Spotify’s hidden Basic tier can save you cash, if you can find it

Annoyed by Spotify’s latest price hike? You can always avoid the increase by switching to a competing streamer, but if you’d rather stick with Spotify, there’s another option: a cheaper but well-hidden music-only tier.

Spotify’s Basic plans aren’t new (they were first announced in mid-2024), but they’re easy to forget and even harder to spot, given that they’re buried at the bottom of Spotify’s Premium plan listings. And you cannot sign up for this service level as a new user.

For a small monthly saving compared to Spotify’s Premium plans, the Basic tier gives you almost all the same features, including ad-free access to Spotify’s extensive catalog of songs, offline listening, and the ability to play songs in any order you want.

The biggest difference between Spotify’s Premium and Basic plans is the audiobooks. While Spotify Premium tiers include 15 hours of audiobook listening (either for individual subscribers or the “manager” of a Family or Duo plan), the Basic plan is reserved for music.

Another difference between the Basic and Premium plans is that only the latter offers lossless music streaming, while Basic members have to settle for “high quality” lossy streaming.

We’ve established that Spotify Basic is cheaper than Spotify Premium, but how a lot cheaper?

When it launched in June 2024, a Basic Individual plan cost $10.99 per month, a dollar cheaper than the $11.99 monthly fee for Premium Individual at the time. (Earlier this week, Spotify announced across-the-board price hikes for its Premium plans, with the individual tier going up to $12.99 per month.)

OK, the Basic Individual plan too always $10.99 per month? We’re verifying this (Spotify doesn’t reveal Basic tier pricing on its website), and we’ll update this story once we get official details.

Spotify also lists the Basic Duo and Basic Family plans on its support site, but again, no prices are listed. We also requested these details.

Then there’s the process of signing up for a basic plan. You can’t just go to Spotify.com and sign up for Basic as a new user; instead, you must first be a Spotify Premium subscriber, and SO you’ll only find the basic option by downgrading your existing plan, perhaps.

According to Spotify’s support page, only “eligible” Spotify subscribers will see the Basic tier as an option when trying to switch plans, meaning some Premium members may not see the Basic plan at all. What makes you eligible for Basic? We check this.

Finally, Spotify notes that if you manage to sign up for a Basic plan but later cancel, you can never go back.

This is the type of condition typically attached to a grandfathered plan that is being phased out, although a glance at the Wayback Machine reveals that the reservation has been around since at least early 2025. (Again, we asked Spotify about this.)