Snap passes 30 million paid subscribers across its plans
Snap, the owner of the Snapchat messaging app, said in its third-quarter earnings that more than 30 million users pay for one of its subscription plans. It also warned of legal risks and said ad revenue growth is below its goals.
Snap, the US social media company behind the Snapchat messaging app, announced with its third-quarter earnings that more than 30 million users now pay for one of its subscription plans. Its non-advertising "other" revenue rose 84 percent from a year earlier.
The company launched Snapchat+ in 2022, offering extras such as seeing which friends re-watched a user's Story. Since then it has added Lens+, a plan for AI-powered augmented reality effects, as well as Platinum, an ad-free tier, and paid storage for the Memories feature. Snap did not break down subscribers by plan, but said Lens+ has grown nearly 600 percent since January 2026.
AI drives demand
CEO Evan Spiegel said on the earnings call that AI-powered features helped Lens+ exceed expectations and showed that new creative experiences can boost demand for paid products. One such feature is an AI photo editing tool called AI Photoshoot. For comparison, the platform X disclosed earlier this year that it had about 6.3 million paid subscribers across X Premium and Grok.
Advertising lags
Subscriptions were a bright spot in the results. Spiegel said advertising revenue was growing "below our ambitions," and daily users rose by only 2 million since the previous quarter. Snap said that from 2027 it will report monthly active users rather than daily users. Snapchat currently has 977 million monthly users.
The company also warned that its legal challenges and increased regulatory scrutiny of youth-related issues could affect its prospects. Snap faces numerous lawsuits over alleged safety issues, and US state attorneys general have pushed it to adopt additional safety features following Meta's high-profile settlement.
