What happened
In May 2013 Adobe stopped selling Creative Suite outright and moved everything to Creative Cloud at $49.99 a month for All Apps. Today the nearest equivalent is $69.99. Forty percent over twelve years — but the percentage understates it, because the thing being measured changed shape twice.
The increases were slow at first: $52.99 in April 2018, the first in five years. $54.99 in April 2022. Then $59.99 in November 2023.
August 2025 is the break. Adobe discontinued All Apps entirely and replaced it with two tiers: Standard at $54.99 and Pro at $69.99. Pro is the successor — it carries the full application set plus the generative AI features. Standard is cheaper than the plan it replaced, but it is also smaller. A subscriber who wanted to keep what they already had paid $69.99.
Note the basis: these are annual-commitment prices billed monthly. True month-to-month has always cost substantially more.
Why
The 2013 move was the pivotal one, and it was never really about price. It converted a purchase into a tenancy. A Creative Suite licence kept working forever; a Creative Cloud subscription stops working when you stop paying, and twelve years of files stop opening with it. That lock-in is what makes each subsequent increase collectable.
The 2025 restructure applied the same logic to AI. Rather than raise the headline number again, Adobe redefined the tiers so that the full product sits above the old price.
What you can do instead
Two routes. Generate images locally on your own hardware, at no cost per image. Or buy a professional editor outright and stop renting the one you already know.