What a Tapo subscription costs now that there are three of them
Tapo Care stopped being a plan and became three. The entry price never moved; everything around it did. All six figures, read from Tapo's own page and dated.
Last updated · source-check dates are listed at the foot of this page
On this page
A Tapo subscription cost starts at $3.49 a month, and that is the only number on this page which is the same as it was three weeks ago. Tapo Care stopped being a plan at some point before 31 August 2026. It is now the name of a service with three plans underneath it.
Everything below was read from tapo.com/us/tapocare on 22 September 2026.
Tapo is the only brand here that prints a free column beside its paid one, and that column records to a card in the camera. So the camera is the whole of the free route — no hub, no plan, and the $34.99 a year is for a copy in the cloud rather than for the recording itself.
Check the price on AmazonTP-Link Tapo C120 (2K QHD, indoor/outdoor)(paid link)What does a Tapo subscription cost?
Tapo publishes six figures across three plans. Tapo Cloud is $3.49 a month or $34.99 a year and covers up to two devices for 30 days. Tapo Cloud Advanced is $11.99 or $119.99 for unlimited devices and 180 days. Tapo Cloud Advanced AI is $19.99 or $199.99, adding an AI assistant Tapo calls Aireal.
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | Devices | History | Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tapo Cloud | $3.49 | $34.99 | Up to 2 | 30 days | Up to 2K |
| Tapo Cloud Advanced | $11.99 | $119.99 | Unlimited | 180 days | Up to 4K |
| Tapo Cloud Advanced AI | $19.99 | $199.99 | Unlimited | 180 days | Up to 4K |
Read from tapo.com/us/tapocare on 22 September 2026. Tapo marks Cloud Advanced as its Most Popular Plan. Tapo Care is now the name of the service, not of any one plan.
| Item | Cost of one year | $ |
|---|---|---|
| Tapo Cloud — up to 2 cameras | $34.99 | |
| Tapo Cloud Advanced — every camera | $119.99 | |
| Tapo Cloud Advanced AI — every camera | $199.99 |
Paying monthly instead costs $41.88, $143.88 and $239.88 — Tapo's own monthly figures multiplied by twelve, a saving of between 16% and 17% for paying up front on all three tiers.
Did the Tapo price go up?
The entry price did not move. Tapo Cloud costs the same $3.49 a month and $34.99 a year this site recorded on 28 August 2026, and it now covers up to two devices instead of one — more for the same money. What changed is that it stopped being the only plan.
| Recorded 28 August 2026 | Read 22 September 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans | One, called Tapo Care | Three, under Tapo Care |
| Entry price | $3.49 / $34.99 | $3.49 / $34.99 — unchanged |
| Devices at entry | One | Up to 2 |
| Retention | 30 days | 30 days, or 180 on the tiers above |
| Dearest plan | $34.99 a year | $199.99 a year |
The price that people search for is the one that did not move. Everything a buyer would weigh against it did.
This is why a price on its own is close to useless. Anyone who checked Tapo's cheapest figure in August and checked it again today would find nothing had happened. The thing that happened is that $34.99 stopped being the ceiling and became the floor of a range reaching $199.99.
Why did this site not notice for three weeks?
It did notice. Nobody acted on it. This site runs a weekly price watch against ten makers' plan pages, and on the morning of 31 August 2026 it reported seven changes on this exact page.
The site knew on 31 August and said nothing until now
- What the watcher reported that morning: $34.99 no longer listed, $11.99 appeared, $11.99/mo appeared, $19.99 appeared, $19.99/mo appeared, $3.49 appeared, 180 days of history now listed.
- What this site published for the next three weeks: one Tapo plan, at $3.49 a month, covering one device, keeping 30 days.
- What that means for every figure here: the dates are the point. A price with a date on it can be checked and corrected. A price without one cannot be shown to have gone stale.
From data/pricing/watch-history.jsonl, the record written by the weekly price watch on 31 August 2026.
The record has been sitting in the site's own pricing history ever since, while the Tapo page went on saying the plan added the same three things whichever tier you bought — a sentence that was true when it was written and false a week later. It has been corrected, with the date.
