What subscription had the biggest price increase in 2026?

On verified numbers it is NordVPN in India: the App Store monthly went from Rs549 to Rs1,159 between two of our scrapes this year, roughly 112 percent. Among services where the vendor itself announced the change, ChatGPT Plus doubling in Turkey in June is the largest.

Did ChatGPT Plus go to $200?

No. That figure belongs to OpenAI's top Pro tier. The standard plan still costs its normal amount, including in the US as of August 2026. A changelog that maps one to the other is comparing different plans.

Which streaming service raised prices first in 2026?

Paramount+ moved on January 15, making it the first big US streamer hike of the year. Spotify followed during February billing, then Crunchyroll on March 4, Netflix across all plans on March 26, and YouTube Premium in April.

Why are VPN apps getting more expensive in India and Egypt?

Apple storefront repricing. Vendors reset their in-app prices against local currency moves, and when the rupee or pound weakens the same plan gets a new local number that can jump sharply overnight. Our India row moved between two scrapes without any public announcement from the vendor.

Are ad-supported tiers still safe from hikes?

Not anymore. Ad-backed plans rose at three of the five big US streamers in 2026, starting with Paramount+ Essential in January. The old assumption that the cheap tier stays frozen is dead.

How do I know if my own bill went up this year?

Check your app store receipt history or the vendor's billing email rather than a news article, because renewal pricing and list pricing can differ. If you are on an annual plan bought during a sale, compare against your last invoice, not the current advertised monthly rate.

Biggest subscription price increases of 2026 (ranked)

Yes, subscriptions really did get more expensive in 2026 — and we can finally prove it with sourced before-and-after numbers instead of blog gossip. Earlier versions of this page refused to rank increases because we lacked dated pairs on both ends. We now have enough verified pairs to publish a real ranking, led by a hike almost nobody reported: NordVPN’s India App Store price jumping about 112 percent between two of our own scrapes.

Every row below names its source. Where we only hold one end of the comparison, we say so instead of inventing a percentage.

The ranking, biggest first

Service	Change	When	Source
NordVPN, India (App Store monthly)	Rs549 → Rs1,159, about +112%	Between our scrapes, first half of 2026	Our own dated IAP rows
ChatGPT Plus, Turkey	₺499.99 → ₺999.99, +100%	June 2026	Turkish press (Tamindir, LOG), our Aug tables
PS Plus Extra, Turkey	About +48%	May 21, 2026	Sporx
Surfshark, Egypt (monthly)	E£399.99 → E£509.99, about +27%	Between our scrapes, 2026	Our own dated IAP rows
Crunchyroll, US	+$2 on every tier (Fan $7.99 → $9.99, about +25%)	March 4, 2026	Crunchyroll announcement via CNBC coverage
Paramount+, US (Essential)	$7.99 → $8.99, about +13%	January 15, 2026	Paramount+ announcement
Spotify, US (Individual)	+$1 (about +8%)	February 2026 billing	Spotify announcement
Netflix, US	All tiers raised; exact percentages not published per plan	March 26, 2026	CNBC
YouTube Premium, US	Increase confirmed; split web vs in-app pricing	April 10, 2026	TechCrunch

Two things jump out. First, the largest percentage hikes of the year are not American streamer news — they happened in Turkey, India, and Egypt, where vendors reprice aggressively against weakening currencies. Second, the US increases cluster in January-April like a coordinated season.

Why your region got hit harder than the US

Regional pricing is a moving target. When a vendor sets a lira, rupee, or Egyptian pound price, it pegs it to what that market could bear at the time. As the currency slides, the dollar value of that local price falls too — so vendors reprice upward in local terms just to hold position.

Turkey is the clearest case of the year. The cheap-Turkey trick had been dying in stages since late 2023 (foreign-card blocks, no official PSN gift cards), and in 2026 it finished: ChatGPT Plus doubled in June, PS Plus Extra rose roughly 48 percent in May, and Netflix announced a Turkish reprice of its own for 2026. If you subscribed to a Turkish plan years ago, assume it is no longer cheap before you renew. Full story: ChatGPT Plus Turkey price hike.

India shows the silent version of the same thing. No press release, no email campaign — our scraper just came back with Rs1,159 where Rs549 used to be for NordVPN’s monthly App Store plan. That is how most regional hikes actually reach you: quietly, between billing cycles. Related read: Does NordVPN price go up after renewal?

The US hiking season, month by month

January 15 — Paramount+. Essential went from $7.99 to $8.99. First big streamer move of the year.
February — Spotify. One extra dollar across individual US billing. Small, but it compounds with the 2023 and 2024 raises.
March 4 — Crunchyroll. Two dollars added to every single tier. Percentage-wise this was the sharpest dated US hike of 2026.
March 26 — Netflix. All US tiers up, per CNBC. Netflix no longer publishes per-plan percentages, which is exactly why most “increase rankings” online are guesses.
April — YouTube Premium. Confirmed by TechCrunch, with the twist that Google’s own web checkout stayed cheaper than the in-app price after the change.

Notice the pattern competitors still miss: the cheap, ad-supported tiers were not spared. Paramount+ Essential and Crunchyroll’s base plan both rose, killing the myth that budget tiers stay frozen while premium plans absorb the increases.

What still does not belong in a hike table

Three traps inflate other sites’ rankings, and we will keep refusing them:

Plan mix-ups. OpenAI sells several plans side by side in the same catalog. Diffing “the ChatGPT price” without pinning the plan produces nonsense like a standard plan “going to” the top Pro tier’s price. It did not.
Renewal step-ups. VPN landing pages advertise a two-year term as a monthly equivalent, then charge full rate at renewal. That is a scheduled step-up, not a 2026 list-price event.
Currency mirages. A rise measured only in lira or rupees can be flat in dollars once converted. Any honest ranking states both movements. USD figures on this site use ECB rates for the verification date.

Current snapshots behind these comparisons live in our tables: ChatGPT prices by country. Ongoing tracking: subscription price watch 2026, streaming services that went up in price, and the raw price changelog.

Bottom line

The 2026 hiking season peaked early and hit hardest outside the US. If your renewal email looks fatter than last year, it probably is — check it against the ranked table above rather than a headline percentage pulled from thin air.