If you live in an area that Starlink considers ‘limited capacity’, your monthly service price will soon be going up. Starlink is increasing prices for both Residential and RV service plans for US customers in limited capacity areas. The new change was announced via emails sent out from Starlink to customers in affected areas. If you woke up to an email from Starlink, your price will be going up. If you haven’t received anything, you might be in an ‘excess capacity’ area.
For Residential customers in limited capacity areas, the price will increase to $120/month, a $10 change. Residential customers that live in areas with excess capacity will see their price drop by $20, to $90/month. RV customers will see a $15 price increase, to $150/month.
The new monthly service prices will start on April 24, 2023.
Checking Starlink Capacity
While the email is pretty vague about limited capacity vs excess capacity, it is actually pretty easy to determine the Starlink capacity in your area. You can browse the Starlink availability map, find your location, and hover over it with the cursor to check capacity. The map is also color coded. As you can see from the screenshot above, most of the populated areas in the United States are low/limited capacity. The vast majority of Residential and RV customers in the US will see a price increase.
Portability Add-On Is Gone
Another change that wasn’t announced in the email is the elimination of the Portability add-on for Residential and Business service plans. Portability was a feature that allowed Residential customers to travel with their dish, away from the registered service address, for short periods of time. For an extra $25/month, Portability was similar to RV. The add-on could be turned on and off as needed. Portability is no longer an option in the Starlink Account Portal for Residential and Business customers in the US.
Why The Change?
It seems this change is an attempt by Starlink to ‘right the ship’ in some way. Previously, with services like RV, Best Effort, and Portability, they allowed far too many customers to sign up to the service. The network became overloaded, performance suffered. Average speeds continue to fall quarter to quarter. This change, I believe, is their strategy to alleviate some of those past strategy issues.
The range of reaction on the Starlink subreddit on Reddit is mostly disappointment and frustration. There is also a lot of confusion on the strategy of targeting limited capacity areas. After all, it was Starlink who oversold those areas in the first place, so why punish the customers? In the end I think most Starlink customers will not have much of a choice but to pay the increased prices. If we had other viable alternatives, we would have probably switched by now. But for most of us, Starlink is the only low latency, high speed option. Whether that is worth an extra $10 or $15 per month is up to each individual.
What are your thoughts? Is your price going up or down? Do you support this change for limited capacity areas, or are you considering dropping Starlink because of the price? Let me know in the comments below.
I simply don’t care. This is such a momumental better product over Hughesnet and it’s horrible latency and inability to stream, We live on the last mile and if they doubled it I would still be happy.
These comments are interesting, as people obviously don’t understand the cost of providing satellite based internet service. They have to actually launch thousands of satellites into space. That costs hundreds of millions of dollars to do. the fact that Starlink can provide service to people at a price point anywhere near what ground-based services cost is simply amazing. I use Starlink solely for when I’m traveling to an area with no reliable ground-based internet, so mostly in the mountains. I pay the monthly fee every month, but only use the service maybe 10 – 15 days out of the entire year, and it is easily worth it to me to have relatively reliable internet wherever I go. The cost is absolutely astounding for what you get and would be at 3 times the price.
After slowly working my way uphill from Dialup, then Verizon (using their MiFi), then Dish, then Viasat, all with S L O W speeds and low GB caps, getting Starlink two weeks ago has really really made a huge difference. I didn’t think I would ever see speeds in the triple digits! And then the price increase… well, it’s only $10 more than what I was spending with Viasat, so I guess it is worth it. However, I do agree that Starlink pulled a fast one on us. We paid a pretty penny for the “dish” (with shipping, mine came to $675) and now they give us a taste of something we’ve never experienced before–and then raise the price, with a very vague explanation. That’s crazy. I hope they reconsider.
I live in an extremely rural county in Colorado that is over an hour west of Pueblo, and far south of the mega-cities of the Front Range. Maybe 5000 full time residents. I zoomed in on the map and this county has probably 20-30 cells, all of them limited. Someone please explain this to me. Can’t wait for Kuiper to come online.
They should had never of sold it to areas that have access to high speed internet. What I mean by this is people who live in the cities. Starlink was designed specifically for us who do not have great access to high speed internet. Tell me why Starlink are you serving us with a penalty who need it and not to rhise who don’t. For it is Starlink who should charge themselves for the not to smart overloading the system. Selling to people who do not need the service. The ones who need ro ha e the newest thing they cones along. I for one am not on board with this new approach of money greed. Mr. MUSK I enjoy your service you provide. But I do mot agree with or enjoy your plan of action against us who really do need your service. To everyone on the comments have a blessed day.
