Whether you are binging The Night Agent or American Primeval, getting a Netflix fix has become pricier in the UK as the streaming giant increased subscription costs despite a record audience.

The streaming service has upped the cost of its most popular standard subscription without adverts by £2, or 18%, to £12.99 a month. Its other packages are going up in price, too. The last time it pushed through a price increase in the UK was October 2023.

“We will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can reinvest to further improve Netflix,” the company said, adding it would “continue to invest in programming and deliver more value for our members”.

The company signalled a price rise was on the way last month when it announced increases in other countries, including the US and Canada. In the UK the price of a standard subscription with adverts has gone up by £1 to £5.99 a month. The most expensive “premium” tier is also up by £1 to £18.99.

Netflix has also increased the cost of adding an extra member to a package by £1. For a standard subscription with adverts, the cost of adding another person is now £4.99. For a standard subscription without adverts, this fee is now £5.99. The new, higher rates apply to both new and existing customers.

Paolo Pescatore, a technology analyst at PP Foresight, said the price increases were widely expected. “The streaming business is following mainstream TV in its price rises, and we should get accustomed to them,” he said.

However, he added: “Netflix must tread extremely carefully … there is a ceiling, a point at which consumers will become incredibly frustrated by price hikes.”

Netflix is not the only platform to raise its subscription costs as rivals Disney+, Spotify, and Paramount+ put their prices up last year. In 2023, Netflix cracked down on password sharing, which led to millions of new sign-ups over the following year.

The price rises come at a time when Netflix is going from strength to strength. Analysts had pencilled in nearly 10 million new subscribers to the streaming service in the last three months of 2024 only for it to be closer to 19 million. It finished the year with more than 300 million global subscribers, an increase of 41 million from 2023.

This surge was put down to the pull of new series of hit shows such as Squid Game as well as its sports coverage, including the boxing match between the influencer Jake Paul and former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.