I held out on joining YouTube Premium for years, as I prefer to keep my subscriptions list short. For a while, the ads weren’t bad enough to make me consider signing up.
But a while later, in 2022, I joined Premium to download videos so I could watch them on a flight. Yes, you can download videos manually, but it was so tedious that I preferred to pay. And while removing ads wasn’t my intention, I got so used to watching YouTube videos peacefully that I stayed signed up, even after that flight.
I felt that YouTube Premium was too expensive if you didn’t want YouTube Music (as I don’t since I have Spotify), and hoped for years for a light plan. In 2025, we finally got one, and I think it’s a subscription more people should have.
YouTube Premium Lite cuts out the bloat
The full version of YouTube Premium is a good value, but only if you don’t subscribe to another music streaming service.
For $14 a month, you get ad-free YouTube and a full YouTube Music subscription, plus the option to download videos and play them in the background on your phone. Given that Spotify, Apple Music, and similar cost $11-12/month on their own, a few more dollars a month for the best YouTube experience is great.
However, this always felt like a waste for me. I’ve used Spotify since 2012 and am the head of a family plan; I don’t need another music streaming app when I’m already entrenched. As mentioned, downloads for offline play are nice, but I don’t care about this unless I’m flying (which I don’t do regularly). And I never need background play on the YouTube app; if I did, I’d just open the video in a browser instead.
This is why Premium Lite is such a great option at $8/month. Its only perk is removing most ads from YouTube, which is the most important benefit, and the price matches that.
Premium Lite saves you time
I loathe the extreme degree to which ads have invaded every aspect of our lives (both online and offline), so I avoid them as much as I can. While static ads are annoying, ads that take up your time are far worse. When given the chance, I’ll gladly pay to remove ads from a streaming service, app, or similar, because that time compounds.
Since YouTube is the primary place I enjoy videos, Premium Lite pays for itself in this regard. Lite does have ads on music videos (which I rarely watch) and Shorts (which I would erase from YouTube if I could). Text ads also appear while searching, but those don’t waste your time like video ads do, so they’re acceptable.
I’ve thought about any question of time vs. money in this way for a while: calculate your time as being worth minimum wage (which is grossly underselling it, but it works as a baseline for discussion). If you spend more time on something than the value you’d get from doing something else with that time, it’s not worth it. To take an offline example: I’m not going to take a 30-minute round trip to do a price match that saves me $2.
The time we waste watching ads
Let’s work through some ad math. I’ve been watching a show on Hulu with my wife that has four 1m 45s ads per ~40-minute episode, plus a 30-second ad at the start. That’s 7m 30s wasted per episode, and means after every 5.3 episodes, we’ve watched an entire episode’s worth of ads.
If we watch one episode per day, that’s 3h 45m of ads in a 30-day month. Given the difference between Hulu with and without ads is $9/month, the extra cost is easily worth it. That time is worth $27.19/month at minimum wage, adding up to an entire extra afternoon you could use to clean a room.
Now, I’ve put up with the ads because I got a deal last year that provided a year of Hulu for $1/month. If I were paying the regular price of $10/month for Hulu, I’d upgrade to ad-free for $19/month without a second thought. But at the discounted price, it’s a harder sell.
It’s harder to calculate an average number of ads for YouTube, but you can do similar math based on how much you watch. Unless you only watch a couple of videos a month, the time you save on ads should far exceed the cost.
YouTube ads are disgusting
All ads waste your time, but many YouTube ads are foul on top of that. Whenever I get signed out of my account, use someone else’s device, or otherwise have to go without Premium for a moment, I’m struck by how awful they can be. This is one of the many ways YouTube has gotten worse.
I’ve seen YouTube ads that show gross teeth, ugly feet, and other ailed body parts that should only be seen in a doctor’s office. Plenty of ads feature AI-generated video and audio trying to scam you into buying a garbage product. You don’t have to look far to see stories about ads featuring explicit content, either.
I get that ads pay the bills, but viewers of the largest video platform in the world shouldn’t have to be subjected to the types of inappropriate ads you’d expect to see on shady pirating sites.
Fewer ads, more enjoyment
I’m sure you agree that even though ad-supported plans save money, another drawback is that ads take you out of what you’re enjoying; the sudden change in volume and constant interruptions make it hard to enjoy the pace of the video. Depending on what you like to watch, this isn’t as big a problem on YouTube as it is with movies, but it’s still annoying.
Even if you’re willing to endure ads on other streaming services, there are a couple of reasons they’re worth stripping out on YouTube. One is that many YouTube ads are minutes long, but allow you to skip after a few seconds. If you often watch YouTube while your hands are occupied (like while working out, cooking, or similar), then you have to constantly stop what you’re doing to skip ads.
Another reason is YouTube’s nature of having videos for everything. While it’s easy enough to ignore an ad break while streaming movies since you can use the bathroom or get a drink, YouTube is also a source for videos to help you fix problems around the house, car, etc. When something is going wrong, you don’t want ads to interrupt a crucial fix.
The intrusion of ads into every service that was once ad-free by default is upsetting. But given that paying to remove ads is an option on every other service, YouTube Premium Lite feels like it should have come first. I’d recommend Premium Lite for anyone who watches YouTube beyond an occasional video, while the full version of Premium is only for enthusiasts.
