YouTube Premium Lite plan could return, in a tweaked form

The YouTube dev team seems to be looking for new ways to monetize the service. Currently, the company offers a single “Premium” subscription with some nice perks. However, you might just want an ad-free experience and don’t really care about the other benefits. With that in mind, YouTube is testing the return of the Premium Lite plan.

A new YouTube Lite plan is being tested in some countries

Google already offered a Premium Lite subscription a while back for about half the price of the Premium one. However, the company discontinued that subscription in 2023. That said, in the last few days, several users have been reporting the appearance of a new “Lite” tier for the Premium subscription.

Following multiple reports about an alleged return of YouTube Premium Lite, Google confirmed to Android Authority that, in fact, they are testing it in some regions. More specifically, the option to sign up for the new tier is available to users in Australia, Germany, and Thailand. Plus, the subscription benefits have undergone some changes compared to the original Premium Lite plan.

If you don’t remember, the old Premium Lite plan offered a completely ad-free video viewing experience. However, additional benefits such as background video playback, downloading videos for offline viewing, and perks for YouTube Music were missing.

Benefits are a little worse than before

On the other hand, the conditions for the “new” Premium Lite plan are slightly less favorable. Instead of offering an ad-free experience, it now only includes a limited ad-supported experience. That is, you’ll see fewer ads than usual, but they’ll still be present and pop up from time to time. The new version of Premium Lite under test also doesn’t include any additional benefits, just like its predecessor.

The price of the new Lite tier is still about half that of the Premium plan. For reference, in the US, the YouTube Premium individual plan costs $13.99 per month. The family plan costs $22.99 per month, and students pay just $7.99 per month. There are no details yet on a potential wide rollout of the tweaked Lite tier. As it is still under testing, it is still possible that the plan’s conditions change.