What a Video Doorbell Costs After You Buy It

Update, 1 November 2026. eufy now lists the Video Doorbell E340 at $169.99 on its own store, up from $149.99 on 4 October, with a $50.01 coupon code on the page. The table, the image and the comparison with Ring below use the new list price: the E340 now costs $70 more than the cheapest Ring doorbell and $229.97 less than it with three years of Ring Multi. Ring’s and Google’s figures are unchanged.

Update, 8 October 2026. Arlo has renamed its plans again since we first wrote this page: its own plans page and knowledge base now list Smart Aware, Smart Secure and Ultra Secure, not Arlo Plus and Arlo Premium, and the plans page now shows prices. The Arlo paragraph below is corrected, with Arlo’s cheapest single-camera price. Nothing else on the page changed.

Update, 4 October 2026. The doorbell prices on this page came from Amazon, and this site no longer shows Amazon prices. They are now each maker’s own list price: Ring’s Battery Doorbell 2K at $99.99 rather than $69.99, Google’s Nest Doorbell at $199.99 rather than $179.99, and the eufy E340 at $149.99 rather than $119.99. Every three-year total rose to match. The subscription prices are unchanged, and so is the point: on Ring’s mid plan the subscription costs as much as the doorbell every year.

The doorbell is the cheap part. Ring’s mid plan costs $99.99 a year, the same as the doorbell it records lists for, so every year of the plan costs another doorbell. Over three years that is $399.96, four times the price on the box, and Ring had the doorbell on sale at $39.99 when we read it.

There is a way out, and it is not a discount. A doorbell that writes to storage you own needs no plan at all.

What three years actually costs

	Hardware	Three years of plan	Total
eufy Video Doorbell E340 (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab)	$169.99	none needed	$169.99
Ring Battery Doorbell 2K (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab) + Ring Solo	$99.99	$149.97	$249.96
Ring Battery Doorbell 2K + Ring Multi	$99.99	$299.97	$399.96
Nest Doorbell (wired) (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab) + Home Premium Standard	$199.99	$300.00	$499.99
Nest Doorbell (wired) + Home Premium Advanced	$199.99	$600.00	$799.99

Subscription prices are from Ring’s and Google’s own plan pages on 4 September 2026, using annual billing. Hardware is each maker’s own list price for its cheapest current model, read on 4 October 2026 (eufy’s on 1 November 2026). This is not a ranking, and we have installed none of them — it is the arithmetic the box does not print.

Every one of these changed its name this year

This is the part that will catch people buying a gift. Research the plan, and you may be researching a product that no longer exists under that name.

Nest Aware is now Google Home Premium. Same subscription, new name, and Gemini features folded in alongside the camera history. Standard is $10 a month or $100 a year for 30 days of event video. Advanced is $20 or $200 for 60 days of events plus ten days of round-the-clock recording. Which Nest doorbells and cameras Google still sells, and which of them can record around the clock, is in our guide to the Nest Cam and Doorbell range.

Ring renamed all of it. Home Basic became Ring Solo, Home Standard became Ring Multi, Home Standard with monitoring became Ring Pro, and both Home Premium and the first-generation Protect Plus became Premium Legacy. Ring says the transition was automatic and free, which it appears to be. It still means the plan comparison you read last year describes tiers nobody sells now. Ring has since renamed its cameras too; which Ring camera is which maps the old names to the new ones.

Arlo now lists Smart Aware, Smart Secure and Ultra Secure. Those replaced the Arlo Plus and Arlo Premium names we read here in September. The cheapest, Smart Aware for a single camera, is $9.99 a month or $95.88 a year on Arlo’s own plans page on 8 October 2026. Which Arlo cameras can save video without a plan is in Arlo’s range, model by model.

What the money actually buys

Worth knowing before you pay for the tier above the one you need.

• Ring Solo, $4.99 a month. Video playback for one device, plus person, package and vehicle alerts. If you own a doorbell and nothing else, this is the plan.
• Ring Multi, $9.99 a month. The same, for every Ring device at one address. The step up is coverage, not capability.
• Ring Pro, $19.99 a month. The first tier with 24/7 professional monitoring, plus familiar faces and video descriptions. This is where a doorbell subscription turns into an alarm subscription.
• Virtual Security Guard, $99.00 a month. Live agents watching your feed. A different product at a different price, listed here only so the ladder is visible.

What to actually do

• Decide about the subscription before you pick the doorbell, not after. It is the larger number and the hardware choice locks you into it.
• If you will not pay monthly, buy for local storage. The eufy E340 (affiliate link to Amazon, opens in a new tab) records to 8GB on board and took five out of five at T3 on exactly that basis. It lists for $70 more than the cheapest Ring and $229.97 less than that Ring with three years of Ring Multi. The same choice exists for cameras: which security cameras record without a subscription.
• Check which plan tier you actually need. Both Ring steps below Pro are recording and alerts. The jump to professional monitoring is the one worth deliberating over.
• Take the annual price, not the monthly one, where the maker offers it. Google’s own page puts the saving at $20 a year on Standard and $40 on Advanced.
• Look up your plan’s current name before comparing prices. Ring and Google changed theirs in 2026, and Arlo’s have changed since we first wrote this page.
• Count what else Advanced now includes. Google’s top tier is also the requirement for letting an outside AI agent into your home, which we cover in Google Home’s MCP early access.