Ring Subscription Plans: Is Ring Protect Worth It in 2026?

Ring renamed its plans on January 14, 2026. These are the four US tiers and the add-ons, with the fees Ring lists on its US plans page and the features described in Ring Help, checked November 1, 2026. Fees are before tax, and plans auto-renew until you cancel.

• Ring Solo: $4.99/mo or $49.99/yr. One doorbell or camera. Up to 180 days of video history, person, package and vehicle alerts (select models), Extended Live View, Doorbell Calls, Snapshot Capture, Device Modes and 10% off at ring.com.
• Ring Multi: $9.99/mo or $99.99/yr. Everything in Solo for every Ring device at one address, plus an extended warranty on eligible devices.
• Ring Pro: $19.99/mo or $199.99/yr. Everything in Multi, plus Video Descriptions, Familiar Faces, Active Warnings, Unusual Event Alert, Single Event Alert and Video Search; 24/7 Professional Monitoring for Ring Alarm; SOS Response; and, with a Ring Alarm Pro, Backup Internet and Ring Edge local video storage.
• Virtual Security Guard: $99/mo. Everything in Pro, plus live video monitoring by security agents who deter intruders in real time and request emergency services when needed.

Add-ons: Pro Intelligence puts Pro's AI features on one camera for $5/mo with Solo or Multi (it's included in Pro). 24/7 Continuous Recording costs $3/mo per eligible camera on any plan, and those recordings stay in the cloud for up to 14 days; on Ring Elite cameras, 24/7 recording costs $6 to $18/mo depending on the model. Smoke & CO Pro Monitoring is $5/mo ($50/yr), included in Pro, and Ring says you can add it without any plan.

Ring doorbells and cameras work without a subscription, but only in real time. Ring lists these features as free on every device:

• Live View, up to 10 minutes per session, for you and your Shared Users
• Real-time motion alerts and customizable Motion Zones
• Two-Way Talk
• Alexa integration, such as Live View on a compatible Echo Show or Fire TV
• A physical privacy cover on select indoor cameras

What you give up: every recording. Ring only records events after you subscribe, and you can't go back for anything that happened before. You also lose person, package and vehicle alerts, Snapshot Capture, Extended Live View (up to 30 minutes), Doorbell Calls and Device Modes. If you own a Ring Alarm, note that Ring requires a subscription for arming and disarming from the app.

Every new or certified refurbished Ring doorbell, camera or alarm starts a free 30-day trial automatically at setup, unless your address already has a plan. Decide before it ends: if a plan lapses, Ring says your stored videos are lost and can't be recovered.

A video doorbell stays on the door for years, so the fee is part of the real price. Here's what each tier adds up to over 36 months, before tax, at the fees Ring listed when we checked on November 1, 2026:

• Ring Solo: $149.97 billed yearly, or $179.64 billed monthly
• Ring Multi: $299.97 billed yearly, or $359.64 billed monthly
• Ring Pro: $599.97 billed yearly, or $719.64 billed monthly
• Virtual Security Guard: $3,564 billed monthly (Ring lists no yearly price)
• Add-ons, per camera: Pro Intelligence $180; 24/7 Continuous Recording $108

Yearly billing saves $9.89 a year on Solo, $19.89 on Multi and $39.89 on Pro. Ring can change its fees at any time, so check the price at checkout before you subscribe or renew.

• One Ring doorbell, and you want to see what happened while you were out: Ring Solo on yearly billing is the cheapest way to get recordings and person or package alerts. Without a plan, a missed visitor is simply gone.
• Two or more Ring devices at one address: Ring Multi covers them all and is the first tier with Ring's extended warranty, for eligible devices that were still within the 1-year manufacturer's warranty when you added them. In the US, that coverage is a service contract administered by Allstate Protection Plans.
• A Ring Alarm you want professionally monitored: Ring Pro is the tier with 24/7 Professional Monitoring. Ring notes that permit, false-alarm or verified-response fees may apply, depending on where you live.
• You only check the door live: Skip the plan. Live View, motion alerts and Two-Way Talk stay free.
• You don't own Ring yet and don't want a monthly bill: Buy a doorbell that saves video at home. Our three picks record to built-in memory or a microSD card with no plan required.

Two catches before you pay for Ring Pro or Pro Intelligence. Ring's AI features, including Video Descriptions, Video Search and Single Event Alert, aren't available in Illinois, and Familiar Faces isn't offered in Illinois, Texas or Portland, Oregon. And each plan covers one address: a vacation home needs its own plan.

According to Ring Help, the Ring Home plans were renamed Ring Protect plans on January 14, 2026, with the same features and no extra charge for the change. Subscriptions moved over automatically:

• Home Basic became Ring Solo.
• Home Standard without professional monitoring, or Protect Plus (1st Gen) without an alarm, became Ring Multi.
• Home Standard with 24/7 Professional Monitoring, and AI Pro, became Ring Pro.
• AI Solo became the Pro Intelligence add-on.
• Home Premium became Premium Legacy, which includes 24/7 Professional Monitoring at no additional charge.
• The Virtual Security Guard add-on became the Virtual Security Guard plan.

Ring also renamed several devices in July and August 2026 to show their video resolution; the Battery Doorbell (2nd Gen) became the Battery Doorbell 2K on August 5, for example. Ring says only the names changed, not the hardware, the features or your plan.

A doorbell that records to built-in memory or a microSD card has no monthly fee and keeps your clips at home by default. Weigh these trade-offs:

• Capacity is finite. eufy estimates the E340's 8 GB holds about 90 days of clips at 30 recordings of 20 seconds a day. A busier porch fills it faster, and a microSD card is an extra purchase with Reolink and Wyze.
• The footage lives in the doorbell. A card inside the doorbell goes wherever the doorbell goes. An indoor hub or recorder, such as a eufy HomeBase or a Reolink NVR, keeps recordings away from the front door.
• Free alerts vary. eufy and Reolink include person detection with no plan; Wyze's person and package detection needs its optional Cam Plus plan.
• Some data still touches the cloud. eufy says notification thumbnail previews are stored temporarily in the cloud, and all three brands sell optional cloud plans.
• Wired-only models need working doorbell wiring. The Reolink and Wyze picks have no battery, so check your transformer's voltage and VA rating before you buy.

Local storage isn't automatically private, and cloud storage isn't automatically unsafe. Two official actions are worth knowing before you choose:

• Ring, Federal Trade Commission, May 31, 2023: The FTC charged that Ring let employees and contractors access customers' private videos and failed to stop hackers from taking control of users' cameras. The proposed order required Ring to pay $5.8 million for consumer refunds, delete data products built from videos it unlawfully reviewed, run a privacy and security program and require multi-factor authentication for employee and customer accounts.
• eufy, New York Attorney General, January 28, 2025: The office secured $450,000 in penalties and costs from three companies that distribute eufy cameras, video doorbells and video smart locks. Its investigation found that, in certain situations, video sent over the internet from eufy products wasn't protected by end-to-end encryption, that at least part of the connection used no encryption at all, and that an active video stream could be opened by anyone with the right link, without authentication. The investigation followed a security researcher's public disclosure in November 2022, and the settlement requires the companies to regularly show that video is encrypted in storage and in transit.

Whichever brand you pick, turn on two-step verification in its app and keep the doorbell's firmware up to date.