Pricing for the Aussie streaming service's other tiers are thankfully unchanged
As the cost of living crisis in Australia continues, the streaming service Binge is implementing another price hike ahead of Max's Australian arrival in 2025.
Binge's Standard tier, which offers ad-free 4K streams for up to two simultaneous devices, will receive a AU$1p/m increase to AU$19p/m starting from November 1, 2024. Mercifully, pricing on Binge's Basic (AU$10p/m) and Premium (AU$22p/m) tiers will remain the same.
The increase arrives just one year after Binge's last pricing restructure, in which the Standard went from AU$16p/m to AU$18p/m, and the Premium jumped from AU$18p/m to AU$22p/m.
Of course, In that particular instance, there was a significant increase in value -- customers were given access to live news channels, such as CNN International, MSNBC and Bloomberg TV, along with a 4K resolution upgrade for the service's Standard and Premium tiers.
This time, however, the price hike won't bring any additional value to the customer, which means it's being implemented for the sole purpose of squeezing a bit more cash out of what is likely to be Binge's most popular tier.
Admittedly, AU$1 extra per month is one of the more reasonable price hikes we've seen from a streaming service recently, bringing only AU$12 of additional cost to Aussie households per year.
Back in March, Disney Plus created a new Premium plan (AU$17.99p/m) to squeeze an additional AU$4p/m out of customers who wanted to continue streaming to four devices in 4K. Meanwhile, Netflix's recent price hikes in May saw its Premium plan jump to AU$25.99p/m -- a monthly increase of AU$3 over its previous price.
With the US streaming service Max set to arrive in Australia next year, it's unknown whether this will be the last Binge price hike -- we'll have to wait and see how Max is integrated into the local streaming scene.