YouTube Premium Lite vs Premium: What is actually different?

Google has announced it is expanding its pilot of YouTube Premium Lite to the United States, giving users a chance to pay less and still skip ads on most video content. However, there are plenty of exceptions. Let’s dive in to whether it’s worth the savings.

The existing YouTube Premium feels expensive, unless you use YouTube Music as your primary music streaming service, where ad-free access to everything else is a nice bonus.

However, for everyone else $13.99 to get rid of ads from across the YouTube platform, access content offline and enjoy background listening feels expensive. Hence there’s a cheaper option on the way in YouTube Premium Lite, which might be better for those watching on the best TV they have in the house.

But is it actually worth it? Let’s find out.

Premium Lite is much cheaper

Let’s start with the obvious. YouTube Premium Lite is less expensive than YouTube Premium.

YouTube Premium costs $13.99 per month (or $139.99 a year), while YouTube Premium will cost $7.99 per month. Right now Google isn’t offering a Premium Lite annual subscription (perhaps because it’s only a pilot), but it works out at $95.88 when paying monthly.

Premium Lite has less ads

YouTube Premium gets rid of all ads you’ll experience across YouTube videos as well as offering ad-free access to YouTube Music.

Premium Lite gets you access to “most” videos on YouTube without ads. It’s “for those viewers who want to watch most videos ad-free – whether it’s gaming, comedy, cooking or learning,” the streaming giant says in a blog post.

So that makes it a great option for those who subscribe to a lot of YouTube’s creators and primarily consume content that way. Considering how many ads there are without a subscription these days and considering the company is putting a lot of focus on blocking the ad-blockers then $7.99 a month might be worth it for a lot of people.

Premium Lite isn’t suitable for music fans

Personally, I love to have a few beers on a Friday night and just let the YouTube algorithm show me live music performances and music videos. For this reason Premium Lite isn’t going to work for me, because ads are still going to show for music content.

Ads when you search, and in Shorts

From YouTube’s wording it seems that if you’re accessing videos from your subscriptions or recommendations you’ll be able to avoid ads. If you’re sent a link, likewise. However, if you’re using the app to search or generally browsing, you might still see ads. Oh and you’ll still see ads in YouTube Shorts too.

No downloads or background play

If you opt to save $6 with Premium Lite you’ll lose two of the best Premium features. There’s no opportunity to download video for offline viewing and you won’t be able to watch or listen to content while doing other things on your mobile device.

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