Which subscriptions can you share with someone you don't live with?

Everyone asks the price question first. The question that decides whether you can act on the answer is a different one: does the provider allow this at all? It has a real answer, it is written on the provider's own site, and it is not the same answer for every service.

Below is what four providers say, in their words, with the page and the date each was read. Where the answer is no, it says no. beemate lists some of these services and would rather tell you the rule than sell you a seat you cannot keep.

The short version

Netflix: household, or a paid extra member

Netflix's help centre is blunt about it: "You may not share your Netflix account outside of your household." People outside it create their own account, or are added as an extra member.

The extra member is not a loophole, it is Netflix's own product. In their words: "Account owners on a Standard or Premium plan in many countries can share Netflix with someone who doesn't live with them by adding an extra member to their account." The owner buys the slot and invites one person, who gets their own profile and password. Netflix notes two limits — extra members cannot be added to ad-supported plans, or to some accounts billed through a third party.

This is the shape to look for in any provider's terms: not whether sharing is technically possible, but whether the provider sells a way to do it.

Spotify: the same address, and they check

Spotify Premium Family is sold "for families who reside at the same address", and the FAQ on the same page repeats it: "Family plan members must live at the same address to join Premium Family." There is no extra-member equivalent. Someone at a different address is not eligible, and Spotify asks members to confirm the address.

So the honest answer for somebody at another address is no, and beemate says so rather than quietly listing the plan as freely shareable. Inside one address it is a different question — see below.

YouTube Premium: the same rule, enforced more recently

YouTube's support page lets you "share membership benefits with up to 5 family members who live within the same residential address", and lists the requirement for each member plainly: "Live within the same residential address as the family manager."

Same conclusion as Spotify. A family plan is a household plan, whatever the word family suggests.

Google One: a family group, which is not the same as a household

Google One is the interesting one, because two different documents apply and neither mentions an address. The Google One terms say your subscription "may allow you to share certain benefits with your family group", and that "Only Google One plan managers may add family members to, and enable or disable Family Sharing on, a Google One subscription."

What a family group is comes from Google, not from Google One: you "create a family group with up to six members", the manager can "invite up to five other people to join", and the constraints Google actually states are about groups rather than geography — you must be 18 or older to create one, invitees need a Google Account, and "People can only join one family group at a time and they can only switch to another family group once every 12 months."

That last sentence is the one to read twice. Joining someone's family group is not a casual arrangement: it locks you out of joining another for a year, and YouTube Premium's address rule rides on the same group. Worth knowing before you accept an invitation for the sake of 2 TB of storage.

A household is not only a family

The two plans above are still listed on beemate, and here is the reasoning, so you can disagree with it if you want to.

What those terms describe is an address. Four people sharing a flat are one address, and each of them paying separately for their own subscription is precisely the waste the plan exists to remove. A plan built around a household is not a plan built around a bloodline, and a household in Singapore is very often flatmates.

Where a provider's wording names the relationship as well as the address — Spotify's terms say “family members residing at the same address” — that is the provider's line to draw, not beemate's, and it is written on the page linked beside it.

beemate does not verify anybody's address and does not decide whether your household counts. It lists the plan, it shows you what the provider says, and it leaves the judgement with the two people who can actually make it — you and the provider. The terms of use say the same in fewer words: their terms bind you, not ours. Read them before you open or join a hive; an owner opening one confirms that what they propose is permitted.

Which leaves a clean rule. Same address: the plan is yours to fill, and beemate will help. Different addresses: nothing here makes it permitted, and no seat is worth an account.

How to check the rest yourself

There are more services than any article can keep current, and a page that is right today is wrong the month a provider changes its terms — Netflix changed its in 2023, and YouTube began enforcing its address rule in 2025. The method matters more than the list:

1. Find the provider's own page. Not a blog, not a forum, not a marketplace listing.
2. Search it for the words "household" and "address". That is where the rule lives if there is one.
3. Look for a paid exception — an extra member, an add-on seat. If the provider sells one, that is the permitted route and usually the cheaper argument.
4. Write down the date you checked. A rule without a date is a rumour.

Where beemate stands

Every service in beemate's catalogue carries an eligibility record: what the provider's terms say, the link, and when it was read. Today every one of them is marked under review, which means exactly what it says — nobody has completed a legal review of any of them yet, and the catalogue says so rather than implying a blessing it has not got. A plan whose terms name one address is listed for one address, and the record says that too.

You can read the current state on any hive page, or browse the catalogue and see what is open. If a provider's terms say a plan is for one household, that is what the page will tell you, even when it costs us the seat.