Snapchat unveils subscription plan

Snapchat revealed on Wednesday that it will now offer Snapchat+, a subscription plan providing a collection of “exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features” for $3.99 a month.

“This subscription will allow us to deliver new Snapchat features to some of the most passionate members of our community and allow us to provide prioritized support,” Snapchat’s parent company, Snap, said in a press release.

New features include the ability to pin your close friend as a BFF and to customize the app’s icon.

The subscription is aimed toward “the people who spend most of their time communicating with their closest friends on Snap,” senior vice president of product Jacob Andreou said in an interview with The Verge. The subscription marks the company’s first real attempt at making money from the app outside of advertising, aside from when it tried to charge users 99 cents for lenses in the Lens Store in 2015, according to the Los Angeles Times.

However, Andreou says there aren’t expectations the subscription will become a “material new revenue source.”

The subscription service launched on Wednesday in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The company noted that it would expand to more countries over time.

Snapchat is the latest social media platform to roll out a subscription option, following Twitter, which announced Twitter Blue in 2021.

The company’s announcement comes after it reported disappointing revenue growth in the current quarter.