Meta is expanding its subscription business across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp as the company looks to turn its growing investment in artificial intelligence into a new source of recurring revenue.
The company on Tuesday introduced Meta One, a collection of subscription plans offering expanded access to AI tools and premium features across its major social platforms. The plans give users greater access to tools for generating and editing images and videos, along with AI-powered features such as Instagram’s Restyle editing tool.
The move represents a broader monetization push for Meta’s AI ambitions. Rather than relying solely on advertising to recover the cost of developing expensive AI models and infrastructure, the company is now asking users, creators, and businesses to pay directly for greater access to those capabilities.
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Meta’s AI strategy has expanded substantially since its $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI in 2025, which brought Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang into Meta to lead its AI efforts. The new subscriptions provide a potential commercial channel for those investments by putting Meta’s Muse AI models directly behind paid tiers.
The announcement follows Meta’s introduction of separate subscription offerings for its social platforms in March. Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus cost $3.99 a month, while WhatsApp Plus costs $2.99, giving subscribers features such as profile customization, super reactions and story insights.
Early revenue data suggests those lower-priced offerings are gaining traction.
Market intelligence firm Appfigures estimates that Instagram’s average daily worldwide revenue reached $1.2 million during the week of Sept. 9, up 475% from the previous week. Facebook’s daily revenue reached $528,000, representing a 143% increase over the same period.
The figures suggest Meta may have found a potentially significant new monetization channel outside its advertising business, although the sharp week-to-week increases also reflect the relatively recent introduction of the subscriptions.
Meta targets AI power users, creators and businesses
Meta One’s consumer offerings are centered on two plans: Core at $7.99 a month and Premium at $19.99.
Both include the existing Facebook Plus, Instagram Plus, and WhatsApp Plus benefits, while their main differentiator is expanded access to Meta’s AI tools. Premium subscribers receive more AI usage than Core subscribers, allowing them to make greater use of features including Muse Image and Muse Video.
Subscribers can also use AI to edit Instagram Stories through Restyle and gain increased access to voice effects and other creative tools. The structure effectively creates a new premium layer around Meta’s social platforms. Users who want to use AI occasionally can continue with free tools, while those generating images, videos, or other content more frequently have an incentive to move to paid plans.
Meta is also targeting businesses and creators with substantially more expensive subscriptions.
Its business and creator lineup begins with Essential at $14.99 a month and rises through Advanced, starting at $49.99, Expert at $149, and Max at $499. Essential provides tools for managing a creator or business presence, expanded access to Meta Business Agent for responding to customers, a verified badge and channel on WhatsApp Business, as well as impersonation detection.
Advanced adds scheduling for Stories up to 30 days in advance, links in organic posts and Reels, exportable analytics, deeper audience insights, team-member access, additional linked devices, more business broadcast credits, and greater access to Meta Business Agent responses.
Meta is also introducing enhanced profiles for Essential and Advanced users that can highlight websites, locations and reviews. Reels will receive a more prominent follow button, while people who interact with content can automatically receive follow invitations.
The company plans to add more agent capabilities over time, including tools designed around marketing, business operations, content creation, and optimization. It will also introduce Edits Plus for Meta’s Edits content-creation app. The subscription will provide additional cloud storage for syncing projects across devices and increased access to the Edits AI assistant.
Expert and Max customers will receive the highest levels of feature access and Meta Business Agent capacity.
While the complex collection of plans could make Meta’s subscription strategy difficult for consumers to navigate, the underlying commercial objective is to create multiple payment tiers based on how heavily users depend on Meta’s platforms and AI services.
Subscription Push Could Become A Meaningful Revenue Stream
The early performance of Meta’s cheaper social subscriptions is giving investors a reason to take the strategy seriously.
Appfigures said U.S. users accounted for 32% of Instagram’s revenue and 39% of Facebook’s revenue after the subscriptions gained traction on Sept. 9, roughly 10% above each platform’s historical U.S. baseline.
The potential revenue opportunity becomes much larger if Meta can persuade users to pay not merely for cosmetic social features but for access to increasingly valuable AI capabilities.
BNP Paribas forecasts that Meta’s subscription push could add $13.5 billion in revenue by 2028, while Truist estimates the company could generate an additional $20 billion by 2030.
Those forecasts would still represent only a portion of Meta’s overall business, but they point to an important shift in the company’s monetization model. Advertising remains the economic engine of Facebook and Instagram, yet subscriptions could give Meta a second recurring revenue stream while simultaneously helping it monetize the costly AI systems it is building.
The approach is needed because AI infrastructure requires significant ongoing spending rather than a one-time investment. Meta therefore needs its AI capabilities to generate economic value, either by improving advertising, increasing engagement, or creating direct revenue.
Meta One addresses the third option.
The bigger test will be whether consumers see enough value in AI-generated content and productivity features to pay monthly fees when many competing AI tools are available separately. For businesses and creators, the calculation may be easier if Meta’s agents can demonstrably save time, improve customer response rates, or generate more revenue.
However, Meta’s subscription expansion is seen as an attempt to turn the company’s AI infrastructure from a largely cost-intensive investment into a direct consumer and business product, while deepening the commercial relationship between Meta and the users who already spend much of their time inside its ecosystem.