Why Brits Pay The Most For Streaming – And Still Queue Up To Pay It

On The Table Read Magazine, “the best arts and entertainment magazine UK“, Brits pay up to 27 times more than the rest of the world for streaming Netflix, Spotify and YouTube Premium – yet we still hand over the cash because Ted Lasso, Sidemen Sundays and ad-free Central Cee drops are apparently worth £100 a month.

If you’re British and you’ve ever looked at your bank statement after payday, you’ll have noticed that a sizeable chunk of your disposable income quietly disappears into the pockets of Silicon Valley and Stockholm.

A new study by reliable VPN services provider AstrillVPN has confirmed what many of us suspected: the UK is one of the most expensive places on the planet to subscribe to streaming and productivity services. In some cases we pay 25–27 times more than users in other countries for exactly the same pixels and waveforms.

Here are the eye-watering highlights:

Service	UK Monthly Price	Global Rank	Cheapest Country (equiv.)	Times More Brits Pay
YouTube Premium	£12.99	1st	Egypt (£1.05)	12×
Spotify	£11.99	1st	Saudi Arabia (£0.44)	27×
Apple Music	£10.99	1st	Saudi Arabia (£0.44)	25×
Apple TV+	£8.99	1st (tied)	India (£0.88)	10×
Netflix	£12.99	2nd	Saudi Arabia (£0.98)	13×
Amazon Prime Video	£8.99	2nd	South Africa (£0.64)	14×
Disney+	£8.99	2nd	Saudi Arabia (£0.86)	10×

YouTube Premium (£12.99) – The World’s Most Expensive Ad Blocker

No one else on Earth pays more to remove YouTube ads and download videos than Brits.

Why we still pay:

• Background play on your phone (essential for podcasts like The Diary of a CEO or ShxtsNGigs)
• Ad-free viewing of British YouTube royalty: Sidemen Sundays, Beta Squad, and every Premier League reaction channel going
• YouTube Music thrown in – suddenly your gym playlist isn’t interrupted by a 30-second gambling advert.

Spotify (£11. zig£11.99) – Paying £11.55 More Than Saudis for the Same Playlists

27× markup. Let that sink in.

British-specific addictions keeping us subscribed:

• Wrapped season (we treat Spotify Wrapped like the census)
• Discovering the next Fred again.., Sam Fender or Central Cee before the algorithms in Riyadh do
• Daylist titles like “Rainy Tuesday Afternoon in Leeds Indie” that feel bizarrely personal.

Apple Music (£10.99) – Classical, Spatial Audio and Stormzy in Dolby Atmos

We pay 25× more than Saudi Arabia for essentially the same library.

What we tell ourselves justifies it:

• Lossless and Spatial Audio actually sounds incredible on AirPods Max while walking along the Thames
• Apple One bundle convenience
• Curated British playlists (“UK Rap & Drill”, “Made in Manchester”, “Glastonbury Headliners”).

Netflix (£12.99) – Second Only to the USA

Only Americans pay more. We’re basically subsidising the Stranger Things budget.

Current British obsessions in 2025:

• Baby Reindeer and every other “true-ish story” drama we can turn into water-cooler chat
• Comfort re-watches of The Crown, Derry Girls, and After Life on rainy Sunday nights
• Knowing we’ll get new seasons of Sex Education spin-offs and Top Boy successors on day one.

Disney+ (£8.99) – The Home of Nostalgia and Star Wars Comfort Food

Second most expensive after Mexico (who knew?).

British guilty pleasures:

• Re-watching the entire Marvel timeline in 4K every time a new phase drops
• Bluey keeping toddlers quiet (worth £8.99 alone for any parent)
• Finally having every single Doctor Who episode from 1963–present in one place (yes, we still care).

Amazon Prime Video (£8.99 standalone / included with Prime delivery)

We pay 14× more than South Africa, but we also get next-day delivery on everything from cat food to kettles.

2025 British Prime addictions:

• Clarkson’s Farm series 4 (Jeremy shouting at tractors is national heritage now)
• Premier League football matches on Tuesday and Wednesday nights
• The Boys and Reacher – big, dumb, brilliant escapism.

