Meta is testing out premium subscriptions on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp
Ahead of its earnings, expected after the bell today, Meta has announced plans to trial a paid tier on its apps.
The list of periodic charges granting entry to much of the essential watching, listening, and even tasting that modern life demands might now be getting one subscription service longer.
On Monday, Meta told TechCrunch that it plans to trial new premium subscriptions on social media apps Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp in the coming months. According to the company, the paid offerings will give users access to exclusive features such as expanded AI capabilities, though the “core experiences” will (supposedly) remain the same for users in the ad-supported tier.
Deals on Reels
Still, unlike Spotify and Netflix, which actually pay for the content on their platforms and are only incrementally looking to advertising to juice up their bottom lines, Meta is already squeezing plenty of revenue from users without a paid subscriber model. In its third-quarter results back in October, the company reported total revenues of $51.2 billion — about $50 billion (~98%) of which came directly from advertising.
Meta’s ability to turn eyeballs into cash has seen it rake in a cumulative $813 billion from ads since 2019. And, having put ads in WhatsApp for the first time last June, this figure is only expected to get larger when the tech behemoth reports its quarterly earnings later today. Indeed, Meta’s only division in which consumers pay up rather than advertisers — Reality Labs — is also the only one that continues to light billions of dollars on fire.
Face value
The new tiered model comes as Meta looks to expand its AI offering, with the tech giant outlining plans to scale Manus — the web-browsing, content-producing AI agent it acquired right at the end of 2025 — and short-form video generator Vibes as part of the subscription plans.
But what might convince some more social media-savvy users to start paying up are additional features designed to give “more control” over Instagram accounts in particular, including creating unlimited audience lists, seeing which followers don’t follow them back, and viewing a Story without the poster seeing that they viewed it.
