Los Gatos, California - Streaming giant Netflix says that its crackdown on password and account sharing, together with an offering for a cheaper service with ads, has worked like a charm.

The number of subscribers rose by 8.76 million in the last quarter. This was significantly better than the just under 6 million that Netflix had expected.

The company now plans to make some subscriptions more expensive for users in the US, France, and Britain.

The basic plan will now cost $11.99, while the premium plan price has been increased to $22.99.

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The company's stock jumped more than 12% in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

Since May this year, Netflix has been taking action against users sharing an account beyond one household. Co-users now either have to pay for their own account, or be added as an additional member to the previous account holder's subscription, for about the cost of the cheapest subscription with ads.

According to earlier calculations by Netflix, around 100 million users had access to a password from another household.

The bet that that affected users will prefer to pay instead of cancelling the service has paid off so far. Netflix had a total of more than 247 million paying customers at the end of the quarter.

Revenues rose by 8% year-on-year to $8.54 billion, the company reported on Wednesday. Profits grew by around a fifth to around $1.68 billion.

Despite this, executives have refused to budge on a fairer deal for striking Hollywood actors, according to the SAG-AFTRA union.