WhatsApp may be planning ad-free subscriptions

With as much division there is in the world right now, at least we can all agree on one thing: Ads suck. At best, we tolerate them, but the incessant push to introduce them to every last corner of our lives can be incredibly frustrating to endure — who ever thought they’d be getting ads on their kitchen fridge? Sometimes, at least, we get the option to avoid ads (for a price), and now we may have spotted one of the next apps planning to introduce just such a program.

Last year, WhatsApp started testing ads for its Status and Channels views. And as you’d only expect, there was immediate pushback. But, so far, Meta seems committed to this course, and only plans to introduce ads to more and more users. But as we dig around the code of WhatsApp’s new version 2.26.3.9 release, we’re seeing evidence that suggests Meta may eventually offer a paid ad-free subscription model.

We’ve got a few different elements within the app here that make reference to subscriptions which remove Status and Channels ads. First up, a couple text strings:

In addition to those, we’ve been able to get the app to actually display one of its messages about no-ad subscriptions:

Admittedly, we still don’t have a great sense of how this program may operate, nor what you’ll need to pay for access, but from these it does appear that Meta plans to offer some level of ad-free subscription.

One of our biggest outstanding questions involves who may be able to actually take advantage to this subscription. Already, we’ve seen Meta restrict ad-free Facebook and Instagram to certain countries. And while we don’t see anything here that mentions a similar limitation, we also wouldn’t count it out, not yet knowing the full picture.

Hopefully we’re able to start filling in some of those blanks as we look through future WhatsApp updates. Check back with Android Authority for our ongoing teardown coverage.