Starlink Reduces Prices Across Europe

Starlink just introduced price reductions across a variety of European countries. The happy news were delivered via e-mail to everyone residing within the countries in question.

Many countries in the European Union, unlike the United States, are fairly well connected. As a result, Starlink has had a tougher time breaking into the region.

Meanwhile, around 80 percent of its customer base is located in the United States, which has meant that portions of the country continue to remain waitlisted.

This has even prompted SpaceX to remove the Portability option as well as increase prices in areas that operate at capacity (to $120 per month; excess capacity areas cost $90/month).

On the other side, customers located in Europe have enjoyed multiple price decreases thus far. Additionally, Starlink introduced the option to rent its hardware on a monthly basis back in early March 2023.

The price cuts it announced today are yet another attempt at getting European customers to sign up. Most countries, like Germany or Spain, saw their prices decreased to €65 per month for the Residential plan.

In some selected markets, like France, prices even dropped down to €50 per month. You can find all of Starlink’s prices in the 50+ countries it’s live in here.

Notably, prices in the United Kingdom remained unchanged at £75 per month. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are adjusted as well given that the rental option is available, thus implying excess capacity.

With that being said, Starlink likely remains the best-performing satellite-based ISP across a variety of European countries. Data by Ookla suggests that its download speeds are on par with different broadband options and in some cases, like Germany, even outperforming them.

Satellite-based competition seems to be on the long-term horizon, too. The EU secure connectivity programme, renamed IRIS², aims to deploy an EU-owned constellation of telecommunications satellites by 2027. So far, the European Union has committed €2.4 billion to the project whose details remain fairly unclear at this point in time.

Update 18/04/2023: an earlier version of the article stated that prices for Starlink’s Roam package remained unchanged. Starlink has seemingly adjusted prices for Roam across all European markets that received Residential price cuts.

In fact, prices for Roam have now been adjusted to the equivalent of €100 per month across all of Europe.

For example, in Spain, Roam’s Regional package was upped to €100 per month from the previous €85 Starlink was charging. Meanwhile, in Austria, Roam prices dropped to €100 from the previous €105 the company was charging.