48% of Young Indonesians Don't Subscribe to Any Paid Digital Service
As many as 48% of young Indonesians do not subscribe to paid digital services, signaling a shift in how they perceive value and ownership in the digital era.
Only 23% of paid users can be considered loyal, while the majority prefer flexible subscriptions or switch to more affordable services based on their needs.
The main factors that make a digital service worth paying for are feature completeness and ease of use, rather than price or promotions alone.
Imagine opening your banking app at the end of the month. A neat row of subscription charges lines up: streaming, music, design tools, cloud storage. The total bill is bigger than you remembered. Then you realize that two of those five services have gone unopened for weeks.
A situation like this is not just about overspending. It reflects a real shift in how young Indonesians relate to paid digital services. Research by IDN Research Institute covering 505 Millennial and Gen Z respondents across urban and suburban Indonesia found that 48% of them do not subscribe to a single paid service. Not because they are unaware, not because they are technically unable, but because they choose not to.
This figure deserves serious reading, especially by brands and policymakers who have long assumed that digitalization automatically means paid adoption.
Half the Market Is Untouched
Of the 505 respondents, 48% use no paid service at all, whether video streaming, music platforms, productivity tools, or premium social media features. At the other end of the spectrum, only 5% subscribe to more than four services at once.
This gap is uneven across generations. Gen Z records a non-subscription rate of 51%, higher than Millennials at 46%. The difference is small statistically, but the direction is consistent: the younger the consumer, the more likely they subscribe to nothing at all.
A too-quick reading would call this a "purchasing-power problem." The next set of data shows a more complex picture than that.
Not Unwilling to Pay, but Unwilling to Commit
Among the 262 respondents who do use paid services, the pattern is far from full commitment. Nearly half, 46%, say they only subscribe temporarily: active when there is a specific need, then cancelled afterward. As many as 33% have switched to a cheaper service. Meanwhile, 19% have unsubscribed entirely, and 18% share an account with others.
What stands out is that only 23% have never done any of the behaviors above, meaning only one in four paid users can be called a loyal customer in the conventional sense.
Gen Z shows higher flexibility than Millennials. As many as 38% of them have switched to a cheaper service, compared with 29% of Millennials. On temporary subscriptions, Gen Z is also more active: 49% versus 43%. This pattern is not just about price. It reflects a different way of thinking about ownership and value: pay only for what is genuinely used, for as long as it is used.
Value, Not Price, Is the Deciding Factor
Despite being selective, young Indonesians are not anti-payment. They simply hold a higher standard for when a service is worth paying for.
Asked when a paid service feels worth it, 63% of respondents answered when the features are complete and fit their needs. This figure far outpaces other factors: a comfortable, low-friction user experience (59%), the presence of promos or added benefits (50%), and the service's ability to genuinely make daily activities easier (48%).
Price and promotion do appear on the list, but neither is the main driver. This means acquisition strategies built on discounts and free trials risk bringing in users who will not stay once the promotional period ends.
One finding worth underlining is about recommendations: only 16% cited a recommendation from a trusted person as a factor that makes a service feel worth it. This figure is relatively low, and it shows that trust in social recommendation within the context of paid digital purchases is not as strong as often assumed.
When They Unsubscribe, the Money Doesn't Disappear
A finding often missed in discussions of subscription fatigue is where the budget goes after someone unsubscribes. The Jakpat x IDN Research Institute data answers this question quite clearly.
As many as 55% of respondents stated they would shift their budget toward productivity tools after leaving a premium service. This means more than half of users who churn from one service do not actually exit the paid digital ecosystem. They simply move to a different category.
Millennials are slightly more inclined toward this reallocation (57%) than Gen Z (53%), likely because work demands make the value of productivity tools more immediately felt. But the difference is thin, and the general pattern is consistent across both groups.
For brands and product developers, this finding opens an interesting line of thinking. A segment that appears to have "disappeared" from one category has not necessarily lost purchase intent. They are reselecting.
What Is Really Happening Beneath These Numbers
Subscription fatigue in Indonesia cannot be understood as an economic phenomenon alone. It is a reflection of how young Indonesians evaluate value within a broader context of economic uncertainty.
The same research recorded that economic pressure visibly affects young people's consumption patterns, from food choices and insurance ownership to digital subscriptions. In an environment like this, routine spending that feels "invisible," such as automatic monthly subscriptions, becomes the first target for review.
There is also a change in how young people view ownership. The lifetime subscription model that was once the industry standard now competes with a preference for flexible access: pay when needed, stop when not. This model is not a reflection of disloyalty but a rational response to conditions that have genuinely changed.
For the digital services industry, this means metrics like active subscriber count need to be reinterpreted. More important than sheer numbers is how often users actually open and use the service, because that is where value is genuinely felt or not felt.
Implications for Brands and Policymakers
For brand executives targeting young Indonesians, this data offers several concrete signals.
First, retention strategy matters more than acquisition strategy. With only 23% of paid users qualifying as loyal, retaining existing users is far more valuable than continuously chasing new users who are prone to churn once the promotion ends.
Second, functional value must be felt from the start. As many as 63% of respondents cited feature completeness as the main factor, while 59% cited ease of use. Both are experienced in the first and second use, not after a month of subscribing. Weak onboarding is where retention starts to leak.
Third, subscription-model flexibility deserves serious consideration. With 46% of users subscribing only temporarily, there is an opportunity in pay-as-you-go models or plans that can be paused and reactivated without friction.
For policymakers working in the digital economy, this 48% non-subscriber figure can be an entry point to evaluate how far existing infrastructure and digital literacy genuinely support young Indonesians' participation in the paid digital ecosystem, not just the free one.
Methodology: The research was conducted by Jakpat in collaboration with IDN Research Institute in April 2026, using the Jakpat mobile panel. Total respondents: 505, comprising Gen Z (16 to 30 years, n=255) and Millennials (31 to 45 years, n=250), with a balanced gender proportion (50% each) and an equal urban-suburban distribution (50% each). Socioeconomic class distribution: Upper Class 6%, Middle Class 17%, Lower Class 48%, Below Lower Class 30%.
