Thanks to eagle-eyes readers, the new pricing and subscription model for the popular MANGA Plus Max subscription service have been revealed.
In late September, the MANGA Plus digital manga service announced that they would be making changes to their subscription service. Needless to say, this news concerned many manga fans, as increases in the cost of services and/or disruption of services can be very inconvenient. These fears were only further exasperated when it was revealed that Manga Plus had contracted an AI Lettering company, Orange Inc., to letter their new simulpub series, Rugby Rumble.
Fortunately, it appears that these fears are now somewhat resolved as images showing Manga Plus’ new subscription model and their pricing have surfaced, thanks to eagle-eyed X user SWVXY. This news and the related images were then further reported on by Manga Alerts
Shortly afterwards, Shueisha then officially revealed the new service as a partial rebrand to MANGA Plus MAX with a release trailer featuring a brief message from Weekly Shonen Jump magazine Editor-In-Chief, Hiroyuki Nakano.
Our new subscription service for English titles has launched! ✨Download MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA and start reading today!📖 #MANGAPlusMAX
Download here：https://t.co/l5Hu0cO39t pic.twitter.com/zPp0UoC1x3— MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA (@mangaplus_o) October 4, 2023
Jump Plus / MANGA Plus Editor-in-Chief Shuehei Hosono also posted this video on YouTube, explaining this announcement.
New Pricing
As for the pricing of the new service, let’s break it down, as there are now three tiers to the service:
- The first tier keeps the app free to read with ads, and users being able to read 6000 chapters from current and ongoing series.
- The second tier costs $1.99 USD/month, and essentially just removes the ads from the service.
- The third tier costs $4.99 USD/month, but it now grants readers access to the MANGA Plus MAX’s entire catalog of 15000 chapters from completed or archived series, as well as all series and chapters from the previous tier.
Besides all that, the first three chapters and last three chapters of all series still remain free to read on MANGAPlus, as it has always been since launch. More details about the plans are posted on the MANGAPlus Plans page.
Personally, I think the shift to gating only ad-free content, as well as the catalog of completed series behind a paywall was a pretty smart move as it seems like the majority of readers prefer to use the app mainly to stay up-to-date with their favorite ongoing series.
So what are your thoughts on the update to what is now MANGAPlus MAX? Feel free to leave them in the comments!
MANGAPlus by Shueisha is available on the web or through their apps for iOS on the Apple App Store, and for Android on Google Play.
