YouTube Announces Major Change to Premium–Users Are Outraged
Digital advertising pays the bills for most of the internet, and YouTube is no exception. While those ad dollars keep the platform free to use, plenty of viewers would rather avoid commercials altogether—which is why YouTube Premium exists. For $14 a month, Premium removes ads across the entire service and lets you download videos for offline viewing, a perk frequent fliers swear by. The catch? It’s pricey.
What exactly is YouTube Premium Lite?
To court price-sensitive users, Google quietly rolled out YouTube Premium Lite in early April 2025. At roughly $8 a month, Lite almost sliced the monthly cost in half—but also scaled back the benefits. With Lite, you are unable to download videos for offline viewing. Furthermore, Lite does not include access to the background play feature.
Lite subscribers who joined between April and June received an email from Google announcing that ads are coming back to YouTube Shorts for Lite members—without any drop in price. Regular videos will remain ad-free, but Shorts (YouTube’s answer to TikTok) will once again be punctuated by commercials. If you want completely ad-free Shorts, you’ll have to upgrade to the full Premium plan.
Why the Sudden Change?
Google hasn’t offered details, but the timing suggests Premium Lite wasn’t generating enough revenue. By reinstating ads on Shorts, YouTube can recoup some of the lost advertising dollars while still pitching Lite as a “budget” option.
The reaction online has been swift and negative. Many Lite members feel that Google moved the goalposts: the very feature that convinced them to subscribe—completely ad-free viewing—has now been watered down. Frustration is compounded by the fact that the monthly price remains at $8 even though the value has clearly decreased. And with YouTube cracking down on ad-blockers, viewers feel there are few practical alternatives. As a result, social-media threads and support forums are filling up with complaints from users who say they either plan to cancel or reluctantly upgrade to the much pricier full Premium tier.
If you mostly watch long-form videos and rarely dip into Shorts, Premium Lite still saves you money. But if Shorts are part of your daily feed and you want them ad-free, be ready to upgrade—or sit through ads again.
What do you think of these changes to YouTube's newest subscription tier? Are you going to cancel your subscription over this? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Google Help
