Subscription price increases in 2026, and who got grandfathered
A running record of every price rise we can date this year — the old price, the new price, the percentage, and whether anyone got to keep paying the old one. Appended as they land.
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Nell Faraday
Editor
Nine years on the disputes side of a UK telecoms billing team, then four more handling chargebacks for a payments processor, where roughly a third of every caseload was somebody who had been charged a renewal they did not know was coming.
Has read something in the region of 400 consumer subscription agreements end to end, schedules included. Started keeping a household renewal calendar in 2019 after being billed twice in one month by the same company for two different products; that calendar is more or less what this desk grew out of.
Covers Streaming, Cloud storage, Music · At this desk since 12 January 2026
Nell edits The Yearly Bill and writes most of what appears under streaming, cloud storage and music. She is the reason this site prints a renewal column even when the answer is “not published” — her argument, made often and at length, is that an empty column is information and a guess is not.
She is interested in the gap between the number on the marketing page and the number on the checkout screen, and in the specific moment a free tier stops being a free tier. She is not interested in whether the product is any good. There are other sites for that.
Filed by Nell
5 pieces
What cloud storage costs per terabyte per year
Every mainstream cloud storage plan, normalised to the one number none of them print — dollars per terabyte per year. Prices read from the vendors on 23 August 2026.
The four kinds of free tier, and how to tell them apart
Some free tiers run forever, some are metered, some are a trial wearing a badge, and some used to include a feature they no longer include. Here is how to work out which one you are being offered.
What music streaming costs a year
Seven services priced per year rather than per month, plus the annual prepay options three of them sell and four of them do not.
What streaming costs a year in 2026
Every major service, its ad tier, its ad-free tier, the annual option where one exists, and what it renews at. Prices read from the vendors' own pages on 22 August 2026.