How Much Does Spotify Cost?

SpotifyMusic, Podcasts & Audio

By Corbin HartwickUpdated on March 14, 2018

Is Spotify free?

Spotify is sort of free. It is what is commonly referred to as a “freemium” service. This means that you don’t have to pay any money to sign up for the service or use it. However, the service has several features that are locked unless you purchase and maintain a paid subscription, known as Spotify Premium.

For instance, if you only have the free version of Spotify:

  • You will see advertisements in the Spotify application, and hear them between songs.
  • You can only skip songs a certain number of times over a certain length of time.
  • You cannot download songs to be able to listen to them when not connected to the Internet.
  • You will not be able to customize the order in which certain songs play (on a mobile device).
  • Your audio quality will be somewhat limited.

How much does Spotify Premium cost?

Spotify Premium costs $9.99 per month (plus tax) in both the United States and Canada, charged at the beginning of each month. If you cancel your subscription in the middle of the month, you will not get a refund for your fee for that month, but you will avoid paying more fees until you renew your subscription.

Are there ways to get discounts for Spotify?

Absolutely! Though Spotify no longer offers 30-day (or 60-day) free trials, it does offer users a 3-month trial of Spotify Premium for a 99₵ flat fee. It only works if you’ve never used Spotify Premium before, though, either through a free trial or some other promotion. We’ll show you how to get it at the end of this tutorial.

(NOTE: after the time period for this trial has expired, if you haven’t cancelled your subscription, you will continue at the usual monthly rate of $9.99 plus tax.)

There are also other discounts that you can get. For instance, with the Spotify Family promotion, you can have up to 5 family members (yourself plus four others) use the same paid subscription. Instructions for how to set it up can be found at this link .

You can also get 50% off your subscription if you are a student at an American college. We’ll tell you more in our Spotify Student Discount article.

How to get a Spotify (almost) free trial

1. Go to www.spotify.com in your web browser. In the top-right corner, click Upgrade.

2. On the next screen, click Get 3 Months for 99₵.

3. You’ll be prompted to log into Spotify. If you don’t have an account yet, visit our How to Sign Up for Spotify tutorial to learn how to make one. Otherwise, just enter your user name and password for Spotify, and click Log In.

4. On the next screen, click in the highlighted boxes and type in or select your credit card number, the month and year that your credit card expires, your credit card’s security code (move your mouse cursor over the “?” to learn where to find this number), and your mailing code. Then click the box labelled “I’m Not a Robot” and complete the activity that appears.You can also click PayPal to pay for your subscription with a PayPal account, if you have one.

5. When you’ve filled in all of your information, scroll down and click Start Premium.


You will receive a confirmation email of your order. Enjoy Spotify Premium! Also, if you ever want to cancel your subscription to Spotify Premium, our How to Delete Your Spotify Account tutorial will show you how to do so.