You may have less than 2 months left to share your Netflix password with people outside your home before the company starts charging for the privilege.
After a delay, the company finally decided to institute its crackdown on password sharing in the current quarter. That means that by the end of June, you may be unable to give out your Netflix password for free.
Netflix initially said it would stop free password sharing in the first quarter, but the company announced in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday that it had "shifted the timing" of the launch "to improve the experience for members."
Netflix first hinted at a crackdown on password sharing in July after its first subscriber loss in over a decade — 200,000 users — during the first quarter of 2022.
The streaming giant said account sharing affected over 100 million households, which "undermines our long-term ability to invest in and improve Netflix." It added that while its terms of use already limited account use to a single household, "we recognize this is a change for members who share their account more broadly."
"As we roll out paid sharing, members in many countries will also have the option to pay extra if they want to share Netflix with people they don't live with," the shareholder letter said.
Subscribers will be able to transfer a user profile to a new account, it added.
Paid sharing was initially tested in Costa Rica, Chile, and Peru, where it costs $2 to $3 to add an extra member account for someone living outside a given household.
The program has now expanded to Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and Portugal, with the cost of adding an extra account varying for each country.
Peruvian Netflix subscribers told Rest of World that the policy was confusing and they hadn't been subject to any enforcement of the rule.
The shareholder letter said some Latin American users canceled their subscriptions due to the sharing charge. Netflix added that it expected near-term engagement to fall. But as people who borrowed accounts begin subscribing, overall revenue should improve, it said.
The planned broader rollout of the sharing charge follows the November launch of an ad-supported subscription tier, where users are shown up to five commercials an hour. At $7 a month, "Basic With Ads" costs $3 less than the cheapest ad-free tier.
