Wyze Subscription Cost: What 267 Bad Reviews Say (2026)

Wyze sells inexpensive cameras and then sells you a subscription to use them properly. That much is not in dispute. What the reviews add is the part no product page tells you: what people are actually being charged, and how little any two of those numbers resemble each other.

The Android app holds 4.41 stars from 184,064 Google Play ratings, with 14,194 at one star. The iOS app is rated 4.60 from 442,567 ratings. This article is a cost breakdown built from what subscribers report paying, not from a published price list.

Quick Answer: What Does the Wyze Subscription Actually Cost?

There is no single answer in the review data, and that is the finding. Reported figures range from about $25 a year for one camera to roughly $20 per month per device, with a cluster of people describing a renewal that arrived higher than the one before it. The plans differ, the tiers differ, the dates differ, and almost nobody describes knowing the number before the charge landed.

The other half of the answer is what the money buys, and reviewers are consistent on that: without a subscription, several of them say the camera captures a still image rather than a video clip, and the SD card you bought yourself is not a way around it.

What We Read

We pulled the 3,000 most recent Google Play reviews for the Android app and kept the 1,798 rated 1 to 3 stars, running from 14 November 2025 to 19 August 2026. Between 128 and 215 land in each month, which makes month-to-month shares meaningful rather than an artifact of the collection window. We pulled a separate 900 reviews from the Spanish-language US storefront and kept 232 negatives from that set.

Percentages below are shares of negative reviews, not raw counts.

The Subscription Is the Largest Complaint, Every Month, for Ten Months

267 of the 1,798 negative reviews, 14.8 percent, are about the subscription, the paywall or a recurring charge. No other theme comes close.

The important detail is the shape rather than the size. Monthly shares: 16.3 percent in November 2025, 12.3, 20.2, 8.2, 12.3, 16.8, 16.9, 19.2 in June 2026, 12.3, 14.1 in August. It never falls below 8 percent and never spikes into an event.

That is not an outage story. A bug appears, peaks and fades. This has been the single biggest reason people leave a bad review for ten straight months, which points at the pricing model rather than at a release.

this is basically not a video camera unless you pay them every month. any sense of security is paywalled.

What Reviewers Report Paying

37 of the 1,798 reviews name an actual dollar figure. Here is the spread, verbatim in substance and ordered smallest to largest:

• $0.99 for a two-week trial
• $2.99 a month for person detection
• $12.99 and $13.00 a month, from two different reviewers
• $15 per device per month
• roughly $20 per month per device for multi-camera households
• $25 a year, described as the old basic price
• $29.99 and $30 a year per camera
• $32.99 a year, rising to $59.99
• $40 and $41 a year, described as the new basic price
• $49.00 renewing at $49.99
• $130 a year recurring

No two of those describe the same thing, and the top of the range is more than twenty times the bottom. Some are monthly and some annual, some are per camera and some per account, and Wyze has sold several tiers over this period. All of that is real and it is exactly the problem: a reviewer cannot tell which one they are on either.

I would pay for the marginal value, but not $15 per device per month.

If you buy two or more they want almost $20 per month per device.

The Increases Reviewers Describe, March to August 2026

Twenty-four reviews use the language of a price rise. Clustered by date, they describe a rolling series rather than one announcement:

• March 2026: an annual rate going from $32.99 to $59.99.
• April 2026: a floor of $30 a year per camera.
• May 2026: a $10 per device annual increase, and separately a $20 increase.
• June 2026: a renewal that arrived after the reviewer meant to cancel.
• August 2026: a basic plan moving from $25 to $40.

In reviewers' words:

not only did the rate for the year double (from $32.99 to $59.99 ) but half the time it doesn't work.

A $10 increase per device for the annual subscription is a wild price hike. I will not be renewing.

Price increase for basic plan Holy Smokes!!! What a increase!For What!!! from $25 to $40!! Given no reason why just blanket email!

Was free to use when I bought it. Then they started charging 25/year. And now changing the price to 41/year.

We could not verify any of these against a published price list, and we are not claiming a specific increase happened on a specific date. The narrower claim the data does support: subscribers describe learning the new price from an email or a charge, not from the app.

Per Camera, Not Per Account

This is the number that surprises people, and it is worth doing the arithmetic before you buy a second camera.

really $30 a year per camera minimum.

