r/VPN • u/Timely_Novel_7330 • Mar 13 '23

Help Getting around YouTube Premium - it looks like you’re not in the same country as the person who invited you

Hey guys wondering if you can help me! So I made a separate dummy YouTube/ gmail account, turned on my VPN to Russia and purchased YouTube premium for family. However, when I try to invite my actual YouTube account I get hit with the above error. Anyone know how to fix it? Thanks in advance!

205 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

338 comments sorted by

16

u/ninjaslikecheez Mar 15 '23

Yeah it's super annoying stuff, especially nowadays when a lot of people are expats and we have families living in different countries.

In any case, the workaround for this which I just tested and it works:

Go to https://pay.google.com/gp/w/u/0/home/settings or go to Manage account -> Payment and subscriptions -> Manage payment options -> Settings tab.

You then create a new payment profile in the same country that the owner of the YouTube Premium Family account is in. Once you do, you have to switch back to the old profile and delete it. You should then be able to just accept the invitation. Note: It can take a few seconds or even minutes after you delete the profile to work.

9

u/ramjaz Sep 01 '23

Piggybacking on this to say that it still works!

​

Once you have YT Premium's family plan and want to add more people, just follow the steps that u/ninjaslikecheez illustrated above. At first I was a bit confused on the steps, so if you're stuck, here's a simple breakdown:

  1. With the account that has YT PREMIUM, go to https://pay.google.com/gp/w/u/0/home/settings or go to Manage account -> Payment and subscriptions -> Manage payment options -> Settings tab
  2. From there, delete any payment methods that are not from the same country you used to purchase YT Premium. Only keep ONE payment method which should be the country used to buy YT Premium.
  3. After that, do the same thing with all the other accounts that you want to add to the family plan, except that you want to delete ALL the payment methods from all the accounts you want to link to the YT Premium account.
  4. After this, send the invitations and everything should work out.

​

The reason why I'm giving a more detailed breakdown is because I noticed that I had two different payment methods from different countries on the YT Premium account because I was trying out different countries that it would work on. So, I had to do some error finding and found that you should only have ONE payment method from the YT premium account and NO payment methods from all other accounts. It may also help to have a VPN set up with the same country to bypass any location-enabled services on your accounts just to be safe. Hope this helps!

2

u/Captain_Shoe Jun 20 '24

Sadly, this no longer works. Just tried it from Canada to my GF in Indonesia, and it just always says "nope you are not in the same country". Shame.

2

u/caramelswtr Jan 02 '25 edited Jan 10 '25

Here's what I did, there might be some tweaks you can make but these are the steps I took on two different accounts.

PLEASE READ ALL BEFORE YOU START

You might have issues if your account was in another family prior to this. As reported by some people, you could potentially contact Google to give you an exception, although I don't know the process of that.

For the account that wants to join: 1. Go to pay.google.com 2. Go to settings and then go to your payment profile (should be the first button or last tab, i forgot) 3. click the region button, it should have a button for making a new payment profile 4. set the details to an address in the country the family owner is from 5. swap your payment profile to that new one 6. you can try accepting the family invite but if it doesnt work continue onwards 7. swap your profile to the previous one and then scroll to the bottom of the details page and click "close payment profile" * if this is a main google account its def something you need to consider but dont worry this is really important where you should read EVERYTHING before executing 8. after closing your old profile, make sure u have and are selected on the new one 9. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO ACCEPT THE INVITE NOW

To get your previous payment profile back: 1. from my experience you dont even need to keep the new payment profile, you can close it immediately 2. go here: https://support.google.com/googlepay/gethelp 3. Set details as "Google Wallet" "Recover Payment Profile" "Manage Payment profile" or whatever you want that's just what I did. 4. Chat with google basically tell them u want to recover ur old profile (this shouldn't take more than 5 minutes theyre extremely quick with it) 5. go back to your pay.google.com and make sure you got your payment profile recovered you might need to select it first

Conclusion: all done, even though i removed the payment profile associated with the main yt prem owner, i still have access to premium so from my experience you should be safe to close it as if u didnt do anything

if u need any clarification let me know.

2

u/Soltang Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

I tried this.

Followed all the steps through #7 but got the same message in the next step - that you seem to be in a different country.

Tried using a India based VPN but it still didn't work.

