You are not alone in feeling caught off guard by YouTube TV's January 2025 price increase; as a YouTube TV subscriber, I always knew a price increase would eventually come, but I never thought it would happen last week.

But the price increase did, and I was faced with the choice of continuing my subscription or cancelling YouTube TV.

Eventually, thankfully, I found out that there was a third option. r/youtubetv Redditors on the subreddit immediately started posting about the price increase (ht/TechRadar), and some of them even tried to cancel their subscriptions and found out that if they tried to cancel their subscriptions, they would get the next 6 months of They discovered that the fee would be discounted by $60. Well, actually, they were offered to lock in their current $72.99/month subscription rate for the next 6 months, which is technically a $60 discount compared to the new $82.99/month subscription rate. However, for the sake of this exercise, we will act as if it is a discount.

So I decided to try this trick myself! I managed to lock in a subscription at $72.99/month for the next 6 months. Here's what I did, so you can try it too.

Canceling YouTube TV is really easy: just log in to [16], click on your profile icon in the upper right corner, and click on settings. You will immediately be taken to the membership page, where you have the option to manage your basic plan membership. Click Manage.

You can then pause or cancel your plan. If you click Cancel, you will be asked for a reason to cancel. Click Cost, then click Submit, and you will see an offer for a $60 discount. When you see this offer, click on “Learn More” and then “Accept”. This will lock in the $72.99/month rate for the next 6 months and you will receive an email confirming this promotional rate.

Now, there is a catch to this price hike hack. It worked for me, and it worked for some others, but others on the r/youtubetv subreddit say it didn't work. So before you try this method, make sure you are prepared to roll the dice. If it doesn't work, you will need to re-register at the full rate to access YouTube TV again.

However, after this price increase, if YouTube TV does not offer a service that fixes the previous price, then you may be ready to say goodbye to YouTube TV. If that's the case, check out our guide to the best cable TV alternatives and be sure to find a new live TV streaming service like Sling TV or Hulu + Live TV.