“To be clear, the core experience in our apps stays free,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote on Threads on Tuesday, as Meta launched its Meta One subscriptions worldwide.
Meta One is a new subscription service across Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Meta AI, Meta announced on 15 September. It offers higher AI usage, extra expression features and professional tools for creators and businesses. Meta says it has launched more than 50 features and counted 15 million subscriptions and trials to date.
“Subscriptions let us build things we otherwise couldn’t, like features that are too specialized or too costly to bring to everyone, and get them to the people who want them most,” Mosseri wrote.
Three single-app plans
Meta launched its single-product plans earlier this year. They start at $2.99 a month:
- Instagram Plus ($3.99 a month) recently added custom DM and Story fonts, alerts when certain people view your Story, and DM previews.
- Facebook Plus ($3.99 a month) is adding customisation options for Messenger, more Reels insights and super reactions on Reels and Feed posts.
- WhatsApp Plus ($2.99 a month) offers exclusive themes and icons, special effect stickers and more pinned chats. Meta says it will soon test storage for chat and media backups, and Focus Schedules, which mute or hide chats on a schedule.
Meta says these plans are seeing strong retention. WhatsApp Plus first appeared in tests in April.
Core and Premium bundles for AI users
The two bundles for individuals are Core, at $7.99 a month, and Premium, at $19.99 a month. Both include the Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp Plus features.
They add more use of Meta’s most compute-intensive AI tools. That includes generating and editing images and videos with Meta AI, powered by its Muse models, and using in-app tools such as Restyle on Instagram. Premium offers the most room to create content with Meta AI.
Buying the three single-app plans separately costs about $11 a month, The Verge noted. Meta started testing the $7.99 tier in May.
Meta declined to share the exact usage limits for Core and Premium, TechCrunch reported. The limits can vary by “country, surface and system conditions,” the company said.
Meta AI stays free for everyday use, according to Meta. In early testing, more than half of subscribers used both AI and expression features in the bundles. Restyle and voice effects on Instagram were among the top reasons people subscribed, the company said.
Four plans for creators and businesses
Creator and business bundles start at $14.99 a month. Pricing, benefits and availability may vary by region, app and account, Meta said.
- Essential (from $14.99 a month) includes a verified badge, a verified channel on the WhatsApp Business app and impersonation protection, pending verification. It also gives more access to Meta Business Agent, which answers customers on WhatsApp.
- Advanced (from $49.99 a month) adds story scheduling up to 30 days ahead, links in organic posts and reels, exportable analytics and deeper audience insights. Team members can access the account without sharing a password.
- Expert (from $149 a month) and Max (from $499 a month) offer Meta’s highest levels of feature access and Business Agent capacity.
The new features also include an enhanced profile that shows a business’s website, locations and reviews. Reels get a bold follow button, and people who engage with an account can receive automatic follow invitations. The Verge listed higher rankings in search results among the perks.
Meta plans to add Edits Plus, with more cloud storage and more use of the upcoming Edits assistant. It also plans to expand Meta One to its AI glasses.
Revenue beyond advertising
The subscriptions help Meta diversify revenue beyond digital ads, Reuters reported. The company averaged 3.60 billion daily active people across its apps earlier this year.
BNP Paribas forecasts that the subscription push will add $13.5bn in revenue by 2028, TechCrunch reported. Truist estimates it could add $20bn by 2030. In May, as Meta began testing paid AI plans, OpenAI and xAI were moving into advertising.
The launch follows Muse, which Meta calls its first personal AI agent, released last week. In August, Meta also planned to price its Hatch agent at up to $199.99 a month.
“They bring more features, more compute and more choice for those who need them,” Rohan Shah, director of engineering for Meta One, wrote on X.
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