Being the world’s largest music streaming platform, Spotify offers both Free and Premium subscriptions to users. Under its Premium tier, there are various options including Individual, Duo, Family, and Student. With this diverse selection, you can pick the one that best fits your preferences.
In this comparison, we will explore all five account types offered by Spotify – free and premium – to help you decide which one is the most suitable for you.
To assist you in selecting the most suitable Spotify account, we’ve created a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of the essential features and advantages of each plan. This table provides details on pricing, audio quality, ads, offline listening, skip limits, and other aspects. Use this table as a tool to pinpoint the plan that aligns with your music streaming requirements and personal preferences.
| Spotify Free | Spotify Premium Individual | Spotify Premium Duo | Spotify Premium Family | Spotify Premium Student | |
| Price | Free | $10.99/month | $14.99/month | $16.99/month | $5.99/month |
| Ad-free | N/A | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Account included | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 1 |
| Over 100 million songs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Podcasts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 15 hours/month of audiobook listening time | N/A | ✓ | ✓(plan manager only) | ✓(plan manager only) | N/A |
| Travel abroad with your music | For up to 14 days | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| On-demand playback | Available on select playlists | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Play songs in any order | N/A | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Skips Per Hour | 6 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Download music | N/A | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Download podcasts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio quality | Up to 160 kbps | Up to 320 kbps | Up to 320 kbps | Up to 320 kbps | Up to 320 kbps |
| Additional feature | · Block explicit music · Spotify Kids: a separate app made just for kids | · Free Hulu (With Ads) plan |
With the Spotify Free account, users can enjoy Spotify music without any payment. However, they have to endure interruptions from both visual and audio advertisements during streaming. Moreover, there are some other restrictions: free users can only shuffle play songs on mobile devices, have a limited number of skips, and don’t have the ability to listen offline or play specific tracks on demand.
Spotify Premium may offer a range of great features, but free is free. If you’re aiming to cut costs and don’t mind dealing with ads and the above-mentioned limitations, the Free model could be a suitable choice.
Spotify Premium removes ads and the restrictions of the free plan. Premium users enjoy benefits like on-demand playback, unlimited skips, offline listening, and high-quality audio at $10.99 per month.
The Spotify Premium individual plan is ideal for users looking for an ad-free experience without sharing their accounts. This plan supports a single account and permits music streaming on only one device at a time. Spotify monitors dual logins and will log you out if you attempt to play on two devices at the same time.
Premium Duo is a discount plan for two people living together. With two separate accounts, you can both enjoy different music without having to take turns. Spotify Premium Duo costs $14.99 per month, and the person who purchases Duo pays the bill.
This plan is perfect for couples or close friends sharing the same address. It’s a cost-effective option at about $7.50 per person per month, compared to the individual plan’s $10.99 per person. With Premium Duo, both individuals can enjoy the complete premium experience.
Spotify Family is the most cost-effective plan for households with three or more members. At $16.99 per month, it allows up to 6 family members residing together to enjoy Premium benefits. Each invited family member will have their own Premium account with personalized music recommendations.
The Spotify Family Plan offers a Parental Controls feature, allowing you to establish explicit content filters for your family. Additionally, it provides access to the Spotify Kids app, which is only available for Family subscribers.
If you’re a student enrolled at an accredited college or university, and above the age of 18, you’re eligible for a 50% discount on Spotify Premium. Priced at $5.99 per month, the Spotify Premium Student plan also includes free access to Hulu’s ad-supported plan without any additional charges. The discount can be enjoyed for up to four years, provided you verify your enrollment status annually through the third-party service SheerID.
The decision largely depends on your situation and preferences. It’s clear that the Premium accounts offer more extensive features compared to Free Spotify. However, whether you decide to invest in a subscription depends entirely on your personal choice. Although it comes with limitations like shuffle-only play and restricted skips, Spotify’s free tier still offers casual listening options. If you’re eligible for a Student, Family, or Duo membership, Spotify Premium offers reasonable pricing. Yet, if you’re undecided, Spotify provides 1-3 months of free trials for all the Premium account types. So, go ahead and enjoy the music!
Spotify does offer a download feature, but it’s exclusively available to Spotify Premium subscribers for albums and playlists. Free Spotify users can only download podcasts. When it comes to downloads, remember that Spotify doesn’t support individual song downloads. Instead, you have to add songs to a playlist and download the entire playlist. Additionally, downloaded content from Spotify can only be accessed through the Spotify app, and reinstalling the app might lead to losing your downloads.
To download your Spotify songs without Premium, consider using a smart Spotify music downloader — Pazu Spotify Converter. It’s designed for both Spotify Free and Premium users to download all types of Spotify songs, playlists, and albums for offline listening. This converter can extract Spotify music and convert it to various formats like MP3, M4A, AIFF, WAV, FLAC, and AAC. With Pazu Spotify Music Converter, you can easily enjoy any Spotify Premium feature within a free account forever.
Key features of Pazu Spotify Converter:
Now, let’s learn how to use Pazu Spotify Music Converter to download and convert Spotify songs with a free subscription from the following tutorial.
Download, install, and run Pazu Spotify Converter on your Mac or Windows. Log in to your Spotify account with the built-in web player.
Click the gear icon on the top right corner. Here you can select the output format (AUTO(M4A)/MP3/AAC/FLAC/WAV/AIFF), choose output audio quality, customize the output path, organize the output files in various ways, rename output files, and more.
Use the integrated Spotify web player to search the songs, albums, playlists,s or podcasts you want to download. Click the Add to List button to load all songs in the album or playlist, and uncheck the songs you don’t want to download if there are any.
Click the Convert button to start downloading the Spotify songs to your local computer.
Once the conversion is done, you can find your Spotify songs downloaded as local files by clicking the below folder button or directly going to the output folder you customized in the previous step.
Note: The free trial version of Pazu Spotify Converter enables you to convert the first three minutes of each song. You can remove the trial limitation by purchasing the full version.
Download and convert any Spotify songs, albums, playlists to MP3/M4A etc.