Just a little more than a month after the top exec for HBO Max mused that the service is “way underpriced,” the streamer is following through with a price hike for each of its three tiers.
Starting today for new subscribers, the price of HBO Max Premium will go up to $22.99, a $2-a-month increase, while the annual rate for Premium will rise to $229.99, up $20 a year. The step-down HBO Max Standard plan is also getting a price hike to $18.49 a month, up $1.50/month, with the annual Standard price going up to $184.99, a $15 annual increase. Finally, HBO Max Basic with Ads is now $10.99, up a dollar a month, while the annual rate for that plan is getting hiked to $109.99 a year, up $10 annually.
Existing HBO Max monthly subscribers will see the price increases take effect on their next bills after November 20, 2025, while current subscribers on annual plans will stick with the previous rate until their plans expire, according to Variety.
HBO Max’s Premium tier gives you four simultaneous 4K UHD streams with Dolby Atmos when available, plus up to 100 downloads at a time. The Standard plan serves up two 1080p streams with 30 downloads at once, while Basic with Ads offers two ad-supported 1080p streams without the downloads.
It’s been roughly 16 months since the last time HBO Max raised its prices. At that time—when HBO Max will still being called just “Max”—both the ad-free tiers got price hikes, but the with-ads tier remained unchanged. While the latest HBO Max price hike arrived without warning for new customers, the top executive for the streamer telegraphed the move last month.
“The fact that this is quality—and that’s true across our company, motion picture, TV production and streaming quality—we all think that gives us a chance to raise [the] price,” Warner Bros. Discover CEO David Zaslav said at the time. “We think we’re way underpriced. We’re going to take our time.”
Apparently, Zaslav’s promise to “take our time” meant only a little more than a month.
HBO Max has seen plenty of changes since its previous price hike back in June 2024. First came the decision in February to pare back the offers of HBO Max’s with-ads tier, with subscribers to the plan losing access to the Bleacher Report Sports add-on as well as streaming CNN content.
Then came the name change from “Max” back to HBO Max, which happened this past summer. The move effectively undid Warner Bros. Discovery’s ill-advised “Max” rebranding of the service, which only lasted a couple of years.
Finally, HBO Max Standard and Premium subscribers learned they would also lose access to streaming CNN news starting November 17, thereby making way for the launch (or re-launch) next week of a new CNN streaming service.
