Streaming plan price hiking seems to be the thing that’s in vogue for streaming platforms nowadays, and it looks like Crunchyroll is following the crowd on this one. It’s not hard to see why either. Big companies just want to make more and more money, after all. Streaming platforms are big companies. Therefore, it’s pretty obvious that price hikes are the way for them to make more and more money. All at the expense of the people using their platforms, but they don’t worry about that. Fortunately, there is a single silver lining to this whole price-hike endeavor. What is that, you might ask? Well, let’s find out together, shall we?

Crunchyroll Price Hike: Details

Crunchyroll Spring 2024 Lineup visual.
And right on the heels of their Spring 2024 anime season to boot.

Crunchyroll has just revealed on their official news site that they are undertaking a price hike for their anime streaming service. The price hike will take place for not only users in the United States, but also in Argentina, Colombia, France, Portugal, and “select additional countries” that are not named. Why those specific countries are getting price hikes is currently unclear at this point. We do know though that this price hike will affect the Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan tiers. You can check out the new prices below:

  • Mega Fan: increase to $11.99/month (from $9.99/month)
  • Ultimate Fan: increase to $15.99/month (from $14.99/month)

Crunchyroll did give an official statement explaining why those specific tiers are getting a price hike. All via their official news site to boot. You can check it out below:

The price change reflects the increase in content on Crunchyroll in recent years, expanding its catalog to more than 45,000 episodes via 1,400 series and films. That means it would take nearly two years to watch everything on Crunchyroll!

Finally, Crunchyroll is also announcing that they are cutting back their free trial period. Previously, that period lasted 14 days or two weeks. Now though, that same period will last only 7 days, or a single week. Again, no explanation for why. Just…because, I guess.

Silver Lining?

And now comes the silver lining I promised you all. That silver lining is the fact that the pricing for the base Fan tier is unchanged. It’s still $7.99/month. The price hike only affects the upper two tiers above it, so if you only want to get a subscription to watch ad-free anime, then that tier goes unchanged.

Oh, and the ad-supported free tier offering over 1000 hours of revolving anime content is still free, so that’s also a spot of good news. Hopefully, Crunchyroll does not alter the deal further down the line.

Source: Crunchyroll News