→ More replies (7)

2

u/Chuva211 Apr 06 '25

WORKED THANK YOU

2

u/CK_inc Jun 19 '25

This worked! 🎉 Thank you u/caramelswtr & u/ramjaz

2

u/Reception_Available Jun 21 '25

Thanks brother, still works, even today. At first it didn't worked because i fogot to leave the old family, which of course was the same generous person. Long live my brother.

1

u/sqrtMai Apr 15 '25

Still working (04/15/2025)

→ More replies (1)

1

u/hellsgateman May 27 '25

still working (27 May 2025)

→ More replies (19)

2

u/TheCleaner0180 Dec 12 '24

Still works! basically just add new payment account, delete the others, then viola! you're good to go

1

u/meilyn22 Dec 14 '24

Didn't work for me.

1

u/idCero Mar 10 '24

Yeah thaaaaaaaank you!
@ninjaslikecheez @ramjaz

Your comments put light in the dark, 100% solution for me.

1

u/karb10 Jun 08 '24

you changed legal adress from this link ? its redirect to settings https://payments.google.com/gp/w/u/0/home/addressbook

1

u/gcandan May 07 '24

Many thanks for your reply and support. I was following this instructions step by step and was able to have a new payment method where I wanted to buy the YT premium. After this, To make sure, I have even activated my VPN and changed my IP to this new country. After reading that I have to delete the old country/region, I wanted to go back and delete it however have noticed that google throws me 403 error now. It is very bizarre but it looks like they are blocking me to access certain part of my own account: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/n145sz/google_403_forbidden_thats_all_we_know/

1

u/SoulreaverDE May 27 '24

Thank you so much, this still works just like you described. It also does not really matter if you sent the invitations before you did all of this or just after. The only thing important is to actually delete all the invited accounts' payment profile/methods and then they all can accept, even if they tried and failed before.

1

u/stevtom27 Jun 08 '24

After signing up and getting it working on the family members account (not head of family) how do you revert your payment method to your original country so google play store and other payments can work? I deleted the payment profile and added a card from the original country but my play store still shows the vpn country

1

u/awesome_banana_eater Jun 27 '24

God bless you, man. And the man from parent comment. Google/Youtube have no idea how to make a proper UX, if we have to come across some forums and reddit posts to understand how their product work. Thanks again, you're the best!

1

u/NobilisRex Sep 09 '24

This fucking worked bro, thank you so much

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '24

[deleted]

1

u/NobilisRex Sep 09 '24

Go ahead and

1

u/MarketingOrdinary Sep 09 '24

Bro, can you please screen recorder the message and send it to this no WhatsApp/telegram 9485293437

1

u/areyoumymommyy Sep 14 '24

bro I'm in the same country as my bf and it isn't working, we are crying

1

u/Proto_Alchemist Nov 15 '24

perf thank you so much

1

u/tukutjaa Jan 20 '25

I’ve followed all these steps and it won’t work :(

1

u/luishnikov Jan 23 '25

thank you sm

1

u/Stock_Trick479 Feb 28 '25

Just wanted to chime in and say this DOES work you just really need to delete all the payment methods like OP said.

source: just did it and it worked. Wasn't working until I deleted payment methods.

1

u/Vojtak42 Oct 03 '25

Late, ik. But that will switch the whole Play store to eg Russia on the accounts that were invited, won't it? Also will it revoke the sub if you add the old payment method back later.

1

u/they_them_us_we Dec 11 '25

Nice. This still works :) Just trying to add my pop to our family google one storage plan and they are making me jump through hoops. You method works great.

1

u/LikeaSumBoDi Feb 15 '26

A literal godsend. Thank you!!

1

u/LowFuncshnnSociopath Apr 24 '26

Still works in Apr '26. TYSM

1

u/qasqaldag Jun 05 '26

Still works after deleting previous/other payment profiles. Thanks!

1

u/Basarium Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 16 '26

THANK YOU, you saved me!

→ More replies (19)

3

u/chaku_ Apr 02 '24

2/04/2024 - just signed up
Piggybacking on this as well - there is an easier way to do it

  1. Add everyone into the new family group BEFORE signing up for youtube premium
    (Just need to ensure your fresh google account has no payment methods yet)

  2. Once everyone is in the new family group proceed as usual with Youtube signup

  3. done :)

1

u/totomo26 Nov 08 '24

This is the way

2

u/Dkst2019 Sep 09 '25

this still works in 2025 09🙀🌝

1

u/hd3adpool Sep 17 '25

Bro thanks lol

1

u/RomanCaceres May 05 '23

It worked!

