Meta is betting that you want its social media products badly enough to begin voluntarily paying for them. Enough of you, at least, if not all of you.

While it surely won’t nix the free versions of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp that have made them household names the world over, Meta will begin trialing paid, premium subscriptions for all three later this year.

The trial explained

Reports of the trial quickly made the rounds among the media by Tuesday, January 27. Meta itself has made no direct public announcement or published any press release, instead mentioning the upcoming trial in a story broken by TechCrunch‘s Aisha Malik the previous afternoon.

“The tech giant said the new subscriptions will unlock more productivity and creativity, along with expanded AI capabilities,” wrote Malik, although Meta seems to have been rather non-specific when it came to exactly what kind of features would be included.

TechCrunch’s article comes hot on the heels of an X.com post made by noted tech leaker Alessandro Paluzzi on January 22, which said, “Instagram is working on a new paid subscription that will offer new perks, including the ability to create unlimited audience lists, see the list of followers who don’t follow you back and sneak a peek at a story without showing that you’ve viewed it.”

The next day, Paluzzi also posted on X.com that Meta would implement Manus AI, a Chinese-founded Singaporean AI firm that Meta recently purchased. “Meta doesn’t appear to be locked into one strategy, noting that it will test a variety of subscription features and bundles, and that each app subscription will have a distinct set of exclusive features,” said TechCrunch, although it’s unclear whether that’s attributable to Meta itself.

Neither did the article mention a pricing scheme for the subscriptions or a date by which Meta plans to roll out the trials, only that it would occur “in the coming months.” That’s awfully vague on Meta’s part, but we could safely assume it means sometime this year.

One, because it’s only January and there’s a lot of 2026 left, and two, if it were going to be next year, Meta wouldn’t put the pressure and public expectation of a 2026 release on itself by not saying “next year.”