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Meta has officially introduced subscription services across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp as it expands beyond advertising revenue. The company is also planning future AI-focused subscription features for its social media ecosystem. The subscription launch highlights Meta’s broader strategy to diversify revenue and increase platform engagement. The company intends to eventually consolidate its various offerings under a single brand called Meta One.
Meta on Wednesday (May 27, 2026) launched paid subscription plans for its flagship apps. Meta's head of product, Naomi Gleit, announced the move in a video posted to Instagram, saying she was rolling out Facebook Plus, Instagram Plus, and WhatsApp Plus globally, with more plans in the works for businesses, creators, and artificial intelligence products.
The move comes as Meta faces investor scrutiny over its massive AI spending. The company has projected capital expenditures, mainly for AI data centres, of between $125 billion and $145 billion for the year.
Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus will be priced at $3.99 per month, while WhatsApp Plus will cost $2.99 per month. Meta's stock rose nearly three percent on the news.
This subscription will allow Meta to diversify its revenue streams beyond advertising by extracting more value from its existing audience of billions, given the limited growth opportunities for these apps, which have already achieved global saturation.
Meta in 2023 launched ad-free, paid versions of Facebook and Instagram in Europe to comply with EU data privacy legislation, giving users a choice between a free, ad-supported experience and a paid, ad-free one.
Meta is expected to begin testing other offerings, including professional plans for creators and businesses and AI-focused plans for all users. These new tests will be branded as “Meta One,” which will serve as the company’s home for its subscription offerings going forward.
For Meta AI users, it will test two plans: Meta One Plus ($7.99/mo) and Meta One Premium ($19.99/mo) with the same features, but the Premium plan unlocks more capacity on higher compute queries. That means the Premium plan would offer deeper reasoning for complex tasks (i.e., more of “thinking mode” in the Meta AI app or on the web). It would also offer more video and image-generation capabilities across Meta’s apps.
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The AI plans will start testing next month, initially in Singapore, Guatemala, and Bolivia. Two other plans for creators and businesses will begin tests later this week in markets including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Thailand, and Bangladesh.
Meta is still experimenting with these AI and professional plans for the time being but aims to bring them all together under Meta One, where they will then continue to be updated and expanded over time.
