Why Netflix stopped reporting subscriber numbers in 2025, and what it discloses instead

On April 18, 2024, Netflix told shareholders that it would stop reporting every quarter how many paying members it has. Starting with its results for the first quarter of 2025, released on April 17, 2025, it dropped quarterly paid membership numbers and average revenue per membership (ARM), figures its letters had given every quarter for the whole company and region by region. Since then Netflix has given a membership figure only on passing a milestone, and in its quarterly letters it has done so once, in January 2026.

What Netflix said in 2024

The reasons came in a section of the April 2024 letter titled “Paid Membership Reporting.” Netflix said it was focused on revenue and operating margin as its primary financial metrics, and treated engagement, meaning time spent watching, as its best proxy for customer satisfaction. Counting members, it argued, had mattered most in its early years, when it earned little revenue or profit. With large profits and free cash flow, and with new income from advertising and its extra member feature, it called memberships “just one component of our growth.”

Pricing was the other reason. Because its plans now came in several tiers at prices that vary by country, Netflix wrote, each additional paid membership had “a very different business impact.” It had already stopped giving quarterly membership forecasts in 2023. To make up for the figures it was dropping, it said it would add an annual revenue forecast to its guidance, keep reporting revenue by region and the effect of currency moves every quarter, and announce major subscriber milestones as it crossed them.

The last quarterly counts

Regular reporting ended on its strongest quarter. Netflix added 18.91 million paid memberships in the last three months of 2024, which it described as the biggest quarter of net additions in its history, and finished the year at 301.63 million, 15.9% more than a year earlier. Its letter of January 21, 2025 restated the change: from the first quarter of 2025 it would no longer report paid memberships and ARM on a regular quarterly basis, would announce memberships “as we cross key milestones,” and would publish its engagement report, which it said covers 99% of viewing on the service, with its second- and fourth-quarter results.

What Netflix has disclosed since

In the letters that followed, audience estimates took the place of member counts. The April 17, 2025 letter put the audience at more than 700 million people. Netflix had explained that estimate in January: more than 300 million paid memberships, a count that excludes Extra Member accounts, with several people in many households, added up to an audience it estimated at over 700 million.

The one milestone so far came on January 20, 2026. In its letter on the fourth quarter of 2025, Netflix said it had “crossed the 325M paid memberships milestone during the quarter” and was now serving an audience approaching one billion people. That is at least 23 million more paid memberships than at the end of 2024, or about 8% (our calculation; Netflix gave no exact total). The same letter said members watched 96 billion hours in the second half of 2025, 2% more than a year earlier.

The letters for the first three quarters of 2026, published on April 16, July 16 and October 20, give no new membership figure; all three again describe an audience approaching one billion people. In October, Netflix said membership growth benefited from healthy retention in every region and that churn improved from a year earlier, without giving numbers. Its annual report on Form 10-K for 2025, filed on January 23, 2026, gives no membership total either. It says that during 2025 Netflix “discontinued the reporting of membership numbers, including average paying memberships and average monthly revenue per paying membership,” and now leads with revenue and operating margin.

Reading Netflix's figures now

What Netflix publishes regularly now is revenue by region and forecasts for revenue, operating margin and free cash flow. Its engagement report is becoming less frequent: in its July 16, 2026 letter, Netflix said that after the report on the first half of 2026 it would publish the report once a year, in the first quarter, starting in 2027, separately from its results. None of these figures counts paying members. The audience figure counts people rather than accounts, and Netflix presents it as an estimate. Our explainer on Nielsen's Gauge covers what outside viewing measurement can and cannot show, and our report on Netflix's third quarter of 2026 has the latest results.

The April 2024 letter did not define what counts as a major milestone, so when the next membership figure appears is up to Netflix.