Snap is nudging Snapchat a little closer to the creator club it long resisted, and it’s doing it the way every social platform eventually seems to: paid subscriptions. Creator Subscriptions, announced today, add a monthly paywall layer over the familiar experience of watching Stories and sending chats, turning what used to be a free-follow relationship into something that can look a lot more like a membership.

At a basic level, the idea is simple: if you’re obsessed with a particular Snap Star, you’ll soon be able to pay them every month in exchange for VIP treatment. Subscribers get three main perks. First, exclusive content, including subscriber‑only Snaps and Stories that don’t show up in the regular public feed. Second, priority replies, which means your messages and Story replies are more likely to be seen and answered by the creator. And third, an ad‑free experience within that creator’s Stories, stripping out one of the biggest annoyances for fans who binge a single account.

The rollout starts small. Snap is alpha‑testing the feature from February 23 with a handpicked group of U.S. creators, with names like Jeremiah Brown, Harry Jowsey and Skai Jackson among the first to get subscription buttons on their profiles. Initially, only iOS users in the U.S. will be able to subscribe, but Snap says it plans to expand Creator Subscriptions to more Snap Stars and to markets including Canada, the U.K. and France over the following weeks. In other words, this is less a quiet experiment and more the first stage of what looks like a significant new product line for the company.

For creators, Snap is pitching this as another building block in a broader “creator‑first” monetization stack. Over the past year, the company has overhauled how money flows on the platform, scrapping its splashy Spotlight Rewards cash giveaways and folding everything into a unified monetization program that pays qualified creators a share of ad revenue on Stories and longer Spotlight clips. Now, Creator Subscriptions sit on top of that, as a second, recurring income stream that isn’t entirely dependent on how many ads Snap can sell against their content.

A big part of the appeal is control. Creators can set their own monthly price within “recommended tiers” defined by Snap. Reporting around the launch suggests those prices will generally fall in the ballpark of roughly $5 to $20 a month, with Snap giving guidance but leaving the final call to the creator. That allows a reality show star to price higher for a superfandom audience, while a meme page or emerging creator might keep things low to maximize scale. Snap says it will give subscription analytics so creators can see what’s working and tweak pricing or benefits over time.

Snapchat is under pressure to figure this out. The company is simultaneously facing a maturing ad market and a user base that’s hitting big‑platform scale but not yet translating into reliable profits. Snap recently revealed it now has 946 million monthly active users, with around 474 million using the app every day globally. That puts Snapchat firmly in the top tier of consumer apps, but its growth is uneven: big gains in markets like India and Pakistan, softness in some higher‑revenue Western regions, and a business still searching for consistent earnings.

Creators are central to how Snap plans to navigate that tension. The company says U.S. Snapchatters posting to Spotlight grew 47% year‑over‑year in Q4 2025, a sign that short‑form vertical video is doing for Snapchat roughly what it did for TikTok and Instagram: pulling in creators and giving the app a steady stream of entertainment content beyond just chatting friends. If those people can actually make money on the platform—through ad revenue, brand deals via Snap Star Collab Studio, and now subscriptions—Snap has a better chance of keeping them from focusing their energy entirely on TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels.

The subscription move also plugs Snapchat more directly into the broader “creator economy” moment. Instagram has its own subscriber Stories and badges, YouTube offers channel memberships, Twitch built a whole culture around subs, and X/Twitter is still trying to turn paid creator offerings into a differentiated product. Snapchat historically leaned more into ephemeral messaging and AR lenses than into public feeds and monetized followings. Creator Subscriptions are a tacit admission that if you’re competing for professional creators’ time in 2026, you need recurring revenue tools that look and feel competitive.

Critically, Snap is framing this as a premium layer that complements, rather than replaces, the free experience. The regular public Stories and Spotlight videos will still exist; they’ll just sit alongside a second tier where core fans effectively pay to move from “viewer” to “member.” The perk mix is tailored to that mentality: exclusive behind‑the‑scenes content, more intimate or frequent interactions, and a cleaner, ad‑free viewing lane with the creator. For younger audiences who treat Snapchat almost like a private club with their favorite personalities, this fits neatly into existing behavior.

There are obvious questions. Subscription fatigue is real: many fans already juggle Patreon memberships, Twitch subs, YouTube channel memberships and even Discord access fees for their favorite creators. Snapchat is arriving late to a crowded field, and it’s not obvious that users will want to pay for yet another platform, especially one that’s historically been more about messaging friends than following influencers. It’s also not yet clear how aggressive Snap will be in promoting subscriptions in‑app—whether that’s through profile badges, upsell prompts, or dedicated discovery surfaces highlighting “subscribable” Stars.

On the creator side, eligibility is another potential friction point. Snap’s broader monetization program has relatively high thresholds, requiring followers, posting frequency and substantial view counts, and is invite‑only. While the company is prioritizing Snap Stars for this alpha rollout, smaller creators may worry that the ladder to meaningful earnings on Snapchat is still too tall compared to other platforms, where anyone can turn on subscriptions with a few taps. If the paywall tools remain locked behind a “verified elite” tier, Snap risks reinforcing a sense that the platform is great for chatting but only selectively good for business.

Snap does, however, have one advantage: habit. For millions of teens and young adults, Snapchat is the default daily app, opened not for a lean‑back feed but for fast, visual conversation. Turning that relationship into a monetizable fan‑creator loop doesn’t require changing behavior so much as extending it. If you already check a creator’s Story every day, paying a small monthly fee to see a few extra posts, DM them with priority, and ditch the ads may feel like a natural upgrade rather than a new product to learn.

For Snap, Creator Subscriptions are less about copying rivals and more about buying room to experiment. Ads will still be the core business, but recurring subscription revenue from fans gives the company a second line item that isn’t quite as volatile as the ad market and that grows directly with the quality and loyalty of its creator community. If it works, Snapchat becomes a place where creators can build an actual business—one where AR lenses, chat‑based intimacy, and now paid membership all weave into a single ecosystem. If it doesn’t, Snap will have spent another product cycle chasing a creator economy that has historically gravitated elsewhere.

Either way, the message is clear: the era of using Snapchat purely as a free megaphone is shifting. For a select group of creators first, and potentially many more over time, the app is about to test what happens when your closest fans stop being just usernames in your Story views and start becoming paying subscribers who expect a little something extra every month.