Apple One Will Give You More in 2025, but Is It Worth It?

Posted on July 21, 2025 by resourcefulman

Apple loves its own apps and devices. iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, Apple News, Apple Music — you can live a full tech life without leaving the Apple ecosystem. But there was no way to bundle all of these services together, and if you wanted to buy every Apple device and subscribe to every Apple product, it would cost you a pretty penny. Then, in 2020, Apple introduced Apple One , an all-in-one subscription that gave you access to Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud+ storage. Or, with an upgrade, you could also add Apple Fitness+ and Apple News+, and bump your storage up to 2TB.

What’s the deal? While Apple One is still cheaper than paying for each Apple service individually, it has become significantly more expensive since its launch. From $14.95 a month to $29.95 a month, subscriptions now range from $19.95 to $37.95 a month. Has the service improved so much in five years that it’s worth the extra cost, or is it better to pick and choose the Apple services you really want and subscribe to just those?

Apple One Plans

Apple currently has three Apple One plans , and the basic terms remain the same. You can currently subscribe to:

Individual plan, which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud+ storage for $19.95 per month (down from $14.95 per month in 2020).
A Family plan that gives you and up to five people Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 200GB of iCloud+ storage for $24.95 per month (down from $19.95 per month in 2020).
The Premier plan, which gives you and up to five people Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, Apple News+, and 2TB of iCloud+ storage for $37.95 per month (down from $29.95 per month in 2020).

There are already a few important takeaways. First, according to the official inflation calculator from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, all of these packages have increased in price at a rate greater than simple inflation, although the Family plan is the closest to that rate. Second, Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+ are not included in any of the cheapest plans, although this has always been the case. Third, while Apple’s services are still a great deal for the entire Apple fan family, the core offerings have remained the same (without the extra in-app bonuses for Apple One subscribers), which doesn’t paint Apple in a good light.

However, things are more complicated than these numbers suggest. Since 2020, Apple has made improvements to its services to match the higher prices, although depending on your plan, you may not encounter them as often.

Here’s what you’ll get from Apple One in 2025, across all the bundled services.

Apple News+

Perhaps the biggest perk for Apple One subscribers is Apple News+, which is a shame for anyone who doesn’t have a Premier plan. Following the lead of publications like The New York Times , Apple’s premium news app subscription has seemed to shift its focus somewhat recently, with more emphasis on games and recipes.

More recently, there’s the Emoji Game , which is like Wordle , but with emoji. Unveiled for World Emoji Day 2025 , it joins the app’s existing puzzles, which launched in 2023, with staples like daily crosswords and sudoku. That means there’s plenty to choose from even if emoji aren’t your thing, though this latest addition is by far the most unusual and shows a commitment to creating unique experiences that I hope will continue into the future. (If you’re wondering how emoji Wordle will even work, Apple essentially gives you three short phrases and then asks you to use a selection of emoji to fill in the phrases using as few moves as possible. The game features Genmoji , created with Apple Intelligence, which could help add variety to the game as it progresses, but may also be a turn-off for AI skeptics .)

If you’re not a fan of puzzles, this spring the News+ app added a Food section filled with “tens of thousands of recipes, restaurant reviews, cooking tips, and more.” The content comes from a variety of sources, including publishers like Allrecipes and Serious Eats, which publish their articles for free, though Apple editors help curate them and organize them into an easily filtered, stylistically cohesive list.

Honestly, I don’t go to the news for puzzles and recipes, but I know I’m in the minority right now. With these additions, Apple is doing its best to stay relevant as apps like NYT Games continue to gain popularity.

Apple Music+

If you haven’t been following the news much, you’ll be happy to know that Apple Music+ has received its share of updates since 2020. Specifically, in 2021, Apple Music+ added spatial audio and enhanced lossless audio across its entire catalog. Now, with the release of iOS 26, it’s set to get its biggest set of new features in years since then . These include time-synced translated lyrics, pronunciation guides for lyrics, an Automix feature to help your tracks blend seamlessly, animated artwork on the Lock screen, the ability to pin your favorite playlists, and a karaoke feature for subscribers with both an iPhone running iOS 26 and an Apple TV.

