HBO Max is raising prices, but it's still cheaper than Netflix

HBO MAX has just announced its first ever price increase. It’s not a big one, thankfully. But it is going to get more expensive starting on February 11.

The company is raising the price on its ad-free model from $14.99 to $15.99 per month. Like we said, it’s not a big one. And is actually still cheaper than Netflix. So there’s that.

The good news? The ad-supported tier is remaining at $9.99 per month, for now. Additionally, the annual plans for HBO MAX have not gone up. They remain at $99 for ads and $149 for ad-free.

This price increase comes at a rather interesting time

As you might be aware, Warner Media – HBO MAX’s parent-company – recently merged with Discovery, forging a new company called Warner Bros Discovery or WBD. Now the two services are set to merge in the Spring, even though the company has long talked about how the customers for both services are quite different.

Could this price hike be put in place for adding all the discovery+ content to HBO MAX? Probably not. Since discovery+ was already around $7 per month. And WBD stating that there’s very little overlap between discovery+ and HBO MAX subscribers, a big $9 hike per month for discovery+ customers would be tough to swallow.

Now, WBD has said in their own statement about this price hike that “this price increase of one dollar will allow us to continue to invest in providing even more culture-defining programming and improving our customer experience for all users.” Which is pretty much what every company says when they raise prices.

What’s also interesting is that, HBO MAX has been losing content left and right lately. And now WBD is raising the price on its ad-free plan? Something feels a bit odd here. And it really feels like this price hike is in anticipation of the merging of discovery+ and HBO MAX.