Joe Maring / Android Authority Subscription plans are an expected (if annoying) part of life in late 2025. Whether it’s for cloud storage, video streaming, or anything in between, some things require a monthly fee. And that’s fine – so long as I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. Unfortunately, that’s a hurdle almost every Google subscription service fails to overcome — such as Google AI, Fitbit Premium, Google Play Pass, and the recently contested Google Home Premium. All of these services offer questionable value at best, leaving you with a heap of Google services you could sign up for, but have little reason to. That is, except for two. Out of every Google subscription available in 2025, there are only two that are actually worth paying for. What do you think is the best Google subscription? 71 votes Google One 34 % YouTube Premium 56 % Google AI 3 % Google Home Premium 1 % Fitbit Premium 0 % Nest Aware 0 % Google Play Pass 3 % Other (let us know in the comments) 3 % Google One and YouTube Premium are subscriptions done right Joe Maring / Android Authority The two subscriptions in question are Google One and YouTube Premium. They both serve very different purposes, and unlike every other service Google wants to charge you monthly for, they deliver clear and unquestionable value. If you regularly use Google Drive, Google Photos, and/or Gmail, a Google One subscription is a must. Your Google account comes with 15GB of free cloud storage, but if you need more space for files, pictures, or an ever-growing inbox, a Google One subscription is money well spent. The 100GB Basic plan (priced at $2/month) is enough for casual use, while the 2TB Premium plan ($10/month) provides ample storage for multiple people at a reasonable price. The Premium plan also includes 10% cash back on all Google Store purchases, meaning you can recoup almost a year’s worth of your monthly fee in Google Store credits when buying a phone like the Pixel 10 Pro. Google One may not be the most exciting subscription service (and its plans are in need of a makeover), but that doesn’t diminish the value you get from it. As someone with a 2TB Google One plan, it’s well worth $10 each month to ensure not only myself, but also my partner, parents, and grandmother, can all use Google Photos, Drive, and Gmail without worrying about whether we have enough space. It’s great. Joe Maring / Android Authority Then there’s YouTube Premium. If you use YouTube at all, I’d argue that YouTube Premium is a must-have subscription. Ads on YouTube videos are a mess these days, and once you experience watching a YouTube video without ads playing multiple times before or during it, it’s pretty much impossible to go back. It’s how life should be, and that alone is worth the $14 per month Google asks for YouTube Premium. Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority? Set us as a favorite source in Google Discover to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more. to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more. You can also set us as a preferred source in Google Search by clicking the button below. However, that’s not all you get with YouTube Premium. I really love the ability to play videos with my phone’s screen locked, something I do quite often when watching/listening to a video version of a podcast. You also get a clever “Jump Ahead” feature that essentially lets you skip through a sponsored portion of a video — and I’ve become absolutely dependent on it. Pair all of that with offline video downloads and a bundled subscription to YouTube Music Premium, and it almost feels like you’re losing money if you don’t pay for YouTube Premium. And if you don’t care about the extra perks and only want to eliminate ads, YouTube Premium Lite is a great alternative. The problems with Google’s other subscriptions Joe Maring / Android Authority And then we have … well, everything else. Google offers numerous additional subscriptions beyond Google One and YouTube Premium, but none of them come close to matching the value or usefulness they provide. Take Google AI plans, for example. Google has two subscriptions that grant you access to its most powerful Gemini features, but unless you’re a Gemini diehard or constantly use Veo 3 and NotebookLM, I struggle to see how these are worth paying for. Google AI Pro is $20/month and is essentially the $10/month 2TB Google One plan with Gemini features tacked on. Then there’s Google AI Ultra, which will set you back a whopping $250/month for top-tier Gemini access, 30TB (!!!) of storage, and a bundled YouTube Premium subscription. If you need cloud storage, a non-AI Google One plan is the better value by far. And at the rate Google transitions Gemini features from requiring a paid subscription to free general availability, you’re not getting much there either. So, who are these really for? Google Home Premium is another troubled Google subscription. Google announced Home Premium alongside its new Nest cameras and Google Home Speaker, with the subscription providing more storage for your security cameras and a range of Gemini features to make your smart home even smarter. On the surface, this is fine for some people. But as my colleague Stephen rightly points out in his critique of Google Home Premium, the problem is that Google doesn’t give you another choice beyond the subscription. If you need more storage for your Nest cameras, you should have the option to pay Google a monthly fee for cloud storage, but you should also be able to expand your storage locally if you prefer. And the Gemini features, while neat, certainly aren’t worth an extra $20/month to unlock all of the AI’s capabilities. And there’s all of Google’s other subscriptions. I love the Pixel Watch just as much as the next person, but I’m not rushing to pay $10/month for Fitbit Premium anytime soon. The additional health data is neat, but it’s not worth the same price as a 2TB Google One plan. Not once have I ever felt compelled to pay $ 5/month for Google Play Pass. Paying $11/month just for YouTube Music Premium is perhaps the most nonsensical subscription when it comes bundled with YouTube Premium. And — as much as I love it — I’m quickly reaching my breaking point with how expensive YouTube TV has gotten in recent years. Google needs to clean this up Joe Maring / Android Authority For a company as large as Google, it’s not completely surprising that its subscription business is as uneven as it is. The team working on Google One is different from the team responsible for YouTube Premium, which is different from the team in charge of Google Home Premium, and so it goes. But there’s another way to look at this. For a company as large and powerful as Google, its subscriptions shouldn’t be this messy. I’m not sure if the answer to resolving everything is to include more features in existing subscriptions, lower monthly prices, or bundle more services into Google One. But that’s for me to solve — that’s something Google should be more than capable of doing. And yet, here we are, where only two out of Google’s many, many subscription plans are actually worth your money. Follow