Apple has quietly ended a long-running new customer free trial offer for its streaming service, Apple TV+, in the UK. UK marketing pages for TV+ have today removed all mentions of the seven day free trial from ad copy.
New customers can still subscribe for one month and then cancel, but they now must immediately start a subscription – whereas before you could quit within the seven day window and pay nothing at all.
Until now, the subscription trial has existed unchanged ever since TV+ launched in November 2019. The seven-day free taster was available to first-time users of TV+, available once per Apple ID.
Other Apple TV+ offers continue, such as the one-time redeemable 3 free months free with the purchase of an eligible Apple hardware device, and the 30-day free trial for Apple One. Apple TV+ also continues to be a free perk for the Apple Music Student Plan.
At least right now, it appears that the TV+ trial has only been ended in the UK market (update: South Africa too). It’s unclear if this is a consequence of a region-specific legal change, or whether Apple will soon follow suit in other countries.
It is certainly an industry trend that free trial windows are becoming rarer in recent years, as streaming services look for ways to reduce churn. For instance, Netflix historically used to offer a 30-day free trial window to attract new customers to subscribe. That was taken away in late 2020.
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