Starlink Now Prices by Town: The Same Max Plan Costs $104 in One Place and $156 in Another. SpaceX Says Bills Will Be Reviewed Roughly Every Quarter.

Honest fence (read first): This is a pricing change SpaceX has told customers about by email, and it shows on Starlink.com. SpaceX hasn't put out a press release, and it hasn't said how many customers or areas are in this first round. The town-by-town prices below come from PCMag's checks of Starlink.com on Oct 29, re-checked by another site on Oct 30. Your price depends on your address, so check yours.

Editorial Thesis

For years, a Starlink Residential plan cost the same anywhere in the US. That's ending, at least in parts of the Midwest.

On Thursday, Oct 29, Starlink Residential customers in Missouri and Kansas started posting an email from SpaceX. "Starlink prices are dynamic, based on supply of capacity and demand from customers," it says. "As our constellation grows and network capacity changes, service pricing may change from time to time."

The email also says how often: "we will be reviewing prices on a regular basis, roughly quarterly, and you may see more frequent changes than we've made historically or compared to other providers. But these won't just be increases: as we expand capacity, service pricing in your area may be lowered."

So the claim is simple: price follows how busy your local network is. The proof is already on Starlink's own sign-up page.

Honest Verdict

Proven (Starlink.com, checked by PCMag and re-checked Oct 30): local Residential prices that sit exactly 10% or 20% above or below the list prices. Residential Max is $104 a month in Marysville, Kansas, $117 in Kansas City, Missouri, $143 in Warsaw, Missouri, and $156 in Rolla, Missouri. The list price is $130. Proven (SpaceX email, shared by customers): prices are now "dynamic," will be reviewed "roughly quarterly," and can go down as well as up. In the email shared on X, the new rate starts with the first bill on or after Nov 30. Not public: how many customers or regions are in this round, whether it goes nationwide, and whether the 20% cap is permanent.

The grid

PCMag found the local prices by entering towns on Starlink.com, which shows a local price once you give it a location. Supercharged Daily re-checked the same four towns on Oct 30 and got the same numbers.

"n/a" means the plan wasn't offered or wasn't reported for that town. In busier areas, Starlink often only sells Max.

The steps are tidy: every price is the list price times 0.8, 0.9, 1.1 or 1.2. Supercharged Daily also spotted the plan codes on the site, such as "max-rental-t1-demand" for the $156 Rolla price. PCMag says the site's code currently caps changes at 20% either way.

On the same Max plan, Rolla pays $52 a month more than Marysville. That's $624 a year, or 50% more, for the same dish and the same plan.

It isn't simply rural versus city

You might expect remote towns to pay more. That's not what the grid shows. Kansas City gets a cut, while smaller Missouri towns go up. SpaceX's own wording explains why: price follows "supply of capacity and demand from customers." A small town full of Starlink users can be more crowded, from the satellites' point of view, than a big city where most people have cable or fiber.

Satellite industry analyst Tim Farrar put the business logic plainly in a post PCMag quoted: "Uniform national pricing makes it hard to compete with terrestrial. If you reduce price in low demand (terrestrially competitive) areas and increase price in high demand (uncompetitive) areas then ARPUs should go up."

ARPU is average revenue per user, and that's the number to watch. SpaceX's third-quarter results put Starlink at 13.6 million consumer subscribers on Sep 30, paying an average of $69 a month. That's up from $66 in the second quarter, but down from $83 a year earlier, after a year of cheaper plans and promotions.

Second change: Priority plans on Dec 1

There's a separate change for business and boat customers, reported by the Mobile Internet Resource Center from customer emails:

• Global Priority becomes "Global Business." The $150 monthly terminal fee stays, but data blocks go up 50%: 50GB goes from $100 to $150, and 500GB from $500 to $750. The cheapest Global Business setup becomes $300 a month for 50GB.
• Local Priority becomes "Business." No price change, but international use drops from 60 to 30 consecutive days.

These are US account figures, from emails. Other countries can differ.

Why now

Two things are happening at once. Subscribers keep climbing, and the big jump in capacity is still mostly ahead. SpaceX's email points to the Starlink V3 satellites that Starship has started to carry. Flight 14, on Sep 28, deployed the first operational batch. Until Starship flies often, many cells will stay full in places where lots of people signed up.

Starlink has done a smaller version of this before. In 2023, PCMag notes, it added $10 in high-demand areas and cut prices where it had spare room. Back then it had a single Residential plan. Now it has three, and the price moves on all of them.

It also comes after a general increase. In May, Starlink raised Residential list prices to $55, $85 and $130, from $50, $80 and $120. "2 price increases within 365 days," one affected subscriber wrote on Facebook, according to PCMag. For people in Rolla, that's fair. For people in Marysville, this round is a cut.

What it means for your bill

• Read the email. In the version shared on X, the new rate started with the first bill on or after Nov 30.
• Check your address on Starlink.com. That shows the local price for new sign-ups.
• Look at your tier. A 20% rise is $26 a month on Max but $11 on 100 Mbps. Some households may move down a tier.
• Expect it to move again. SpaceX says roughly quarterly. That's a promise of reviews, not of cuts.

One open question for RVers: some move a Residential plan's service address as they travel. Nobody has said yet how a mid-cycle address change works under local pricing.

The video

We embed DISHYtech's "Starlink Surge Pricing Is Here" (18:19), posted Friday evening. DISHYtech is an independent channel that reviews Starlink hardware and plans. Note the word "surge": SpaceX calls this "dynamic" pricing, and in some towns it's a cut. We couldn't play the video on our research machine, so every number here comes from the written sources listed.

What would change our read

• SpaceX confirms the scope: which regions, how many customers, and whether it goes nationwide.
• The first quarterly review. If V3 capacity arrives and busy towns get cuts, the "won't just be increases" line holds up. If prices only ratchet up, it doesn't.
• The cap moves past 20%.
• Starlink's next ARPU number, in the fourth-quarter results.

Bottom line

Starlink has started pricing Residential service by town. On the same Max plan, Starlink.com shows $104 in Marysville, Kansas, and $156 in Rolla, Missouri, which is 20% under and 20% over the $130 list price. SpaceX says prices will be reviewed roughly quarterly and can fall as capacity grows. So far it's a regional rollout told by email, not a national announcement.