Instagram Plus is real, the social reveals its new subscription plan

Meta, the parent company of some of the world’s most widely used communication platforms, has begun the testing phase of a new paid premium service for Instagram.

The project, officially confirmed by management in recent statements to U.S. outlets such as TechCrunch and Bloomberg, marks another evolution of the company’s business model, adding a new source of revenue to the traditional system based on advertising.

What is Instagram Plus and how does it work?

The package is positioned as a clearly separate and distinct product compared to the Meta Verified, which had previously been introduced with features primarily aimed at content creators and businesses for identity verification.

In this case, the offer aims to appeal to the average user who desires additional options and greater flexibility in managing their social profile.

Leaks and early confirmations outline a package rich in new tools, largely focused on viewing and posting Stories.

Subscribers will have the ability to view others’ ephemeral content completely anonymously, without the author of the post being able to notice or find them in the viewing history.

And this adds a more meticulous control over their interactions: subscribers will be able to search for specific names within their audience list quickly and discover exactly how many times a single Story has been viewed by the public.

Another notable novelty concerns the duration and promotion of content. Those who subscribe to the plan will extend the lifetime of a Story by an additional 24 hours, bringing the total expiry to 48 hours.

It will also be possible to promote a specific piece of content once a week, pushing it to the top of followers’ viewing queue to maximize its reach.

Regarding interactions with other profiles, the service includes sending special animated ‘Superlikes’, a more pronounced form of appreciation than the classic heart.

Finally, the opportunity is offered to create unlimited audience lists, overcoming the current restriction limited to close friends and enabling precise segmentation of who can view every single ephemeral update.

International tests and expected costs

Currently, the initiative is not yet available globally. The testing phase is active in a limited number of countries, including Mexico, Japan, and the Philippines.

Company spokespeople have stressed that these field evaluations are essential to understand which tools are truly valuable for people before proceeding with a global territorial expansion.

The service costs reflect macroeconomic differences of the markets chosen for testing. Prices stand at 65 Philippine pesos, 39 Mexican pesos, and 319 Japanese yen. Converting these figures, the monthly fee ranges roughly between 0.93 and 1.92 euros.

To incentivize adoption and collect a sufficient amount of usage data, users residing in these territories are granted the first month of trial as completely free.

The introduction of this novelty fits into a broader corporate strategy involving the entire app ecosystem of the group founded by Mark Zuckerberg. Already in recent months, the company had signaled its intention to explore paid subscriptions not only for Instagram and Facebook but also for the instant messaging sector.

In this regard, recent analyses of WhatsApp beta versions have revealed ongoing work for a twin service named a twin service named WhatsApp Plus.

This paid variant should provide advanced aesthetic customization options, allowing users to modify interface colors, apply themes, and even choose from 14 different icons for the app installed on their smartphone.