I thought YouTube Premium Lite was good, but this two-person plan could beat it

Seemingly out of nowhere, the last few weeks have been incredibly busy for YouTube Premium subscribers. In March, YouTube rolled out YouTube Premium Lite in the US, letting folks get an ad-free YouTube experience at the lowest price yet. Now, just a couple of months later, YouTube has begun testing a new two-person Premium plan.

The goal behind this two-person plan is simple: offer the full YouTube Premium experience at a discounted price for two people. If you need more than one YouTube Premium subscription but don’t need the full family plan, having an option in the middle makes a lot of sense.

In fact, I think this could be YouTube’s best Premium offering yet. As a happy YouTube Premium Lite subscriber, here’s why I can’t wait to get my hands on the new two-person plan.

The current selection of YouTube Premium plans is, for the most part, strong. If you’re on your own and just need a single Premium subscription, the individual plan for $14/month (or $140 for an entire year) is a great deal. If you’re a student, you can get the same plan for just $8/month.

For multiple users, YouTube Premium shines with its family plan. For $23/month, you get your own Premium account plus the ability to share the subscription with up to five other people. In other words, you’re effectively getting six YouTube Premium accounts for just under $4 per person. Even for three people, that still costs just a little over $7 per user.

Whether you’re a single person, a student, or a family of three or more, this lineup of Premium plans means there’s a choice for everyone. Everyone except couples.

That’s where my partner and I find ourselves, and for the longest time, YouTube Premium didn’t make sense for us financially. A $23/month family plan for the two of us, while slightly cheaper than paying for two individual subscriptions, was still way more money than we wanted to spend.

That changed when YouTube Premium Lite came around. For $8/month per person (a total of just $16/month), each of us now has the ad-free YouTube experience we’ve wanted for years. We don’t get YouTube Music, background playback, downloadable videos, or ad-free music videos, but that’s fine. Ad-free videos are the main thing we wanted out of YouTube Premium, and thanks to Premium Lite, we get that at a lower price than we’ve previously been able to.

However, looking at this new two-person plan YouTube is testing, it could be an even better fit for us.

Like the family plan, this two-person subscription offers the entire YouTube Premium feature set — including background playback, downloadable videos, and YouTube Music. My partner and I don’t need those things, but they would be nice to have. What’s exciting about this two-person plan is that we might get all those extra features for about the same price as what we’re paying now for two Premium Lite subscriptions.

YouTube is currently only testing the two-person Premium plan in a handful of countries, not including the US, so it’s difficult to say how much it’ll cost if/when it launches stateside. But assuming it does, it’s easy to see it slotting right in between the individual and family tiers — likely anywhere from $16-$18/month.

At that price, I’d sign up for a two-person YouTube Premium subscription in an instant. I’m thrilled with YouTube Premium Lite as is, but if I could pay the same amount of money (or a couple of bucks extra) for my partner and me to get ad-free YouTube plus the extra goodies of a full-fledged Premium account, that’s a no-brainer.

If YouTube launches its two-person plan widely, that would give us five different ways to subscribe to YouTube Premium. Those being:

• YouTube Premium Individual ($14/month)
• YouTube Premium Family ($23/month)
• YouTube Premium Two-person ($16-18/month)
• YouTube Premium Student ($8/month)
• YouTube Premium Lite ($8/month)

No matter your budget or living arrangement, YouTube is quickly making it so there’s a Premium plan to fit anyone’s needs. Are you in school and trying to save money? Part of a big family? Uninterested in YouTube Muisc? Have a partner/spouse but no kids? It doesn’t matter. Whichever camp you fall into, it’s clear that YouTube wants there to be a Premium plan to meet you where you’re at — and I couldn’t be happier.

Everyone’s wants, needs, and budgets are different, and it’s cool to see YouTube understands that. While some may think all these subscription options make YouTube Premium too confusing, I’m all for the added choice. The individual plan may work best for you, the family plan is the best choice for my colleague Rita, and the two-person plan is perfect for my partner and me.

YouTube says it’s currently “experimenting” with the two-person subscription, and right now, it’s unclear if it’ll ever make its way out of that experimentation stage. But I sure hope it does. The two-person plan could be the final missing piece in the YouTube Premium puzzle, and if YouTube decides to launch it in the US, I’ll be ready and eager to sign up.