A three-camera setup at the figures above lands somewhere between roughly $90 and $180 a year depending on tier, on hardware that reviewers routinely describe buying for $25 to $35 a unit. The subscription can cost more per year than the cameras did.

I paid for the subscription and just got an email that it's going up $20.

I wasn't going to renew it in June because the price went up $10, but I missed the chance to cancel.

The Free Path Is the Second-Biggest Complaint

The obvious way around a cloud subscription is a microSD card in the camera. 134 reviews, 7.5 percent, mention SD cards, and they are overwhelmingly about that path not working.

you can't even record to your devices built-in SD card without a subscription anymore

despite the cameras having sd cards, they dont save recordings.

Wyze locked simple features like continuous recording to your own SD card, or lowering the cool down for recording events, or recording video rather than a single picture when there is motion at the door or your bell is rung.

Since a firmware update a few months ago, none of my v3 cams recognize the SD cards.

Whether the SD limitation is a deliberate gate or a bug is not something reviews can settle, and reviewers disagree about it themselves. What they agree on is the practical outcome: buying your own storage does not reliably get you recorded video.

Spanish-Language Reviewers Describe the Same Sequence

Of the 232 negative reviews from the Spanish-language US storefront, 36 mention payment, price or the free tier, and they describe the same progression in the same order.

Spanish

Actualmente tienes que pagar una mensualidad para poder usarlas, antes no se requería y solo tenías que pagar si no querías usar el almacenamiento interno o si querías más de 12 segundos de grabación en la nube.

Spanish

hasta que hicieron de paga la sola opción de mirar el video grabado de tu propia SD

Spanish

el tema de que sea gratis con micro sd casa vez que actualizan te van empujando a comprar el paquete

Spanish

Algo le hicieron a la cámara en alguna actualización, porque ahora ya no graba la camara en la micro sd, solo puedes ver en tiempo real

One reviewer makes the comparison that shows up repeatedly across both languages, that competing brands include the same capability with the hardware:

Spanish

La mayoría de las opciones son de paga, nada, a diferencia de tp link que te lo ofrece ya con los dispositivos sin necesidad de pagos ni suscripción

Charges Reviewers Say They Did Not Expect

A smaller cluster, but the most expensive kind to be in.

i get charged for Never Wonder of annual subscription that i did not approve of

I decided to do that $0.99 for 2 weeks or whatever it was. did it cancel the subscription days in advance and they went ahead and billed me the 1195 for one month without my authorization?

Features we've had for years suddenly locked behind an annual subscription.

And the complaint that stings most among people who are already paying:

Even though I PAY for the recurring $130 service and I PURCHASED the hardware $700+, the app is full of freaking ADVERTISEMENTS.

What To Check Before Your Next Renewal

• Find out which plan you are on and where it bills. Reviewers describe charges from Wyze directly and charges through Google Play. They cancel in different places, and cancelling one does not stop the other.
• Count devices, not accounts. If your plan is per camera, adding a camera changes your bill without any announcement.
• Set a calendar reminder a week before the renewal date. The most common regret in this set is not the price, it is finding out after the charge.
• Test the SD card path before you rely on it. Trigger a recording, then try to play it back from the card. Several reviewers found out it does not work only when they needed the footage.
• Screenshot your current price. It makes a refund conversation shorter.

If you want out, the store-level steps are in our Wyze cancellation and refund guide.

What We Cannot Verify

We can count what reviewers report and we can quote it exactly. We cannot confirm any individual price, match a figure to a named plan, or say what Wyze charged on any given date. Reviewers also conflate tiers freely, and some of the figures above are almost certainly the same plan described by two people who understood it differently.

That is a limitation of the source, and it is also the point. If a review corpus this large cannot produce a consistent picture of what a product costs, that is a finding about the pricing, not just about the reviews.

Bottom Line: Is the Wyze Subscription Worth It?

The cameras are cheap and the recurring cost is not, and the gap between those two facts is what the reviews are about. If you are buying one camera, watching a live feed and nothing more, the free tier may be enough. If you are buying three cameras and expect recorded video when something happens, price the subscription per camera per year first, and treat the SD card as a bonus rather than as a plan.

Read the most recent 1-star reviews on the Wyze review page on Unstar, or check the trust summary at is Wyze legit. The iOS app is rated higher, though the subscription is identical on both.

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