I tried a $6/month YouTube Premium alternative, and there's one reason why I can't switch

Aug 18, 2026 — 5:30 AM ET

I have a love-hate relationship with YouTube. I love many of the creators on the platform, and the way it has made so many topics accessible. However, I hate how aggressively Google monetizes it, inundating users with ads unless they pay for YouTube Premium.

So, when I saw some creators I watch promoting another platform — Nebula — I decided to give it a try. Nebula is quite a bit cheaper than YouTube Premium at just $6/month, but could it fully replace it? That’s what I decided to find out.

What would a platform need to pull you away from YouTube?

Nebula has some great selling points

Ironically, I first came across Nebula when watching YouTube videos. Certain creators had mentioned the platform as a place where they release their videos early. At $6 per month, Nebula is ad-free and offers perks like offline downloads.

It also notably has exclusive content, from limited series to creator videos available only on Nebula. I’ve long been a fan of Lindsay Ellis’ video essays and saw that she had released several exclusives on the website. Meanwhile, another one of my favorite creators, Princess Weekes, also releases many of her videos on Nebula first.

With YouTube's experience becoming overwhelming and loaded with sponsored content, Nebula offered a well-curated alternative with quality videos.

Some of the other content on Nebula also intrigued me, especially since I enjoy deep dives into pop culture and media. At the same time, I was finding the YouTube experience overwhelming. The platform’s algorithm constantly curates new suggestions and sponsored content, and it’s difficult to sort through the noise.

If I watch one video on bonsai trees, I get countless recommendations that cover the same topic. It became extremely difficult to sort helpful content from videos that just wasted my time.

Considering YouTube Premium Lite wasn’t available in my country at the time, and Nebula was only $6 a month, I decided to give it a try to see if it offered the video streaming experience I craved.

After the first few days, cracks started showing

When I started my subscription, I was excited by Nebula’s promise. I could find a healthy dose of video essays about movies, TV shows, and pop culture. Some of the exclusive shows and history videos also piqued my interest.

I spent the first day adding videos to my watch list so that I could easily find them when it was time to settle down for the evening. These videos included a few new creators I wasn’t familiar with. I also subscribed to Princess Weekes’ channel, hoping that this would inform the content recommended on the homepage. However, this didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

Unwilling to let this get in the way, I thoroughly searched through different categories to find videos on different topics to see what interesting takes I could find. For the first few days, I could fill up my queue with enough content to keep me busy.

However, after this initial honeymoon phase, the cracks started to show. After a long day of work, I wanted to sit down and see recommendations for niche content I’m interested in. But my watch history didn’t seem to inform much.

After the first week, I started running out of things to watch. If I was in the mood for different types of content, I couldn't find it on Nebula.

When I wasn’t in the mood for a video essay, I struggled to find content that suited my other interests. When I was in the mood for a video essay, I often didn’t find the depth of analysis and source citation that I really wanted. And that’s when I started to notice how limited Nebula’s content is.

The few creators I really enjoy don’t produce enough content to fill up my time, nor would I expect them to. But that’s where Nebula’s lack of variety and volume starts showing. I also enjoy hobby content and have recently been watching more videos about Pokémon Go.

But the hobbies I follow and Pokémon Go content weren’t available on Nebula. When I explored certain categories, I noticed they often included only a few creators. The content in these categories was also old, with some of the ‘newest’ videos being months or even a year old. This affected categories like health and productivity the most.

It seemed that if I wasn’t in the mood for a certain kind of content, I wasn’t in the mood for most of what Nebula had to offer.

I reluctantly returned to YouTube a month later

I quickly ran out of things to watch on Nebula. While I didn’t get through all the Lindsay Ellis videos I still had to watch, I felt that, on a daily basis, I would struggle to find what I was in the mood for. This meant I started switching to YouTube partway through my evening to see what else I could watch. Before the month was over, I had switched back to watching YouTube completely.

Don’t get me wrong, Nebula has quality content and some great creators. It is promising, and I really hope that it gains ground as a YouTube Premium alternative. But I think to keep the platform more diverse and lively, it needs more creators.

While Nebula is promising, the much smaller number of creators means it doesn't have the same variety of content as YouTube.

The benefit of YouTube is its massive volume of content. While you have to sift through a lot of low-quality videos, there are also some really strong channels. Some of my favorites include Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Ze Frank, SciShow, Vox, and a variety of PBS-partnered channels. This variety works for me whether I’m in the mood for something light or something in-depth. I also regularly research my hobbies and software on YouTube, which includes some great how-to content. And it’s this kind of variety that Nebula lacks.

If you keep multiple subscriptions going at a time, then Nebula may be worth it for you. But as someone who limits their subscriptions and has the dollar exchange rate working against them, I couldn’t justify the cost of Nebula given how much I used it. I love what Nebula is doing — I just wish it was doing more of it.