I agree. I live in Shannon county Missouri, out in the sticks I have no other option. I hear all the time “When i get fiber optics ill dump Starlink.” Well guess what, some of us don’t have access to the precious fiber optics. here’s an idea, why not charge costumers more if they live in an area with other high speed options.
We need to get all streaming services to allow us to adjust the streaming resolution in their applications so that those with limited data plans like Starlink customers may enjoy their services. ie. Hulu and Discovery+ among others. Please join me.
I feel it’s the opposite way. Starlink and other ISP’s need to evolve with the technology. Customers shouldn’t have to use lower resolutions, the data limits should be increased as streaming and other activity online uses more data.
It is nonsense. They oversold ( even though I was on a waiting list and was contacted by Starlink. If it is in a overused area, why did they contact me? Total BS. I’ve only had the service for a few months. I have no choice where I live right now. However, when Verizon offers theirs, I’ll be jumping ship.Greedy bastards.
I also live in a rural area and by using the ‘availability map’ above as suggested I am clearly in an excess capacity area (light blue) yet I received the email about a price increase as Starlink deems me to be in a ‘limited capacity’ area. I wrote to Starlink and they ” do not have more detailed information to share” when asked how they determine between limited versus excess capacity. Pretty frustrated. Filed a complaint with the FCC today
I’ve heard several similar reports. They just use their own internal threshold for determining capacity, that is different than the public map. More transparency would be nice.
I wanted to share our experience when I saw this article popped up on my news feed. It feels pretty one sided which is fine but the headline reads – Starlink Increases the prices for US customers and below you write that if you didn’t receive an email you probably live in a excess capacity area.
We also received the email yesterday but ours stated because we live in an excess capacity area our bill will now be $20 less beginning today.
We moved to a pretty rural area of the US and had Starlink now for a year. We couldn’t be happier with it. Yes of course the lower monthly surprise is great but well before, it was all very smooth, from ordering, to installing to it has taken us thru zoom meetings during snowstorms etc. I would compare the speed to fiber which we used to have when we lived in a city and there we had several good options. The first year we lived here we had the only other satellite company offering services out here and it was pretty bad including their customer service. So my view is how much I appreciate Starlink and their efforts to connect people living outside the bigger more populated areas, and it goes without saying it’s a business model and one we hope to keep.
Thanks for reading and sharing your feedback!
Elisabet
I will tell you this I have no other options at the moment however as soon as 5G internet opens up I am going to dump Elon and his ripp off. Does it work yes is he gouging yes. The price should be 50 bucks a month period.
From what I’ve heard, 5G home internet works pretty well if it covers your address. And it’s less than half the price of Starlink.
No it doesn’t at least not rural, maybe 5G closer to big cities will perform better. But my house was just updated to 5G home internet (major company) coverage so I was excited at the possibility of having a lower monthly bill but it will not be replacing starlink for me, an okay option as a back up though. Download speeds are fast but… upload speed is hit and miss (connection loss type miss) and latency can not compare to starlink so it looks good on paper but not in real world use, at least for me and yes it has a good signal and have moved it to several different locations but still same problems.
Good to know for everyone reading. Try it for a month to see if it works before switching. The marketing is often much different from real world performance.
We are RVers and travel across the country. We have Verizon 5g as a backup to our Starlink and used to have AT&T 5g as a backup. We have been in many areas with 5g availability and have to say it is a terrible connection. 4g works great but I dread seeing that 5g symbol because it is like going back to 3g or data doesn’t work at all, I have spent hours on the phone with support and they eventually just tell me it is a developing standard.
It wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow if the new prices were for new customers, but it really ticks off customers when they get told “take it or leave it”. These are the loyal customers who helped fund the business by putting down deposits for service way ahead of actual availability. I’m an RV customer who has been waiting (still waiting) since the beginning for service availability for my home. They still have my original $100 and are paying zero interest to use it.
Other companies are loyal to their loyal customers, grandfather their original pricing even as new customers are charged more. T-mobile is an example. They’ve never in nearly 20 years increased the rate I paid except when I made the choice to make changes to my plan.
I used to be a fan of Elon. Not so much as time passes. I’ll gladly jump to a better value offering as it comes my way.
