how much it’ll charge US subscribers who want to let friends and family outside their household stream from the same account: $7.99 per month for each extra user.
Netflix says it will send emails “to members who are sharing Netflix outside their household in the United States.” Affected subscribers can expect to receive the email as soon as today.
“Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with — your household,” the email reads, according to a copy from the company. The email then advises subscribers to help freeloaders transfer their profile to their own paid Netflix account.
The alternative is the “buy an extra member” option. Netflix has already been offering this paid sharing feature in other markets, but the company priced it at $2.99 per month.
So $7.99 price is significantly higher than expected. It’s also a dollar more than Netflix’s most affordable plan, the ad-supported tier, which costs $6.99. In a support document, Netflix says "extra members cannot be added to ad-supported plans."
Another restriction: "The extra member must be activated in the same country where the account owner created their account."
Hence, it looks like Netflix is trying to push account sharers to the ad-supported plan, which is proving to be quite lucrative for the company, thanks to the commercials. Last month, the streaming giant reported that it’s generating a higher "Average Revenue per Membership" in the US through the ad-based tier than via its “Standard” plan, which costs $15.49 a month.
The email also signals Netflix’s crackdown on account-sharing is imminent. The company has yet to mention an exact date on when it’ll start restricting freeloaders from accessing their Netflix accounts. But the crackdown is slated to occur in Q2.
"No specific date to share, but members will start to see notifications in the product around this soon," Netflix told PCMag.