YouTube has started rolling out its Premium Lite plan in India. This should allow users to access content with fewer ads and features at a lower starting price compared to the standard Premium plan.
The Premium Lite plan has three differences compared to the standard Premium plan. First, unlike Premium, Premium Lite gets rid of ads from most places but not everywhere. The company says most videos will be ad free except content such as music videos and Shorts. Ads may also appear when you search or browse through the app.
The company’s language here is wishy-washy, with a lot of ‘most’ and ‘may’ in there that provides no real clarity if you will or won’t get ads for a particular type of content. This is done deliberately so the company can adjust the frequency of ads appearing here as it pleases over time without breaking any promises.
The second difference from Premium is that Premium Lite does not include the YouTube Music streaming service as part of the plan. Finally, Premium Lite also does not support downloading videos for offline playback, as well as background playback.
The Premium Lite plan is priced at INR 89/month in India, compared to 149/month for the Premium plan.
India joins a growing list of countries where the Premium Lite plan is available, which now includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and United States.
