LINE Is Starting to Charge — and It Matters More Than You Think
LINE Premium is LINE’s subscription plan at NT$165 a month, offering advanced backup, 100GB of cloud storage, multiple profiles, custom app icons, and more. It is expected to launch in Taiwan in the first half of 2026, making Taiwan the third market after Japan and Thailand. For brand marketers and the Social CRM industry, it means even stickier LINE users — and new challenges for identifying customers and building segments.
Ula WangBrand Marketing Manager
LINE Premium could arrive in Taiwan as early as the first half of 2026, priced at NT$165 a month with the first month free. This is more than a “paid version of LINE.” It signals that the entire LINE ecosystem is entering its next phase — and the impact on everyday users, brand marketers, and Social CRM vendors runs deeper than you might expect.
Table of contents
An honest look at LINE Premium’s features
Do you need LINE Premium?
The new reality for Social CRM
FAQ
LINE goes subscription — a move that has been a long time coming
Have you noticed that almost every app you use has started charging over the past few years?
Spotify, YouTube, even Threads is testing paid features. LINE Premium is not a whim. It follows the broader shift across tech platforms — away from “living off ads” and toward “letting true power users pay to unlock a better experience.”
More than 23 million people in Taiwan use LINE, a penetration rate of nearly 90%. When a platform that big starts charging, even for an optional subscription, it deserves a serious look from everyone.
What does NT$165 get you? An honest look at five features
LINE Premium is not a “sticker plan.” It addresses pain points that heavy users have lived with for years.
| Feature | What it does | |
|---|---|---|
| ① | Advanced backup × 100GB cloud storage | Photos, videos, voice messages, and files are all backed up automatically, and you can restore across iOS and Android. Switching phones no longer means worrying about losing your chat history. |
| ② | High-quality albums × up to 100 videos | Upload in original quality, with no more compression. Family trip photos in the group chat and videos of your kids growing up can finally be stored properly. |
| ③ | Custom profiles (up to 3) | One each for work, family, and friends, with different profile photos and display names — and you choose who sees which. |
| ④ | Custom app icons | Limited-edition icons released from time to time through IP collaborations — a little visual bonus for heavy users. |
| ⑤ | Font options | Choose from several stylized fonts besides the default, a bit like changing your desktop theme. |
Is it worth NT$165? That depends on how heavily you use LINE. The next section helps you decide.
What kind of LINE user are you? How to decide whether to subscribe
✅ You’ll feel the difference if you:
- Constantly run out of phone storage and worry about backups every day
- Really need separate “personas” for work, family, and friends
- Often send important files or photos over LINE
⏸ You can hold off if:
- LINE is just a chat app for you, with no particular need for advanced features
- You don’t care about visual customization like icons and fonts
One thing worth noting: LINE has announced that starting at the end of April 2026, regular chat rooms’ Notes will no longer accept new video uploads. The timing overlaps closely with the Premium launch, and some users see it as a nudge toward paying. We won’t judge whether that’s right or wrong, but the two are worth watching together.
Brand marketers, take note: LINE Premium is quietly changing your audience
On the surface, LINE Premium is a personal feature upgrade. For brands, though, it sets off a few chain reactions worth watching.
Users who pay are stickier. People who spend NT$165 a month on a subscription rely more heavily on the LINE ecosystem. Their activity and retention are higher than those of regular users — which means the share of “high-value users” among your LINE OA followers will gradually rise.
Behavioral data across LINE’s family of services will get richer. Premium includes member benefits for services such as LINE Shopping, LINE Travel, and LINE MUSIC, so subscribers will leave a more complete trail of spending inside the LINE ecosystem. For brands, that data is great material for segmentation and retargeting — as long as you have the tools to capture it.
The new reality for Social CRM: opportunities and challenges arrive together
From a brand marketer’s perspective:
LINE Premium’s multiple-profile feature lets the same user show up under different identities in different contexts. That poses a clear challenge to the old practice of segmenting and tagging by a single LINE UID — what is your tagging rule actually capturing? It may be this person’s “work identity,” not who they really are when they shop.
For marketing strategy, this means putting more weight on behavioral signals, not just identity matching. What they clicked, what they bought, when they engaged — these matter more than “who they are.”
From a Social CRM vendor’s perspective:
The challenge of multiple identities actually highlights the dividing line in tool capability.
Take OakMega: the real work only begins the moment a user comes in through your LINE OA. Identifying who this person is is just the first step. What matters more is complete behavioral tagging after they arrive — which entry point they came through, which message they clicked, which product page they viewed, where they dropped off. Every action builds into a trackable user footprint.
With this footprint data, brands no longer have to rely on “guessing what type of person this is.” They can see directly “what this person did” — even if they come in with a work identity today and a different profile photo tomorrow, the behavioral trail stays complete and the tags stay accurate.
This isn’t bad news. It raises the bar for tool precision. The more complete the LINE ecosystem becomes and the longer users stay, the richer the behavioral data they leave behind. Only platforms that can capture, tag, and reuse that data can truly help brands turn every incoming conversation into the starting point for the next precisely targeted touchpoint.
LINE has already made its next move. What about your strategy?
LINE Premium is not the end point. It is one step in LINE’s transformation from a messaging tool into a “platform ecosystem.”
For individual users: try the free first month, then decide whether it’s worth it.
For brands: use this moment to take a fresh look at your LINE OA strategy — can your current segmentation logic keep up with changing user behavior?
This wave of change brings more than challenges. It is an opportunity to redefine what a tool is worth. Only those who clear this bar will be able to go the distance with brands.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Q1｜When will LINE Premium launch in Taiwan, and how much will it cost?
LINE Premium is expected to launch officially in Taiwan in the first half of 2026 at NT$165 a month, with a free first-month trial. Taiwan will be the third market to adopt the LINE Premium subscription plan, after Japan and Thailand.
Q2｜How is LINE Premium different from a regular LINE account?
A regular LINE account is free and focused on basic messaging. A LINE Premium subscription unlocks advanced features such as 100GB of cloud backup, switching between up to 3 profiles, high-quality albums, and custom app icons. Both use the same LINE account: Premium is an upgrade layered on top of your existing account, so you don’t need to sign up for a new one.
Q3｜Does LINE Premium’s backup support both iOS and Android?
Yes. LINE Premium’s advanced backup can restore across operating systems, fully preserving chat history, photos, videos, and voice messages between iOS and Android. For anyone switching phones — or switching platforms — it’s the feature that most directly solves a real pain point.
Q4｜How will LINE Premium affect brand marketing?
Once LINE Premium launches, subscribers will be even more attached to the LINE ecosystem, with activity and retention expected to exceed those of regular users. For marketers running brands on LINE OA, the share of “high-value users” among followers will gradually grow. Pairing this with a Social CRM tool (such as OakMega) for precise segmentation and behavioral tracking lets you engage this audience more effectively.
Q5｜Will LINE Premium’s multiple profiles affect segmentation accuracy in Social CRM?
Yes, but this is exactly where tool capabilities diverge. When users can switch identities across contexts, the old approach of tagging by a single LINE UID starts to drift. Social CRM platforms like OakMega are responding by evolving from “identity matching” to “complete behavioral tagging after users arrive” — tracking click paths, browsing behavior, and engagement timing so that footprint data replaces static tags and segmentation stays accurate regardless of multiple profiles.
Source: EBC Financial News