That’s a lot, and while these features aren’t publicly available yet, you can already try them out in the developer beta , with a public beta likely coming soon.

Apple Fitness+

I don’t go to the gym as often as I should, so my eyes kind of glazed over when these updates arrived. However, my colleague Beth Skuerecki would be a big fan of one of them: If you use Strava , Apple Fitness+ now offers Strava integration for more accurate running stats. Plus, the service also offers multi-week workout plans to help you gradually improve your fitness, and it’s made it easier to find custom plans coming in 2023.

Apple Arcade

Games! That’s something I know about. Apple Arcade has been a bit of an oddity since its launch, debuting exclusive games and ports of popular titles from consoles and PCs, all without any microtransactions. The selection is constantly changing, with new games being added while others are either dropped or losing their exclusivity . There are some good ones here, with my personal favorite being Sonic Dream Team , but the focus on more traditional games has received mixed reviews given that the audience is still made up of iPhone and iPad gamers who may be more accustomed to touchscreen controls and a pick-up-and-play action. There’s also often an outcry from people who don’t have Apple devices when a major new exclusive for the service is announced, but that’s a pain gamers should be used to by now.

What do you think at the moment?

Whether Apple Arcade is right for you depends on its library at the time you sign up, but there’s one upcoming update that will make it even better regardless of the games it offers: the Apple Games app . Coming in iOS 26, the app is technically available to everyone, but it also supports controller controls and conveniently displays all of Apple Arcade’s games in one, distraction-free place. It’s a big improvement over having to sift through the App Store to find them all.

Apple TV+

Apple TV has received a number of feature updates this year, most notably a redesigned app with improved content discovery, as well as improved subtitles and dialogue in tvOS 18. The problem is, many of these improvements were only available to owners of Apple TV streaming boxes, but there is one feature that every device with the Apple TV+ app supports: streaming new Apple TV+ shows.

Apple’s streaming library has seen some smash hits since 2020, with the most notable addition being Ben Stiller’s sci-fi drama, Exit . Spy thriller Slow Horses and Seth Rogen’s Hollywood series, The Studio , which recently received multiple Emmy nominations, have also received praise . It seems a new era of prestige television is upon us, and Apple is leading the way.

Apple iCloud+

Finally, there’s iCloud+. You’d think this would be the easiest Apple One service to keep track of, and you’d be right. You get the same amount of storage as in 2020. But there’s one new addition: Apple Invites . I used to organize all my in-person events through Facebook, but as I moved to other platforms, I switched to dedicated party planning apps like Partiful. Apple Invites is Apple’s answer to that, but oddly enough, you have to be signed up for iCloud+ to create invites with it (though anyone can receive invites). It’s a bit of a bummer, but hey, it’s added value for Apple One subscribers.

So is Apple One worth the monthly fee?

Having looked at all the improvements to Apple One since its launch, I think it’s safe to say that the service isn’t resting on its laurels, but some households will still use it more than others.

Personally, I don’t see the point of an individual subscription unless you exclusively own Apple devices and organize your entire life through Apple services. Unless you’re working out with Apple Fitness, relaxing with Apple TV+ or Apple Arcade, or reading the world’s news with Apple News+, you’re probably paying more than you can afford. Plus, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, you’ll get the biggest price increase. I’m not sure I’ll have enough time to take advantage of all the new improvements to justify it.

But if you have a large family with Apple users, the service becomes a better value. Apple One Premier, while pricey, still saves you $29 a month on each Apple service individually — and, importantly, that’s compared to the cost of a single subscription (except for iCloud+ and Apple Music+, which are comparable to those services’ plans). Imagine a group of six people using Apple One regularly, and that seems more than reasonable, even with the new prices. There’s also a Family plan, which is great for families who don’t need Fitness+ and News+ and don’t have a lot of storage.

That said, I’d like to see cheaper plans with access to Fitness+ and News+ in the future. If you’re single and love Apple, you’ll probably be pesky about paying for a whole-household package just to play Emoji Game , even if you save money overall when you bundle it with other Apple subscriptions.

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