YouTube ‘Premium Lite’ subscription offers ad-free viewing for less.

YouTube is piloting a new cheaper subscription tier in Europe called "Premium Lite," which offers ad-free viewing minus YouTube Premium's other features.

Premium Lite cuts out almost all of the Premium perks with only a 40 percent reduction in price. If this service makes its way to the U.S. with the same price drop, it might not be an especially great value.

Confirmed by The Verge, there's a new, cheaper version of Premium called YouTube Premium Lite that select users in places like Finland, Norway, and Luxembourg can test out.

It cuts the monthly European price of Premium nearly in half, from €11.99 (₹1059.56) to €6.99 (₹618.08), and rids subscribers of advertising. The only problem is that it doesn't do anything else.

Premium Lite sounds like a tempting proposition. But at its current pricing, it costs around 60 percent of the price of a regular Premium subscription, while only offering around a quarter of its benefits.

YouTube says that the current subscription is in an experimental phase, however, and that it’s considering rolling out more plans based on audience feedback.

“WE’RE TESTING A NEW OFFERING TO GIVE USERS EVEN MORE CHOICE”

A full Premium subscription offers not only an ad-free viewing experience, but also offline downloads, YouTube Music perks, and the ability to keep a YouTube video playing in the background while another app is open.

Considering it's still in limited regional testing, however, that's a big "if." Premium Lite might never come out at all, or it might come out with a couple extra features or a cheaper price. At the very least, it's good that YouTube is looking at different ways to free us from the clutches of terrible commercials.