Apple TV+ (£8.99) – The Most Expensive “Budget” Streamer

Tied for most expensive globally, yet somehow has the smallest library.

Why Brits refuse to cancel:

• Ted Lasso comfort re-watches (we need the positivity)
• Slow Horses – Gary Oldman mumbling through the best spy thriller on television
• Severance season 2 dropping episodes weekly and dominating group chats.

The Real Reason We Keep Paying

1. Purchasing Power Pricing (The Official Excuse)

Tech giants insist they price according to local average income and purchasing power parity (PPP). The theory goes: Brits earn more in absolute terms, so we can “afford” to pay more.

Reality check: UK wages have barely grown in real terms since 2008, while subscription prices march relentlessly upward. Meanwhile, countries with far lower average incomes are handed rock-bottom deals to grow the user base quickly.

2. Tax and Regulatory Burden

The UK charges 20% VAT on digital services. Most Gulf states charge 5% or less (Saudi Arabia introduced 15% VAT relatively recently but still heavily subsidises or negotiates lower base prices). That alone accounts for some – but by no means all – of the gap.

3. We Actually Watch (and Listen) More

Ofcom data consistently shows British households spend more hours streaming than almost any other nation. We binge harder, playlist harder, and background-play YouTube harder. Companies know we’re addicted and relatively price-insensitive.

4. Weak Sterling + Strong Dollar Pricing

Most of these services are ultimately priced in US dollars internally. Since 2016, the pound has lost roughly 20–25% against the dollar. Many subscription increases in the UK are simply currency adjustment in disguise.

5. The Competition Paradox

You’d think Sky, NOW, BBC iPlayer, ITVX, All 4, and the rest would force prices down. Instead, the US giants treat the UK as a high-margin mature market and charge accordingly, safe in the knowledge that British consumers see Netflix/Spotify/YouTube as non-negotiable utilities rather than luxuries.

6. Cultural Willingness to Pay for “No Ads” and Convenience

Brits hate adverts more than most. A 2023 YouGov poll found 68% of UK adults would pay to remove ads from YouTube (vs. 42% globally). We also normalised paying for music after the Napster/LimeWire era died – Spotify’s paid tier took off faster here than almost anywhere else.

7. VPN Guilt and Inertia

Yes, technically you could buy a gift card in Turkey or route through Egypt and pay a quarter of the price. But most Brits either:

• Don’t know how,
• Don’t want the hassle,
• Worry about getting banned, or
• Simply think “£11.99 isn’t that bad” when it comes out of a £3,000 monthly salary rather than a £800 one.

The Bottom Line

We’re paying premium prices because companies have correctly identified the UK as a rich, ad-averse, binge-loving nation with a weakish currency and a cultural aversion to piracy 2.0. Until enough of us actually switch to VPNs en masse (or regulators force price transparency), the streaming giants will keep treating Britain like the cash cow we apparently are.

These services have become cultural oxygen. We don’t just watch or listen – we participate. We quote Taskmaster panelists on WhatsApp, argue about Succession endings in pubs, and judge each other’s Spotify Wrapped.

Yes, technically we could fire up a VPN, buy a Turkish gift card and pay pennies. But that would require effort, and Britain ran out of that particular energy sometime around 2016.

So we grumble, we tweet, we write sarcastic Reddit comments… and then we renew for another month. Because when The Traitors season 4 drops, or when Central Cee surprise-releases an album at midnight, none of us actually want to be the one stuck watching adverts or scouring pirate sites.

We’ve accepted our role as the streaming world’s favourite cash cow – and honestly, as long as the next episode auto-plays in 4K with no ads, most of us are weirdly okay with it.

Methodology:

The online services that cost more in the UK than abroad were investigated by collecting current pricing data from official websites. Online services were accessed for their prices per country from the following sources:

• Netflix: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926
• Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G34EUPKVMYFW8N2U
• YouTube Premium: https://www.youtube.com/premium
• Spotify: https://www.spotify.com/uk/premium/
• Apple Music: https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-music/
• Microsoft 365: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products
• Adobe Creative Cloud: https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/plans.html
• Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb
• Apple TV+: https://tv.apple.com/gb

Each country’s price was converted to British pound sterling and ranked per online service from highest to lowest.