A major Lifetime Plex Pass price hike is coming this summer

To get the most out of personal media streaming platform Plex, you’ll want to subscribe to the service’s Plex Pass offering that enables features like remote streaming and over-the-air downloads of your media for offline viewing. The most price effective way to get a Plex Pass has historically been to buy a lifetime membership — but starting soon, that’s getting a lot more expensive.

Plex announced in a blog post today that, starting this summer, the cost of a Lifetime Plex Pass subscription is jumping from $249.99 all the way up to $749.99, a 3x increase that’s got us doing back-of-the-envelope math about our streaming habits years into the future.

Existing Lifetime Plex Pass memberships are unaffected by the upcoming price hikes; if you already locked in your sub at a lower rate, you won’t have to pay any additional fees, and your service isn’t changing. Monthly and annual Plex Pass subscriptions are also unchanged for now.

Future price hikes on shorter-term subscriptions might make the new lifetime rate look more appealing over time. Right now, though, paying an up-front cost totaling nearly a decade’s worth of subscription fees seems a little dubious. Plex has been around for nearly 20 years now, but in today’s tumultuous economy, there’s no guarantee it’ll stay solvent long enough to make a $750 investment worth it in the long run.

This is the second major price hike for Plex Pass in just over a year. The cost of a Lifetime Plex Pass more than doubled last year, from $119.99 to $249.99. The new Lifetime Plex Pass subscription pricing takes effect on July 1, so if you’re keen on paying for a lifetime of Plex service up front, you can save a full $500 if you do it in the next few weeks.