Bluesky continues to grow. Today, it has close to 25 million users, which is great news for the platform. The bad one? They have a problem as a business. They need to make money to keep growing, and the possible solution has just emerged.

Bluesky+ and subscriptions. TechCrunch reports that the social network is already working on a subscription model for Bluesky. They had already floated this alternative when giving details about the funding round in October, and now a set of preliminary designs for how these subscriptions will work have appeared on Bluesky’s GitHub repository. Following the trend of other paid versions of online services, the service will be called Bluesky+. These drawings were discovered a few days ago by a user named Rea.

What will Bluesky+ offer to its subscribers?. Subscribers will have a small icon identifying them as Bluesky+ subscribers, just like X subscribers. There will be fewer restrictions on video uploads, both in terms of number and resolution, as well as profile customization options. Additional options such as automatic post translation, post statistics, and bookmark folder support will be available later.

Temporary options. A message from one of those responsible for this design makes it clear that the feature list is subject to change, but if we pay attention to this preliminary draft, we already know what the company will offer to its paying customers.

No benefit sharing. One of the attractions of X for its subscribers was sharing the revenue from subscriptions. If a user generates a lot of activity on This has led to the emergence of a new generation of X creators who are spending time creating more engaging content, especially in topic format and featuring lots of images and videos, to increase engagement. Bluesky doesn’t seem to have anything like that in mind right now.

Payment verification? So far the only way to verify that you are who you say you are at Bluesky is to associate your account with a domain name that you own. The media is starting to do this, and the @nytimes.com account, for example, has the nytimes.com domain associated with it. In a recent video conference, those in charge of Bluesky explained that they are considering creating an ecosystem of “verification companies” that verify the identities associated with accounts. It’s unclear whether Bluesky+ will offer this type of verification, but it’s something that could compete with Twitter/X.

It won’t be cheap. The price appearing in these drawings is $8 per month or $72 per year; This monthly cost is perhaps a bit high considering Bluesky is currently much smaller than X and therefore has less content. The fact that the social network has much less “noise” and the absence of ads – also in its current free version – makes it more attractive for many users.

What about advertising? The other way to make money from Bluesky is, of course, to add ads, but the company’s CEO, Jay Graber, stated back in February that it “will not pollute the network with ads.” Things appear to have changed since then, and Graber seemed more open to the option at a recent event in San Francisco. He noted there that any advertising presence must be compatible with Bluesky’s Open Source and decentralized model.

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