PRICE HIKE: YouTube TV Announces Major Price Increase for 2025 – Technologist

Another day, another live TV streaming service announcing a price increase.

This time, it’s one of the most popular services on the market: YouTube TV.

Team Clark’s choice as “top overall” live TV streaming and money expert Clark Howard’s personal live TV subscription is going to get more expensive in 2025.

Let’s take a look at the details.

YouTube TV Will Increase Price By 13.7 Percent in 2025

As you set your personal budget for 2025, YouTube TV subscribers can expect to pay about 13.7% more for the base subscription.

YouTube TV’s base subscription package pricing will increase by $10 per month, from $72.99 to $82.99, beginning in January.

And, unfortunately, there was no accompanying news of additional channels or features to come along with this price hike.

An email was sent to subscribers on December 12, 2024 notifying them of the pricing changes and citing generic reasons for the increase:

“To keep up with the rising cost of content and the investments we make in the quality of our service, we’re updating our monthly price from $72.99/month to $82.99/month starting January 13, 2025,” the statement said. “We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we realize this has an impact on our members. We are committed to bringing you features that are changing the way we watch live TV, like unlimited DVR storage and multiview, and supporting YouTube TV’s breadth of content and vast on-demand library of movies and shows.”

For existing subscribers, this change will go into effect for the first billing cycle on or after January 13, 2025. And, if you plan to stick with it after this increase, you can expect to pay $120 more for your live TV in 2025.

For new subscribers, the new pricing is already in effect. However, YouTube is softening the blow by offering a promotion that will give new subscribers the service for $59.99 for the first three months.

Is YouTube TV Still Worth It in 2025?

This price increase leaves us to question: Should you pay $83 plus tax to continue watching live streaming TV in 2025?

It’d be easy to “rage quit” the service based on this significant price increase, but there are some factors to consider:

• Competitors are raising prices, too. If this was a standalone price increase, it’d be easy to recommend leaving YouTube TV for a service that offers a better deal. But it’s worth noting that this isn’t an isolated incident. Nearly every live TV streaming competitor (including Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV and DIRECTV STREAM) has instituted some sort of price increase of their own in recent months. In fact, YouTube TV was one of the lone holdouts at its existing price point for 2024.
• YouTube TV still has most of the key sports channels and features. Trimming the cost of your live TV streaming subscription for a skinnier bundle of channels with a service like Philo or Sling TV will help you wallet, but it may cost you access to live sports and news.

The Decision Likely Comes Down to Sports

The reality is: For many people, paying for a live TV service in 2025 is all about live sports.

If you’re a sports fan who can’t live without access to ESPN and the like, you’re going to have to pay for a live streaming package that carries a heftier price tag. That’s going to be true whether it’s YouTube TV or a competitor. The annoying part of this price increase for sports fans is that YouTube TV still lacks access to many of the regional sports networks (RSNs) that feature local baseball, hockey and basketball teams. You may find that you either have to pay for a standalone subscription to stream these, or pay even more than this new YouTube TV price to receive your RSN via Fubo TV or DIRECTV STREAM.

If you’re not a sports fan, you’ve likely figured out that most of the top TV shows are available on some sort of video streaming service (such as Netflix, Prime Video, Peacock, Paramount+ or Max) that has a monthly subscription price much more palatable than YouTube TV. This price increase could be your signal to get out of the live TV bill in 2025.

Don’t Dismiss “Free” in 2025

If you do decide to trim the live TV bill in the wake of this news, Clark loves to recommend checking out free streaming services.

I recently updated our analysis of this emerging market for 2025. If you haven’t checked this market out in a few years, you may be pleasantly surprised with the live news, weather and on-demand streaming of recognizable TV shows and movies that you can now get without paying a dime.

If you’re looking for advice on where to start, I suggest trying these out first: Pluto TV, Tubi TV and The Roku Channel.

Will you keep your YouTube TV subscription in 2025? Or is this price increase the final straw? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the Clark.com community.

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