Apple One is Apple's new subscription plan that bundles a bunch of its services together, including Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV Plus, iCloud, News Plus and Fitness Plus. It was announced early in September but it's only just became available. So, should you sign up?
There are three different plans within Apple One that you can choose from, depending on which services you actually subscribe and how many people you want included within the plan. You can see the different tiers and pricing below.
So, how much are you actually saving?
If you sign up for the Apple One "Individual" plan, you're saving about $6 per month over the cost of subscribing to each service individually. The total subscription plans for Apple Music ($10/month), Apple TV Plus ($5/month), Apple Arcade ($5/month) and Apple's 50GB iCloud storage ($1/month) comes out to $21. The individual plan that bundles all them together costs $15.
If you sign up for the Apple One "Family" plan, which allow you to share the plan with a total of six family members (including yourself), you're saving about $8 per month over the cost of individual subscriptions. It's important to note that Apple TV Plus and Apple Arcade offer family sharing for free, so you're really only paying extra for the Apple Music's family plan ($15/month) and the Apple's 200GB iCloud storage plan ($3/month). Apple One family plans costs $20, while all those plans together cost $28.
Finally, there's the Apple One "Premier" plan that costs $30 per month — and it's essentially the Apple One family plan, but on steroids. It includes Apple's 2TB iCloud storage plan ($10/month) and subscriptions to News Plus ($10/month) and Fitness Plus (month). Again, you're paying the same price for Apple TV Plus and Apple Arcade because family sharing for both those services is free.
The big catch with the Premier plan, at least for right now, is that Apple's Fitness Plus subscription plan hasn't yet launched; Apple's website currently says that it will be available "later this year." So, if you're somebody who was planning on taking advantage of Apple's new workouts and exercise regimes, it's probably worth waiting to sign up for the Premier plan.
Before you sign up, check your free trials
Before signing up for Apple One: check how much (if any) time you have left on your free trials. Apple gave everybody who bought a new Apple device in the past year a one-year free trial of Apple TV Plus, for example. Apple also offers shorter free trials of Apple Music and Apple Arcade, too. It could work out that if you sign up for Apple One too early, meaning before your free trials run out, you'll actually be spending a little more than you should be.
So figure out when you're free trials actually expire and then sign up to whichever Apple One plan right after that.
