Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 9, 2025.
Snap is introducing a subscription feature that will allow creators to earn recurring income directly from their most engaged fans, as the social media company works to diversify beyond advertising.
The Los Angeles company will begin testing "Creator Subscriptions," as the feature is called, on Monday, starting with a small cohort of Snapchat creators, the company told CNBC exclusively. With user growth moderating, Snap's expansion into paid creator subscriptions emphasizes the company's initiative to grow income beyond advertising and build more predictable revenue streams.
"In the year ahead, growth in subscribers will be a critical input metric to track our progress," Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wrote earlier this month as part of the company's fourth-quarter results.
Snap's existing subscription offerings, Snapchat+ and Memories Storage Plans, grew 71% year over year to reach 24 million users in the period. However, the company reported 474 million daily active users, down 3 million from the previous quarter.
With the upcoming feature, Snapchat users will be able to pay to subscribe to their favorite creators and receive exclusive content, including direct photos or videos, as well as access a subscriber-only Story and send text-based replies that can be featured at the top of a creator's public Story.
"We want the next step in our long-term creator monetization journey to be one that's really rooted in real relationships," said Jim Shepherd, Snap's head of content partnerships, in an interview with CNBC. "And help creators expand the ways that they make money in a way that's predictable and they can make money from their most engaged fans."