YouTube’s Premium plan unlocks a ton of cool features, but if you’re just trying to skip ads, the asking price of $12 or €12 a month is hard to justify. That’s why YouTube is currently testing a Premium Lite plan that removes advertisements (without any bells and whistles) for nearly half the price of the standard Premium subscription.
First spotted by a user on resetera, YouTube is currently offering Premium Lite to select customers in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland, and the Netherlands. The plan costs €7 a month and eliminates all ads from YouTube and the YouTube Kids app.
Unlike the standard YouTube Premium plan, Premium Lite does not support offline downloads or background playback for music on the mobile app. Also, it doesn’t include ad-free access to the YouTube Music app. But if you spend most of your time watching YouTube on a PC or TV, then these missing features don’t really matter, do they?
Google could roll out Premium Lite in more regions over the coming months. Assuming that pricing remains at €7, it will probably cost $7 when it arrives in the United States (based on the $12 or €12 pricing of YouTube Premium). Of course, this is just speculation, and there’s no guarantee that Premium Lite will ever leave its test regions.
If you live in one of the Premium Lite test regions, then you can try to sign up for the service now. Those outside the test regions may be able to sign up using a VPN.