YouTube Premium costs $5 more a month on your iPhone

Two prices for the same subscription, both published today, both by the company that charges you.

Apple prints the in-app prices on every App Store listing. On the YouTube app listing, YouTube Premium reads $20.99 a month and YouTube Premium Family reads $34.99.

Open youtube.com/premium and the same plans read $15.99 and $26.99.

Nothing separates the two except where you tapped the button.

What the gap costs over a year

Plan	On the web	In the iOS app	Over a year
Individual, monthly	$15.99	$20.99	$60.00
Family, monthly	$26.99	$34.99	$96.00
Individual, yearly on the web	$159.99	$251.88 for twelve months at $20.99	$91.89

That last row holds the number worth remembering. Take the cheapest route YouTube offers, the yearly plan on the web, and set it against the route your phone offers by default, and the two land $91.89 apart for a subscription that behaves the same on both. The yearly route also means one charge a year, and it belongs in your tracker as a yearly charge, not as $13.33 a month.

Why the two prices exist

Apple charges a commission on anything sold inside an iOS app. Google prices the in-app option to absorb it, so the commission arrives on your bill rather than coming out of Google’s margin.

You end up with the same account, the same downloads, the same ad free playback and the same background audio. Only the billing route changes.

The part that hides it from you

The cheaper route creates a second problem, and it is one you may already have.

Buy YouTube Premium inside the iOS app and Apple bills you. It appears in Settings, your name, Subscriptions, with a price and a renewal date and a cancel button.

Buy it on the web and Google bills you. Nothing appears in that screen, ever. The subscription runs, your phone plays ad free video, and Apple holds no record of it, because Apple never processed the payment.

So the cheaper route is also the quieter one. People who switch to the web price save the money and then lose track of the charge, and months later they find a line on the card statement they cannot place. The four Apple screens will not help here, because none of them ever saw it.

How to move to the web price

1. Check which one you are on. Settings, your name, Subscriptions. YouTube Premium listed there means you are paying the in-app price.
2. Cancel it, and let it run out. Apple does not refund the unused part of a period you already paid for, so cancelling today keeps your access until the renewal date and stops the next charge.
3. Subscribe on youtube.com once it lapses. Same account, same everything, at $15.99 or $159.99 for the year.
4. Write it down somewhere. This charge no longer appears on your phone, and that is the trade you just made. Finding every other charge like it takes twenty minutes.

The rule this is a case of

YouTube is the loudest example rather than the only one. Netflix went further and closed the Apple route to most new members. Any company selling the same subscription inside an iOS app and on its own website can price the two differently, and the App Store listing is where Apple prints the in-app number for anyone to read.

Before you subscribe to anything from your phone, open the app’s App Store page, scroll to In-App Purchases, and compare that figure against the price on the company’s website. It takes twenty seconds and it caught $91.89 here.

Keeping the list once you have moved

A subscription that leaves no trace on your phone needs somewhere to live.

Kelo holds it with the price and the renewal date, and warns you before the charge lands. It never connects to your bank and never asks for a login, so you type this one in yourself, which takes about fifteen seconds and is the reason your bank credentials stay yours.

It is iPhone only, and it is free to start.