SpaceX Pushes Its Luck With $1,000 Starlink 'Demand Surcharge' in 3 States
PCMag editors select and review products independently . If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing .
If you thought a $750 "demand surcharge" for Starlink was outrageous, brace yourself. SpaceX is increasing this one-time fee to $1,000 in parts of the Pacific Northwest.
On Thursday, a Reddit user noticed that Starlink.com had added the $1,000 fee when trying to subscribe to the satellite internet service's Residential plan from Washington state. "Demand surcharge to the moon," the user wrote, later adding, "That's gonna be a no for me dawg."
The new fee pushes the starting price for Starlink to $1,349 since the standard dish costs $349.
The $1,000 fee has appeared for people in Seattle, Spokane, and Redmond, in and around Portland, Oregon, and in parts of Northern Idaho, such as Sandpoint. The move is intended to slow Starlink adoption in these areas to prevent new users from overloading the network.
Still, it's surprising to see the demand surcharge reach $1,000. SpaceX originally introduced the congestion-related fee at $100 last year. But after removing the waitlist for the Starlink residential plan, the company has increased the demand surcharge to $250, then $500 , and $750 last week before cranking it up again to $1,000.
The increases suggest that people in the affected areas are signing up despite the surcharge. The official Starlink map shows that Washington has download speeds ranging from 54Mbps to 223Mbps, which is lower than many other US states.
Fortunately, the exorbitant demand surcharge has only been appearing in select areas of the Pacific Northwest. In other parts of Washington state, where SpaceX appears to have excess capacity, the residential Starlink plan only requires that $349 dish purchase. In other areas of the US, including Oregon and Idaho, SpaceX is even offering the dish for free in exchange for subscribing to the residential plan for 12 months.