This is very frustrating. I have no other option in my area. I had also recently reached out to support since my service has actually become slower; no response from support, but yet I get an email increasing the monthly cost. Not happy at all…
Was going to get RV…. Not anymore
I was at Miami boat show last week and asked several marine communication vendors about using Starlink on a pleasure boat. They all said Starlink is soon going to use geo-fencing to keep boaters from using RV service and force them to use a new marine service (not the ultra-expensive $5,000/month service for cruise ships) but about $1,000/month to use on a personal recreational craft, still very expensive for average boater. I suspect their geo-fencing can’t distinguish between a motor home and a boat that are both in coastal areas (within a few miles of coast), but would require the higher cost service if your boat goes say 10-25 miles offshore or to islands. What do you know about this rumored change?
There are hints of this in the legal documentation on the Starlink website. Some of the documents describe “open ocean” and “transcontinental” data packages. I’m guessing that when they restructure things, someone with the RV plan would be able to add on the ability to use their dish in open water, away from coasts. The transcontinental would give you the ability to travel with RV outside of the continent. No word on pricing in these documents.
I knew Musk would do this when he lost his shorts on Twitter and Feels took a dive. We’re all his ATM’s. Unfortunately, not all of us can afford unlimited increases at a moment’s notice. Not that, that means a thing to Musk, it does not! We bought the jargon of getting internet to everyone at an affordable price. **That, of course, is subject to change without regard for previous statements and commitments. Money IS the bottom line after all… Just my opinion, of course!
We use our starlink alot. We are on the best effort account we are allowed 1tb per month just like everybody else. We use most of it usually. I have two kids and they love the internet. We also have a few pc’s and co soles that had to have a bunch of updates due to not being online in years. I have no complaints. We had hughesnet and got terrible signal. They did nothing to help. We couldnt even do the kids homework with it. Im glad starlink is available. Its still cheaper for us then hughes was. Would like to see this continue and service not be overloaded. I believe they will get there. However, that being said. Starlink was meant for those who dont have other options. If you have options available to you why are you using starlink? Large cities have no purpose for satellite internet. You have better options. As do most small to medium towns. We have no other option. This is the only way my family can use and wnjoy the internet.
The internet infrastructure is pretty bad in the US. Most small, medium, and even a lot of the suburbs of major metro areas are extremely lacking in high speed internet access. That’s one of the reasons that Starlink is overloaded in the first place. They just didn’t understand how badly it was needed, even in cities around the country. With my own experience, I live in a suburb of a major metro area. My options are 5 mbps DSL or Starlink. I think most would assume, based on my location and proximity to a major city, that I would have more internet options. But I don’t, and I know the story is similar all over the country.
The US has just chosen not to invest in public infrastructure like fiber. Most other countries don’t have this problem, which is why Starlink performs much better in Europe and other continents. They simply don’t have as much of a need for it, so there are far fewer customers. In the US, I can assure you, people aren’t just trying it because it’s new tech. Starlink just underestimated the amount of people that need high speed internet access and don’t have alternatives.
I would have killed for 5 mbps before starlink was available in my area. We would get .1 to 2.5(at the highest) with premium data thru Verizon, and that’s with 4 bars. And even that was almost unusable with the latency.
I really wish they would put out a limited and excess capacity map. Everyone I know got the price hike and all are in the ‘available’ area, but we different grids/states. I think it’s only right if they are going to start differentiating between the capacity areas to at least show us what that map looks like.
I waited 16 months to get Starlink and think it’s amazing and better designed than a Tesla car. It took me about 3 months to get my Starlink dish mounted on my roof, thus I had three months of zero usage, yet continued to pay. While the price increase is disappointing, I understand why it’s necessary. Starlink can’t fail financially or we all lose.
What I’d like to see is pricing that returns costs to the abusers (high volume users) of this service. If you’re a good Starlink Citizen then you shouldn’t get punished.
I also understand the process of debugging the strategy to find the sweet spot where usage, features and costs are balanced and the network is not congested. I’m assuming the laser communications between Starlink satellites will eventually apply to the entire network since with the right algorithm you could route Internet traffic to the closest downlink on Earth, sort of like a private Internet and have even greater throughput.
We’re all early adopters and have to suffer a little bit through the “debugging”.