The reason to publish this rather than quietly fix it is that the site's claim was never that it is never wrong. The claim is that every figure carries the date it was read, which is the only reason this could be caught at all.
What is the difference between Tapo Cloud and Tapo Cloud Advanced?
Devices and days. Tapo Cloud covers up to two devices and keeps 30 days of history at up to 2K. Tapo Cloud Advanced covers unlimited devices and keeps 180 days at up to 4K, and Tapo marks it Most Popular Plan. The jump is $3.49 a month to $11.99.
For a household with three cameras that is the real decision, and it is the same shape as the one every other maker on the tracker poses: the cheap tier is priced for one or two cameras and the second camera is what moves you up a tier.
What is Aireal?
Tapo's name for the AI features on the most expensive tier. It covers AI chat, AI video search, intelligent notifications, daily summaries and facial recognition. Tapo describes the facial recognition on the same page as identifying familiar faces "(where available)", and does not say where that is.
Two markers, and nothing behind them
- 24/7 Video Storage<sup>1</sup> — on both Cloud Advanced cards, monthly and annual.
- Facial Recognition<sup>2</sup> — on both Cloud Advanced AI cards.
- The footnotes themselves do not appear on the page. Neither marker resolves to any text, at the foot of the table or anywhere else.
Checked by reading the page source on 22 September 2026: the superscript characters occur twice each and no footnote text is present.
Ring's Solo page carried seven footnotes that genuinely qualified the headline above them — 180 days of history, except snapshots, which are 14. Tapo has the opposite problem: the markers are there and the qualifications are not, so a reader cannot tell whether 24/7 storage means all cameras, all the time, or something narrower.
Do you need a Tapo subscription to use the camera?
No, and Tapo says so in its own words on the pricing page: your Tapo camera works without a subscription. Recording goes to a microSD card in the camera.
Tapo remains the only brand tracked here that prints a free column beside its paid one, which is the subject of this site's page on whether Tapo works without a subscription. That has not changed. What the paid column contains has.
Which Tapo plan is named but never priced?
Tapo's own FAQ, answering whether one plan covers cameras at two addresses, says you "may need separate subscriptions or a Multi-Home plan (where available)". There is no Multi-Home plan on the pricing page, no price for it, and no link to one.
That is the smaller version of what this site found at Wyze and at Ring: a plan that exists in a sentence and not in a price list.
The part of Tapo that costs nothing a year
Specifications as published by each maker, read 22 September 2026. Nothing was tested and nothing is ranked. Tapo's own free column records to a card in the camera, so the card is the whole of what the free route needs — bought once, against $34.99 every year.
- Form
- microSDXC card, full-size SD adapter included
- Built for
- Continuous recording — dashcams and security cameras
- Goes in
- The camera itself, on every brand that takes a card
- Replaces
- Nothing — it is what makes the free tier work
- Form
- Small cube on a magnetic base — stands on a shelf
- Power
- Mains, 5V adapter — needs a socket
- Video goes to
- microSD in the camera, up to 512 GB
- Resolution
- 2560 × 1440 (2K QHD, 4MP)
- Form
- Outdoor camera on a bracket
- Power
- 5000 mAh battery, optional 6W solar panel
- Video goes to
- microSD in the camera, up to 512 GB
- Subscription
- Not required for local recording
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Corrections
This site published a wrong Tapo claim for three weeks and has now fixed it. Until today, the Tapo page said the subscription added "three things, and they are the same three whichever tier you buy". That was accurate on 28 August 2026 and stopped being accurate within days, when two more tiers appeared with different retention. The sentence now says which tier it describes and carries the date of the change.
If a figure here is wrong or has moved since 22 September 2026, tell us and it is corrected with the new date noted. Prices on this page are dated on purpose.
How this was checked
All six prices were read from tapo.com/us/tapocare on 22 September 2026, from the monthly and annual cards and confirmed against the feature comparison table lower on the same page, where the three monthly figures are repeated. The footnote finding was made by reading the page source and counting the superscript characters against the footnote text, of which there is none.
The site's subscription tracker now carries all three tiers beside every other brand's, each with the date it was read. Nothing here was tested, and no figure came from a review site. Tapo's free column is covered in full in the roundup of which cameras work with no plan at all.
