Mac and iPad Owners Face a New Apple Bill: AppleCare+ Costs Climb $5 a Year

New AppleCare+ subscriptions for Mac and iPad buyers now cost more, with Apple raising monthly plans by $0.50 and annual plans by $5 across eligible devices. Existing AppleCare+ subscribers are unaffected and will continue on their current pricing.

The revised pricing touches a wide range of hardware: the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Studio, iMac, the standard iPad, the M4 and M5 iPad Pro models, and the iPad mini. As an example, the 13-inch MacBook Air’s monthly AppleCare+ plan rises from $7.49 to $7.99, while its annual plan moves from $74.99 to $79.99.

This is not an isolated move. Apple raised prices across its Mac, iPad, Vision Pro, HomePod, and Apple TV lineups just weeks ago, with increases spanning $100 to $1,300 depending on the product. Notably, the iPhone 17 range was excluded from those hikes, suggesting Apple is treating its phone pricing differently from the rest of its portfolio for now.

Apple also rolled out a new financing option for cellular iPad buyers around the same time as the iPad price increase: a three-year plan that spreads payments over 36 months, an alternative to the Apple Card’s existing 12-month financing.

A Bloomberg report has tied the broader increases to rising component costs, particularly for DRAM and NAND memory, which have climbed as AI companies compete for supply. Apple itself has not explicitly confirmed the memory shortage as the reason behind the AppleCare+ price change, but the increase lands in the same window as its other cost-driven adjustments.

Wikimedia Commons/by Kgbo