Subscription fatigue is real, and few tech companies try our patience quite like Google. But even in the midst of an over-stuffed lineup of monthly upsells, two services still offer plain, everyday value for most people. If you’re opting to pick your spots with where to spend some cash in 2025, the only Google subscriptions that continue to charge for themselves are Google One and YouTube Premium.
Google One Still Offers Real Value for Most Users
Google accounts come with 15GB of free storage, but that amount disappears fast if you use Google Photos, Drive or Gmail. Google One fixes that with straightforward, reasonable sizes at strong prices: 100GB for around $2 a month, 200GB for $3 and 2TB for $10. And critically, the 2TB tier includes family sharing for up to five other people on your plan, which makes one subscription a hiding-to-nothing loser proposition at home.
More broadly, with little fanfare, Google One adds a safety net that can be hard to replicate. The dark web monitoring tool enables you to identify exposed personal data, and premium support can be invaluable when email or photo backups go haywire. You’ll also get Google Store Member Rewards on eligible hardware purchases, up to 10% back, to help mitigate the cost of your subscription.
Now think about a top-of-the-line Pixel purchase, in the $1,000 range. Receiving and spending $100 at the Store itself just about covers a year of the 2TB plan by itself. No, Google One isn’t sexy, but it addresses a mundane and universal need — space — in useful new ways that can benefit both individuals and families. It’s precisely that practicality that makes it pay-to-win.
The Only Streaming Service You Need: YouTube Premium
The promotion-crammed ads and YouTube’s crackdown on ad-blocking have made the free experience bumpier and bumpier. YouTube Premium fixes that instantly. Ad-free viewing removes friction from videos you already watch, and when it comes to browsing YouTube, once you get used to an ad-free experience, it’s difficult to go back. Alphabet’s filings indicate that YouTube creates tens of billions in advertising revenue annually; paying so I could skip those interruptions was the rare subscription that would actually give me back time.
The features go beyond ad-free. There is background play so you can lock your phone and just listen completely hands-free, great for lectures, commentators or long-form podcasts on YouTube. Offline downloads keep me sane on flights and commutes. Picture-in-picture makes multitasking painless. Meanwhile, premium-exclusive features such as “Jump Ahead,” based on aggregated viewing patterns and designed to skip to the next point worth watching, are becoming more widely available and subtly improving everyday viewing.
Price matters, and the bundle counts too. The single plan is self-contained with YouTube Music Premium, which eliminates ads on music, downloads songs and allows background playback — so there’s little need to have a separate music sub for anyone. Google revealed that Premium and Music combined had more than 100 million subscribers worldwide, suggesting people perceive real value. If you’re concerned only about watching video ad-free, and live in a region where it’s offered, there’s also the Premium Lite option: lighter and cheaper.
What Not to Buy From Google’s Subscription Catalog
There are many other Google subscriptions, but most are niche or redundant compared with superior alternatives. (AI add-ons like Gemini Advanced through Google One’s higher tiers are aimed at power users who want model upgrades for work or creation workflows; standard Google One plans provide better value for casual use, and Google typically filters AI down to free over time.)
Fitbit Premium offers coaching programs and more in-depth metrics, but at around $10 a month, it’s struggling to top what many other wearables offer for free. Google Play Pass is a package of games and apps for roughly the same price, yet discovery friction and the power of free-to-play ecosystems means it’s a “nice to have” rather than “must have.” YouTube Music as a separate subscription is mighty hard to endorse when Premium includes it. YouTube TV, meanwhile, is feature-loaded but costs keep edging ever so slightly higher that it feels more and more like a selective purchase rather than a default.
For smart homes, the value calculus is even more complicated. Camera cloud plans like Nest Aware can be essential if you depend on continuous recording or event history, but the absence of local storage options for many Google cams results in ongoing fees. If you really need those features, budget for them — but don’t mistake that necessity for broad universal value.
The Bottom Line for Your Google Budget in 2025
Keep it simple. And if you’re heavily invested in Photos, Drive and Gmail, pay for Google One — beginning at 100GB and upgrading to the 2TB family plan when you inevitably outgrow it. If YouTube is your daily destination of choice, YouTube Premium is a rare subscription that saves time and reduces friction while also providing an equivalent to a dedicated music service. Everything else from Google is situational at best. Amid a year of seemingly never-ending subscriptions, here are just two that prove their worth monthly on your bill.
