Meta Launches 'Meta One' Subscription Tiers for Businesses, Creators, and AI Users

Meta on Tuesday, September 15, unveiled a new paid subscription service that comes with higher AI usage limits and offers unique features for creators and businesses to use on its social media platforms. Meta One subscribers will be able to access more than 50 features launched on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Meta AI.

The social media giant also plans on introducing these features on other apps such as Edits and its flagship AI-powered smart glasses soon. The newly launched subscription service is being rolled out gradually across the world. It is available in India with single product plans such as Instagram Plus, Facebook Plus, and WhatsApp Plus starting at Rs 79 per month.

Meta One Core and Premium, which are individual bundles, are priced at Rs 549 per month and Rs 1,950 per month, respectively, while creator- and business-specific bundles start at Rs 639 per month. “Subscriptions unlock more specialized capabilities and expanded AI usage that go beyond what a free experience built for billions can offer,” Meta said in a press note.

It further emphasised that the core user experience across its platforms and Meta AI will continue to be free. But, what extra AI features and tools are packed into Meta One plans? More importantly, is Mark Zuckerberg’s paid subscription bet guaranteed to pay off? Take a look. What is Meta One?

What do you get? Under Meta One, there are three broad subscription tiers, namely: single product plans, bundles for individual AI power users, and bundles for creators and businesses. Single product plans include Instagram Plus (Rs 99/month), WhatsApp Plus (Rs 79/month), and Facebook Plus (Rs 99/month).

These plans give users additional features such as exclusive themes and icons, custom app icons, super hearts, special effect stickers, the ability to pin more chats in WhatsApp, custom DM and Story fonts on Instagram, more Reels insights, user-specific notifications, etc. They are aimed at letting users customise their experience on these platforms in new ways.

Single product plans were launched earlier this year and have recorded over 15 million subscriptions and trials to-date, as per the company. Also Read | Meta unveils ‘Plus’ tier subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp alongside new AI plan trials Meta One’s Core and Premium bundle plans offer more usage of compute-intensive AI features available on its social media apps.

It is targeted at those who want even more creative freedom from Meta’s AI tools. Some of the features under the Core plan (Rs 549/month) include the ability to generate more images and videos with Meta AI along with voice effects, restyling more Instagram Store, and more. Premium (Rs 1,950/month) is similar to Core with more room to create content using Meta AI and across the company’s family of apps.

The last category is Meta One creator and business plans, starting at Rs 639 per month. For creators, subscribing to this tailored bundle will help them manage their presence on Meta’s social media apps more easily. It includes a verified badge, verified channel on WhatsApp Business app, and impersonation protection.

On the other hand, businesses can subscribe to this custom package for access to professional grade tools. Higher tiers also include advanced publishing features like scheduling stories up to 30 days in advance, links in organic posts and reels, exportable analytics, and deeper audience insights.

Team members can access an account without the need to share passwords. Businesses will also be able to use Meta Business Agent to respond to customers 24x7. The Expert and Max packages starting at Rs 6,399 per month and Rs 20,990 per month, are the highest tiers with advanced features and extra Meta Business Agent capacity for teams managing at scale.

What is driving Meta’s subscription push? Just as nearly every major OTT streaming service has rolled out paid plans with a plus sign in the name brand (Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+), tech giants like Apple, Google, and now Meta have launched Apple One, Google One, and Meta One subscription services with various add-on offerings.

The only exception seems to be Amazon One, which used to be a palm-reader system for retail stores. Google One and Apple One have long offered extra amounts of digital storage, along with other perks. Similarly, Snap has also rolled out a bunch of different subscriptions, including Snapchat+ and Lens+.

However, AI has turned subscriptions into a much more important business model than ever before in tech. Earlier this year, Google added extra usage limits of its AI services in its Google One offering. Also Read | Meta launches Muse AI agent: What it can do, and how it handles your data While tech giants look to subscriptions to help offset the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into AI infrastructure, it is also a crowded market with lots of options for customers, including from Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceXAI.

Most of these companies offer a free tier of service so users can just as easily switch between AI platforms albeit with some downsides such as the lack of memory retention, personalisation, etc. Whether Meta manages to persuade users to pay for its subscription service supercharged with AI remains to be seen.