Crunchyroll Price Increase Explained
The anime community is generally outraged at Crunchyroll’s pricing for Funimation subscribers. Funimation was bought out by Crunchyroll in 2022 but only just announced that their app and website would no longer be available by April 2, 2024, causing Crunchyroll transfers that may increase prices.
It’s the end of an era, and the price increase isn’t exactly a pleasant way to welcome Spring 2024 within the anime community, as you can see the increase quoted for one subscriber below is substantial:
Who will be affected by the Crunchyroll Price Increase in 2025?
This isn’t necessarily a price increase for everyone who uses Crunchyroll, though. Only Funimation Legacy subscribers will be affected by this drastic hike, or those who had a Funimation subscription. Former Funimation subscribers can still change their subscription plans and possibly downgrade to a cheaper option, but Crunchyroll’s current cheapest plan is $7.99 per month, which comes out to $95.88 per year—not much savings over the $99 per year membership mentioned in the tweet above.
There’s no news of any price increase for existing Crunchyroll subscribers. This increase for Funimation subscribers brings their pricing more in line with Cruncyroll plans, as the services merge. Funimation’s news release about the changes says that subscribers can expect billing changes to be reflected in their next billing cycle:
“Going forward, the subscription fees will be reflected in the next billing cycle through Crunchyroll or the third-party access platform, following Crunchyroll’s pricing. To access Crunchyroll subscriptions, users will need to log in to Crunchyroll using the same credentials they used for Funimation.”
More importantly, there has been backlash surrounding digital copies. Former Funimation subscribers will have their subscriptions transferred to Crunchyroll, including their watch history. But another benefit to Funimation subscribers is their digital copies that they couldn’t migrate or access at Crunchyroll, and this added more fuel to the fire that anime fans are currently feeling. Unfortunately, Funimation’s digital copies of certain titles are bought for streaming and not necessarily as an online copy for viewers to keep.
(featured image: Toei Animation)
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