What is Apple One? Is it worth it? Here's everything you need to know

Apple isn’t just focused on iPhones and iPads anymore — now it offers just about every service you could ask for. You can tap into some great originals like Ted Lasso, stream music to your heart’s content, and finally, get back to that workout program you’ve been neglecting. It can be tough to keep all of those subscriptions straight. It can also get expensive to pay for all subscriptions, but that’s where Apple One comes in.

So what exactly is the service, and is it worth the monthly subscription fee? Here’s everything you need to know!

What is Apple One?

Apple One is a subscription bundle that brings all the main Apple subscription services into a single monthly payment. It doesn’t add anything to the services themselves, but it does offer considerable savings over individual subscriptions.

The service is available in Individual and Family plans. There’s also a Premier plan open in select countries, and it includes Apple News Plus and the Apple Fitness Plus service. The other two plans are available in more than 100 countries around the globe.

What services does it include?

Individual and family subscriptions include Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, and iCloud (50GB for Individual and 200GB for Family plans). Premier plans include all those services and News Plus, Fitness Plus, and iCloud storage up to 2TB.

Here’s a brief description of each service:

Apple Music: The music streaming service includes access to more than 100 million songs, curated playlists, and cloud access to purchased music from iTunes. It usually costs $10.99 a month for an individual plan, and $16.99 a month for the family plan.

Apple TV Plus: The TV and movie premium subscription streaming service is full of exclusive shows and files. It doesn’t precisely replace Netflix, but it’s one of the cheapest video streaming options at just $6.99 monthly. This is the only plan available, and it includes up to 6 family members, 4K streaming, and media downloads.

Apple Arcade: This mobile-first game subscription service includes over 200 games to download and play offline on your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV, or Mac. It usually costs $4.99 a month, including up to 6 family members.

iCloud: The cloud storage service includes 5GB of storage for free, with several different upgrade plans. It usually costs $0.99 a month for 50GB, $2.99 a month for 200GB, or $9.99 a month for 2TB.

Apple News Plus: The premium news service unlocks access to hundreds of articles from magazines and newspapers. There are also curated lists of articles from the company’s editors, covering the most important news of the day. Unfortunately, it’s only available in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US. It costs $9.99 a month.

Apple Fitness Plus: The fitness streaming service with guided workouts and fitness plans. It’s designed to work, first and foremost, with the Apple Watch. It launched on December 14, 2020, costing $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year.

How much does it cost?

The service has three different subscription plans, each with a single fixed cost per month. Here are the three plans and what each includes:

• Individual: $16.95/mo
  • Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, and iCloud (50GB) for one user.
• Family: $22.95/mo
  • Music, TV Plus, Arcade, and iCloud (200GB) for up to 6 users.
• Premier: $32.95/mo
  • Music, TV Plus, Arcade, iCloud (2TB), News Plus, and Fitness Plus for up to 6 users.

Can I get the service for free?

New subscriptions to the service include a 30-day free trial, but with a significant limitation. The trial is only available for services that you haven’t already used a free trial for and are not currently subscribed to. This means that if you already redeemed a free month of Apple Arcade, you won’t get an extra 30 days via Apple One.

If you sign up for a Verizon Unlimited wireless plan, you can add Apple One for only $10 a month for the Individual plan, or $20 for the Family plan. While not free, it’s a nice discount. Especially if you already have Verizon, or were already thinking of switching to it.

Is Apple One worth it?

While the service undoubtedly offers savings over each subscription, whether or not it’s worth it depends on if you take advantage of everything it offers. Even if you’ve already bought into the Apple ecosystem of devices and services, you may not need or want every service available.

Of what’s on offer, the most essential service is iCloud, which costs a whopping $0.99 a month for the 50GB on the individual plan. Bumping that up to $2.99 a month gets you 200GB, which is still a tiny fraction of the overall subscription fee.

Music and TV Plus are also great for entertainment buffs, but neither is truly essential. Music can reasonably be replaced by ad-supported services like Spotify or YouTube Music, and if the ads are too much, the paid plans cost the same as Music. The video streaming service TV Plus is growing, but it’s still not as robust as rivals Netflix and Hulu. Arcade is a solid choice if you (or your family members) like mobile games, but there are plenty of fun free games. Not everyone games enough to take advantage of it.

Ultimately, the standard subscription is only really worth it if you already subscribe or are interested in subscribing to multiple Apple services. This represents savings of about $7 a month.

The family plan will save you about $9 a month. Still, since the base subscriptions for Arcade and TV Plus already include multiple family members, you’re really paying for more Music users and a bit more iCloud storage.

Things are slightly different with the premier plan, where you can save a whopping $26 a month. The cost of Apple Fitness Plus alone covers the difference between the family and premier plans. Again though, it’s only worth it if you plan on actively using every service on offer.

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