While subscriber additions have been going steady again, Netflix's revenue growth is slowing. In 2026 to-date, revenue was up 13.7 percent year-over-year, compared with 15.9 percent for the full year 2025 and 27.6 percent as recently as 2019. As Netflix has been adding subscribers in lower-priced markets and has seen more people sign-up for cheaper ad-supported tiers, revenue from subscriptions slowed. Despite ad-supported subscriptions meaning that Netflix could earn more through ads to make up for cheaper membership prices, this concept relies on people actually using their accounts.
In an earnings call Tuesday to discuss its Q3 financial statement, CFO Spencer Neumann said Netflix was "not satisfied” with its engagement in term of user viewing hours while a report by market research firm Jefferies made the rounds, claiming that average monthly viewing time per Netflix subscriber fell from 66 hours in H1 2023 to 49 hours in H1 of 2026.
Aside from re-accelerated membership growth, Netflix has been impressing shareholders with a significant improvement of its operating margin – a metric that used to be a point of concern for the company as it invested billions upon billions into building its content library. As Netflix’s business continues to scale – the streaming giant ended 2025 with 325 million paid subscribers – its margins continue to improve because the company is able to balance its investments against a larger revenue base. However, stock buybacks, content cutbacks and layoffs also contributed to this development.
In the first three quarters of 2026, Netflix’s operating margin, i.e. the share of revenue left after subtracting production, operational and overhead expenses, jumped more than 5 percentage points to almost 33.5 percent. That’s up from 21 percent in 2023 and the continuation of a long-term trend.
