Zen Tests Ad-Free Paid Subscription: Zen Pro

Posted by By Dan Taylor 1 Min Read

Zen is testing a new paid subscription service, Zen Pro, offering users an ad-free experience for reading articles and watching videos on the platform. The beta test is currently available to a limited group of users, with plans to make the subscription accessible to everyone in the future.

Subscription Details

Zen Pro will cost 159 rubles (~$1.50)per month. Users can activate the subscription through the web platform by logging in, navigating to “Settings,” selecting the “Zen Pro” section, and entering their payment details.

Once subscribed, users can enjoy uninterrupted access to Zen’s content without advertisements.

Enhancements to User Experience

This initiative follows Zen’s introduction of the “Table of Contents” feature, which helps readers navigate articles more efficiently. The launch of Zen Pro aligns with the platform’s goal to enhance user satisfaction through personalized and seamless content consumption.

Zen Pro reflects a growing trend of offering ad-free experiences through subscription-based models, catering to users seeking more streamlined interactions with digital platforms.

Source: Zen press release
Dan Taylor
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Dan Taylor is the founder and editor of International Search Insights (ISI), the publication behind ReadIsi, and a Partner and Head of Innovation (Search & AI) at SALT.agency. He has worked in search for more than a decade, in-house and agency-side, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading voices on search engines beyond Google, including Yandex, Baidu, Naver and Cốc Cốc. On ReadIsi, Dan covers the engines and AI answer platforms that English-language coverage tends to miss: Baidu and ERNIE, Yandex and Alice AI, Naver, Cốc Cốc, Shenma, Sogou, WeChat and Weibo search, plus DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen. He also keeps dated records of documented changes, such as the Yandex, Baidu and Naver algorithm update histories and the DeepSeek, ERNIE and Qwen model update histories. His approach is to take learnings from global search engines and apply logic with a high evidence threshold. A claim needs a source, patterns seen in one market are treated as a hypothesis until they are checked in another, and where the evidence is thin he says so. For brands, that means advice built on what can be shown, with measurement that separates being cited from being chosen. Dan is credited with coining the term “edge SEO” and won the inaugural TechSEO Boost research competition in 2018 for his work on CDN and edge changes for SEO. In 2026 he was credited with coining “Infinite Tail” to describe how keyword research is changing with AI search. He is the author of AI Search Marketing For The Travel Sector, writes for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land and Travel Marketing Guy, and has advised technology, SaaS, travel and enterprise ecommerce brands, including Cloudflare, GitLab and Airbnb. He has given multiple talks and panels at the International Search Summit in Barcelona, and has also spoken at Optimization Moscow, brightonSEO, Google Search Central Live Deep Dive Asia in Bangkok, Athens SEO and the Asia SEO Virtual Summit 2026, where his talk looked at how Baidu, Naver, DeepSeek, Tencent, Cốc Cốc and Yandex built their own AI answers.
Founder & Editor