Three elements define the pricing strategies of top 50 news subscription brands: Keep entry simple and cheap for scaling, design for renewal and price increases, and bundle to drive habit rather than just ARPU.

Across 317 news brands benchmarking with INMA, the median publisher grew digital subscription volume in 2025 by 8% year-on-year, while revenue grew faster at 13%. 

The gap reflects how publishers increasingly design pricing as a system — from entry through repeated renewal — and how they embed pricing into product.

My pricing analysis is based on continuous tracking of subscription offers of the world’s top 50 news brands by digital subscriber base. 

I first presented this data in full to participants of the INMA Subscription Benchmarks and shared a sample later in my keynote at the INMA Media Subscriptions Summit in Toronto.  

Entry is cheap by design, not by necessity

Despite inflation and pressure on consumer spending, most leading publishers have not raised entry prices. Quite the opposite.

Among the top 50 global news subscription brands, 88% offer discounted trials in Q1 2026, often extending beyond three months, with average discounts around 72%. Shorter trials are discounted even more aggressively. 

This pattern has held for years. For example, The New York Times continues to anchor its offer at roughly US$1 per week for the first year, one of the longest-running pricing tactics in the industry.

As our multi-year research shows, it is a deliberate strategy to maximise market share. As a median publisher’s household penetration for digital subscriptions stood at 2.2% at the end of 2025, there is clearly room to grow for most brands, and the subscription ceiling is far, far away.

Lowering the barrier to entry expands the pool of users who can experience the product long enough to form a habit. We call this tactic a “subscription cyclone,” and it continues to dominate acquisition strategies of the top 50 news brands. 

Pricing power is exercised at renewal

If entry prices are stable or even lower, where does revenue growth come from?

Among the global leaders, about half increased their post-trial prices over the past year. The average increase was around 10% nominal or 5% in real terms after adjusting for inflation.  

These increases are not applied uniformly. They are increasingly targeted and tied to behaviour.

Publishers observe how users engage during the trial, for example, how often they return, and then adjust pricing accordingly. Those who get more value from the subscription are more likely to be retained at higher prices. Those who do not may remain at lower price points.

This reflects a broader shift in the news industry from static pricing to lifecycle pricing. The key decision is no longer what price to set but how price evolves over time in response to user behaviour.

Bundling has become the default product logic

This shift in pricing cannot be separated from changes in product lines’ design.

Among the top 50 brands, all now bundle in some form. Publishers combine content, features, non-news benefits, and access into broader value propositions.

More than half bundle multiple standalone products together, typically at a discount, while 96% integrate additional benefits directly into the core subscription, including apps, personalisation, podcasts, or video. 

The subscription is no longer a single news product. It is a structured package of use cases designed to increase frequency of use.

Case study of The New York Times

The world’s best selling news company offers perhaps the clearest example of how bundling works economically.

According to the 2025 annual report, bundle subscribers represent about 53% of the digital-only base (or 51% including print), yet generate roughly 71% of subscription revenue, per my modeling. 

This is not because bundle subscribers pay more per month. In fact, their ARPU is slightly lower than that of news-only subscribers (US$12.92 vs. US$13.33). This is likely because The Times no longer markets news-only plans, and the remaining base is tenured.

The revenue growth comes from retention. As The New York Times Company’s CEO Meredith Kopit Levien disclosed, bundle subscribers exhibit about 40% lower churn, driven by higher engagement. 

This extends their average lifetime from roughly 26 months to about 44 months, based on my modelling informed by INMA churn benchmarks. The result is roughly 60% higher lifetime value (US$566 vs. US$351).

This reframes bundling entirely. Most value sits in improved retention and not higher price.

Habit products drive engagement inside the bundle

What drives that usage is not evenly distributed across the bundle.

At the New York Times, games account for roughly 45%-48% of time spent, slightly exceeding or matching the share of news itself at 40%-42%. Other components, such as cooking or sports, contribute far less.

This insight is based on aggregated time spent on different apps of The Times and was reported by ValueAct Capital, an investment company. Note: Engagement in apps may not fully reflect behaviours on Web sites, as apps tend to attract super users. 

Anyway, this data suggests habit-forming products — such as puzzles, crosswords, and other daily-use features — play a disproportionate role in retention and therefore in bundling. 

People may subscribe for news, but they often stay for habit.

Packaging as a growth lever

One of the most immediate and replicable applications of bundling is the family plan.

Among price-based bundles, extra subscriptions to share are the most common feature, used by more than half of the top publishers. The New York Times’ financial report shows why.

By offering a family tier at roughly double the base price and allowing up to four users, the company added 366,000 subscribers in the second half of 2025, per my estimates. 

Family plans contributed around 40% of all new additions in the last two quarters and added up to less than 3% of the total digital-only audience. The Times counted each family subscription as two subscriptions rather than four, as the plan’s price is only a double. 

This growth required no new content and no new acquisition channels. It came from increasing usage within households and capturing more value through packaging.

Product lines are shifting from content to segments

Bundling is also reshaping how publishers structure their product lines:

• The Wall Street Journal has expanded from a single subscription into a portfolio serving core, professional, and enterprise audiences. 

• U.K.’s Telegraph combines news with puzzles and multi-user access. 

• France’s Le Monde experiments with bundles that include external services such as Spotify or HBO. 

• Mediahuis in The Netherlands bundled news brands, magazines, e-books, streaming services, and lifestyle apps, e.g., cycling, and revealed in Toronto that entertainment magazines, e-books, and quality nationals performed best.

In each case, the logic shifts from a single product to a set of offerings aligned with different user needs, levels of engagement, and willingness to pay.

Pricing becomes a system, not a decision

Taken together, these trends suggest a deeper transformation.

Pricing is no longer a front-end decision focused on conversion. It is part of a broader system that connects acquisition, engagement, retention, and product design:

• Entry price maximises access.

• Renewal captures value.

• Bundling drives usage.

• Retention determines revenue.

The top publishers spend less time optimising the initial price point and more time designing the conditions under which subscribers stay, upgrade, and renew.

Want to receive our pricing insights first and in full? Consider joining the INMA Subscription Benchmarks cohort of 317 news brands in 38 countries.

Greg’s Readers First newsletter is a public face of a revenue and media subscriptions initiative by INMA, outlined here. INMA members can subscribe here.

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