Crunchyroll will end its free ad supported plan on December 31, moving fully to paid tiers

Crunchyroll will end its free ad supported plan on December 31, moving fully to paid tiers

Crunchyroll is reportedly planning to discontinue its free ad supported tier on December 31, 2025, according to reports from Reddit users who received the announcement directly from the platform. Once that deadline arrives, all viewers will need a paid subscription starting January 1, 2026 to watch any title, removing the last no cost way to sample the service.

Free tier users are already seeing these notices. The tier currently offers only a rotating set of older catalog titles with ads and has not included simulcast episodes since 2022. The change mainly affects those who rely on the remaining older shows, since major series have required a subscription for years.

Pricing stays the same for now at 7.99 dollars for Fan, 11.99 dollars for Mega Fan, and 15.99 dollars for Ultimate Fan, with annual options still available. Each plan offers different features including device limits, offline viewing, and store or screening benefits, and Crunchyroll has not indicated whether rates will change after the free tier ends, though it is possible we could see a situation similar to Prime where the cheapest plan eventually begins to include ads.

by Mauricio B. Holguin

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Crunchyroll is a video streaming platform offering access to over 25,000 episodes and 15,000 hours of the latest anime and Asian dramas, available just one hour after TV broadcast. Highly rated at 4.6, it features seamless video playback, an ad-free experience, and a vast library for anime enthusiasts. Crunchyroll's top alternatives include other streaming services in the anime and drama niche.

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After shuttering Funimation and butchering Fall 2025 anime subs (1, 2, 3,) the proprietary enshittification continues (Netflix, Disney+, Unity, and recently Plex.) Due to market oversaturation (see how many Netflix "alternatives" (sic) here) and being proprietary means some you-own-nothing-and-be-happy FUDDs, copyright infringement is always inevitable (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,) as soon as enough is enough.

Keeping on outsourcing your entertainment to proprietaries means their justification for enshittification (look at Disney+, they copied Netflix after their sharing crackdown success). However, there is no reason to support defective-by-design platforms driven by copyright extremists. Self-hosting or using the likes of MediaGoblin icon MediaGoblin and PeerTube icon PeerTube will become one of the only solution as soon as trust is damaged because of some proprietary control which avoids accountability.

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