YouTube adds cheaper Premium service, but it comes with a whole bag of catches

If like me you want ad-free YouTube but don't want to pay for YouTube Music, the new Premium Lite subscription tier sounds like good news. But while it cuts the cost of ad-free YouTube quite considerably, there are quite a few caveats.

The first and most significant problem is that if you're in the UK, you can't get it yet.

It's launching in the US to begin with, and will then roll out to Thailand, Germany and Australia in the next few weeks. As yet, there's no indication of when it'll be available elsewhere – Google says that the pilots will come to "additional countries" this year, but doesn't elaborate on which ones or when.

Even when it does arrive though, there are other catches – one being the fact that ad-free viewing isn't completely ad-free.

YouTube Premium — What's Now and New! - YouTube

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YouTube Premium Lite: what it offers, and what it doesn't

With Premium Lite, "most" videos are ad-free. But you'll still see ads with music videos, YouTube Shorts, and when you're searching or browsing. YouTube's worded things carefully – it's promising "fewer interruptions", not no interruptions.

There's another key feature missing – downloads.

While the full-fat Premium subscription enables you to download video to watch later, that isn't available for Lite customers. The same applies to background playback, which is also absent from Lite.

I'm very much the target market for this service – I prefer Apple Music for my tunes and just want a YouTube that doesn't blast me with ads – but there's another issue here that might be a deal-breaker. Google hasn't yet announced a family or student plan for YouTube Premium Lite.

A reasonably priced family plan would be an easy sell for me, but at the moment that doesn't appear to be on the table.

The US pricing for YouTube Premium Lite is $7.99 per month compared to $13.99 for the existing Premium tier. Here in the UK, YouTube Premium is £12.99. That suggests a UK price of around £7 per month for Premium Lite when it eventually arrives.