OSRS: Membership Subscription Price Increase (Again)
Posted on March 11, 2026 by Aywren
This week, RuneScape and Old School RuneScape players were informed that the cost of the membership subscription would be increasing. Again. This is the second time this has increased since I’ve started playing, and it’s not a good look.
From the email I got:
Please note, the email states “month membership” but actually means 12-month membership. Much typos! Either way, something that used to cost me $8.29 per month – the lower cost was the whole reason I purchased the years’ worth of membership - will now cost $10.99 a month at a yearly rate.
That’s not absolutely terrible, but it’s more than I really want to pay given my income right now.
If you pay from month to month, the price is going up to $14.99! That puts it on par with the higher price tier of FFXIV and WoW. In fact, there’s a lower price tier of FFXIV that restricts the number of alts you can have at $12.99, which is now less than you’d pay for a monthly OSRS membership.
On top of that, there are a number of players who are pointing out that your membership to OSRS only gets you one character slot for the cost. If you want more than one character with a membership, you have to pay $14.99 for EACH character you play.
It’s just crazy that FFXIV is now a better deal price-wise than OSRS. Note, that I pay for the 3-month subscription in FFXIV, which is $13.99 a month (before tax). We’ve never seen a price hike in FFXIV before, either.
Things got even worse, however. Folks who have been playing OSRS for a very long time with no lapse in their monthly membership subscription are grandfathered in at a much lower cost. Those who jumped from the monthly subscription to the Premier membership (the yearly membership) for whatever reason have lost access to their grandfathered monthly price.
Others are reporting that support is refusing to do anything about the loss of the grandfathered membership price. This is despite the fact that Jagex previously communicated to players that 12-month membership purchases would not take away the grandfathered monthly price. The warning about this came with this pricing update in the FAQ. So, basically, they had no warning.
If you are a 12-Month Membership Subscriber, your inactive grandfather monthly membership rate will be discontinued. For the vast majority of subscribers, 12 Month Membership represents the best value even against Grandfathered Rates, providing 12 months for the price of 9 on average.
Official Site
It’s just… a huge mess.
As for me, I really wanted to jump head-first into sailing back when it released last year. I was super excited, so much that I did purchase a 12-month membership in October of 2025. However, after the loss of my job and just other things popping up IRL, I haven’t been able to play as much as I’d like to.
I’ve been cutting as many subscriptions as I can – I’ll write about my Second Life subscriptions soon – and the thought of this one pushing now over $100 for the yearly price makes me hesitate to resubscribe. I already pay a sub for FFXIV and one Second Life account. It wasn’t so bad when OSRS was just a little over $8 a month for membership, but $11 is making me put on the brakes.
I do want to spend more time in OSRS, however, if nothing else, to get my money’s worth. I still want to do more sailing and figure out what my next project is. I’ve just been heavily caught up in FFXIV lately, and probably will continue to be on through Fan Fest, which is in April.
Whether or not I’ll renew in October is a question of how much I feel enticed to play OSRS when renewal comes around and whether I’ve got the money to or not. I hope by that time of the year, I’ll have found new employment. But seeing that I don’t even know if my time will be spread thin once I get a new job, it may not be viable for me to play OSRS alongside of FFXIV.
Either way, this has the community in an uproar for many different reasons. If it was just the price increase, that would be one thing. But they’ve also stripped away some perks of having the Premier account on the RS3 side, and then there’s the loss of grandfathered pricing. I’d be extremely put out if I were a long-time dedicated player who lost that pricing at this point.