Netflix is Discontinuing its Ad-free ‘Basic’ Plan for Existing Subscribers

Netflix is pushing forward with its plan to discontinue its ad-free Basic tier in markets where it’s still available. This Basic tier has already been phased out for new subscribers in Canada, the US, and the UK last year. However, existing Netflix Basic subscribers have shared on Reddit (via The Verge) notifications urging them to switch to a new plan to keep watching content.

One of these Reddit posts shows a notification telling a user who’s apparently located in Canada that “Your last day to watch Netflix is July 13. Choose a new plan to keep watching.” Tapping the button below the message displays a selection screen with Netflix’s three plans: Standard with ads, Standard, and Premium.

In a letter to investors published back in January, Netflix explained how it was planning to discontinuing its Basic ads-free plan. “The ads plan now accounts for 40% of all Netflix sign-ups in our ads markets and we’re looking to retire our Basic plan in some of our ads countries, starting with Canada and the UK in Q2 and taking it from there,” the company said at the time.

Netflix’s Basic plan is restriced to “HD” video quality, and it also only supports one active device at once. At $9.99 in the US, it was also $3 more expensive than the new Basic with Ads plan, which supports Full HD quality and a maximum 2 devices streaming at once. In May, Netflix said that its ad-supported tier now had over 40 million monthly users, up from 5 million users a year before.

According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Netflix top executives have been discussing the launch of a free ad-supported plan in select European and Asian markets to reach more users and expand the company’s advertising inventory. Netflix already tested free plans in select countries like Kenya and Vietnam, but these experiments have now been discontinued. Anyway, don’t get your hopes up yet as the Bloomberg report said that internal talks about launching free versions of Netflix are still at the discussions stage.