YouTube is broadening its budget-friendly Premium Lite subscription service at $7.99 a month, introducing new features such as downloading videos for offline viewing and allowing videos to play in the background while the screen is off or when using other applications. These features were previously exclusive to users on the full subscription plan priced at $13.99 a month.

The company indicated that these enhancements stemmed from user feedback, as participants in its pilot initiative expressed a desire for these functionalities to enhance the appeal of the subscription.

Launched in March, YouTube Premium Lite provided a cost-effective subscription option aimed at eliminating ads from “most” videos on the platform, encompassing popular categories such as gaming, fashion, beauty, cooking, news, and others. However, advertisements will still appear on music content and music videos. Moreover, Lite plan subscribers will not have access to the ad-free YouTube Music application.

With these new features, ad-free music content will now be the sole incentive to upgrade to the full Premium subscription. It is also expected to enhance the Lite tier’s attractiveness to customers who were reluctant to pay solely for ad-free content but were seeking additional benefits.

The Lite subscription option was initially rolled out in Thailand, Germany, and Australia, before its arrival in the U.S. last year. It is currently available in various other global markets, including Canada, Brazil, the U.K., India, Mexico, and other regions in Europe and Asia.

YouTube’s subscription model has been consistently expanding. When combined with advertising, YouTube’s total revenue hit $60 billion in 2025, based on information provided by its parent company Alphabet earlier this month during its Q4 earnings announcement.

The company also disclosed that YouTube’s advertising revenue grew by 9%, reaching $11.38 billion in the fourth quarter. At the same time, the “subscriptions, platforms and devices” segment saw a revenue growth of 17% to $13.6 billion in Q4, which the company attributed to robust expansion in YouTube subscriptions, particularly for YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.

Alphabet reported over 125 million YouTube Music and YouTube Premium users globally as of March 2025. While the company did not provide an updated statistic in its recent Q4 earnings report, it noted that the total now surpasses 325 million paid subscriptions across consumer services, including YouTube Premium and others like Google One.