The End of Free Netflix Password Sharing Is Coming
Netflix is ratcheting up its efforts to get freeloading viewers to pay up: Starting early next year, it will start charging accounts for password sharing, instituting a system that adds fees for "extra member" subaccounts when people outside one household use the membership.
The company didn't specify the price of these new fees when it confirmed the plan last week. But this change is already being tested in a few Latin American countries, where Netflix is charging a fee for each extra member that's equivalent to roughly one-quarter the price of a Standard plan.
If Netflix sticks to that practice, then each extra member subaccount in the US would cost between about $3.50 and $4 -- possibly as much as $4.43, based on the fee level in Chile. And if it keeps to the norms of those account-sharing tests, Netflix is also likely to make these "extra member" fees available only on its $15.50-a-month Standard and $20-a-month Premium plans, which both allow more than one simultaneous stream.
