TikTok launched an ad-free subscription option in the U.K. for users 18 and older, costing £3.99 (or $5.44) per month, allowing subscribers to forgo seeing ads while also opting out of having their data used for advertising purposes. While TikTok’s U.K. Managing Director Kris Boger pitched the move as enhanced user control, the option likely doubles as a means of generating additional subscription revenue for the company and helping it better comply with the region’s GDPR, which restricts companies from collecting user data for advertising purposes without consent. The move follows similar ad-free subscriptions rolled out by Meta on Facebook and Instagram in the U.K. last year, and TikTok initially began testing the option there in 2023.