I am really disappointed, we got Starlink in beta years because we lived in a area that did not have internet, in the mountains of Montana. AT&T was pricey and not reliable at best 4gb’s barely enough to stream, especially in bad weather. We were very happy when Starlink came around, actual internet. We are retired no children so no gaming, just emails and surfing. We stream Youtube TV for local news and movies. When Starlink started tracking data usage we were using just under 1T (970gb) a month. We have two 4K HD tv’s, never on at the same time but decided to due our part and cut down on the data usage, so we now watch our 4K TV’s at 720p (being old came in handy for poor eyesight, couldn’t tell the difference) we now average 600gb a month. As a reward our price is increasing because we live in an area that has no reliable options. As I remember Mr. Musk wanted Starlink to provide internet to areas that had none. Now that’s the very area’s getting the increase, and our option for the 3 mos out of the year to travel (Portability) is gone… Really a bummer…
Did i reed right, 1Tb / 600Gb per month? Thats 20 to 30 Gb per day. Thats huuuuge amount of data. Is the TV running all day? I watch Netflix on lo data rate which is really enough on a 24 to 32″ TV and i have some internet traffic every day. My data usage is not exceeding 100Gb per Month which is about 3,5 Gb per day. A phone mobile plan with data over 200Gb pm is considered as large, and costs accordingly. In excess data download will be slowed down after limit ridged. I find this scheme fair and could see it used by starlink. I assume 4k and soon 8k TV data, all day watching is congesting the system. TV reception on an orderly satellite dish works very well in remote areas is very low or no cost and would relax the data flow on starlink.
I would gladly pay $120/mo if Starlink would allow me to sign in to an account that I had for nearly 2 yrs. They don’t recognize my credentials and now I have no Internet and no other options.
Have you tried to reset the password and recover the account? They allow you to recover the account via phone, email, or alternate email.
You state “RV customers that currently reside in excess capacity areas will see a $15 price increase, to $150/month. Those with the RV plan in excess capacity areas will not see a price increase.”
How will that work? We’re full time in our RV moving from location to location. If we spend one billing cycle in an area with limited capacity followed by a billing cycle in an area with excess capacity will our monthly cost change each month? What about when we spend a billing cycle split between different capacity areas? I think you have your facts wrong. RV is always billed at $150/mo.
You’re correct. I went back and looked at the email. It reads:
“The monthly service price for Starlink is increasing in areas with limited capacity. As a service that can be used in any area, including those with limited capacity, the monthly service price for existing Starlink for RV customers will increase by $15 to $150/month…”
I misinterpreted the first sentence and assumed it only applied to people traveling in limited capacity areas. I will update the article. Thanks for pointing that out!
Here is what I sent to Starlink:
I just want to register my disappointment with today’s second price increase since placing my Starlink order. No reply is necessary, but please escalate these comments to the proper authorities. When I ordered Starlink, it had an attractive price and a promise of fast speeds with no data caps or throttling. Now, you have implemented a “Fair Use Policy” (throttling) and one $20.00 per month price increase and now an unfair increase forcing us with slow speeds to pay $30.00 a month MORE than those with faster service just because Starlink oversold their capacity in certain areas. This is VERY disappointing!
I think that’s good feedback for Starlink. I would encourage everyone to also give their feedback to Starlink, maybe with enough backlash they will turn things around in the future.
Overselling means unanticipated excess revenues and cashflow which should result in a discount. You make more at greater scale on broadband Internet services, shifting fixed and mixed costs across a wider customer base. Musk should be giving all of us a discount reflecting the slower service spread across far more, unexpected customers.
But like his bungled fiasco at Twitter where Musk drove off 80% of advertising revenues just to sell a blue check to a white nationalist troll poster, his expertise at shooting both feet seems to be prevailing.
I as a customer in a area where I can not get high interest service or cable tv and Hughes net was slow and would not stream movies I decided to go with RV starlink. because I go back and forth to Texas. Why do people in areas with limited capacity areas be changed more for less service. After all We should get to pay the same as the one that has full access. Or you need to put more satellite over the slower area’s.
It is bizarre how some will pay more just because of where they live. I think it would have made more sense to introduce more speed tiers instead of raising prices across the board. People that want the fastest speeds can pay more, people that just need basic access can pay less.
Starlink is going to be just like every other cable and internet company. Your going to get screwed and like it
I hope they don’t continue down this path and are able to become more efficient and get these issues ironed out in the future.
I think Wayne is right. Also, Elon needs to rebuild his nest egg after paying an astronomical overpriced amount for his ‘Ford Pinto’ equivalent of a website just to make a point. I lost any respect I had after that move and I’m an unwilling casualty of that greatest debacle of the decade. 43+ billion, what a waste!