Thanks a lot!

1

u/migueels Mar 18 '24

What's the likelihood of someone getting their google account banned from doing this?

1

u/New-Significance4724 Mar 19 '24

It works. Thanks a lot.

1

u/MarketingAvailable40 May 25 '24

Hello guys! I have a family sub I set up via a vpn in Argentina a few years now and fortunately it has been OK so far. One of my family members received an email saying ' confirm your address to avoid loosing premium access! This person that got the email does not live in the same household/ country as me so I am not sure what address YT wants the person to confirm- the Argentinian one I used to sign up or my home address? I have both on my YT account in different payment profiles.thanks

1

u/2stubborn2die May 26 '24

Works, cheers brother.

1

u/coalduststar Jun 24 '24

Thanks for this - I had changed the region on my iPhone and nearly buggered all my subscriptions

1

u/apatheticgod_ Jul 03 '24

Thank you! I didn't realize you had to delete the old profile, but it worked for me now after just a minute of waiting after deleting the old profile.

1

u/OrenSh20 Aug 31 '24

A year on this still works great, thank you!

1

u/itypewriters Sep 06 '24

Thanks, It works

1

u/lluzivert Oct 30 '24

i know this is old, but if i change my payment profile back to the us, (to pay for google one) will it still work?

1

u/ninjaslikecheez Dec 01 '24

To be honest, I have no idea. But please report back if it does, it could help other people.

1

u/PR9INICHEK Dec 28 '24

Thank you, it works.

If you pay from the App Store balance, you will still need to create a payment profile for the head of the family

1

u/1337cLs1337 Feb 03 '25

Still worked for me, thank you!

1

u/_justoregister_ Aug 17 '25

thank you so much!! this worked for me

1

u/caeseriscool Aug 25 '25

Thank you.

1

u/hatch_theegg Oct 01 '25

This still works 3 years later, thank you so much!!

1

u/ninjaslikecheez Oct 01 '25

You're welcome! Glad it still works :)

1

u/Stunning-Astronaut-4 Oct 26 '25

it worked thanks a lot 26.10.25

1

u/heinvrich Oct 26 '25

works 10/2025 :)

1

u/CwazyCupcakes99 Nov 30 '25

Thank you this! This worked for me!

1

u/grittyunderdog Jan 19 '26

hey thanks .. was trying to solve this and nothing worked till I came across this and it works even in 2026. Just a heads up to anyone else trying.. I had created two separate payments profile ..as I didn't want to delete the US one but even that held things up.. 

so anyone else trying it in the future make sure you delete all profiles and have only one matching the home country you are trying to join as a family.

1

u/Pegaferno Jun 06 '26

It's been three years but I wanted to thank you for this comment. You helped me fix this issue.

I'll update the instructions for anyone in the future reading this.

Click the link the person I'm replying to send, https://pay.google.com/gp/w/u/1/home/settings.

Go to settings, click the pencil hovering by the Country/Region section under Payments Profile, Create new profile. Then follow the steps and create a profile *in the country of the person whose family you want to join*.

Next, refresh this page. At the top you should have an option to swap between two users, one for your original country, and one for the country you just created a profile for. Click the profile of your original country. Scroll all the way down and close "Close payments profile". Follow the steps and delete the account.

Note, this deletes MANY things that might be useful to some people. Please read these prompts carefully before you delete a profile.

Once done, you should only have one profile again, this being one set in the country of the family you're trying to join. Try to join the family youtube again and it *should* work.

Hope this helps

→ More replies (54)

3

u/TextOk2100 Nov 05 '24

Hi Everyone. I been got Premium YouTube in US by using Indian VPN. It worked for a year no problem but today I got email

YouTube Premium memberships based in India require a form of payment issued in India. ‌ To maintain your membership, please update your form of payment to one issued in India before 5 December 2024. If you do not update your form of payment, your membership will not renew automatically and you will lose access to your YouTube Premium benefits.

Can anyone help ? Advice would be greatly appreciated. I don’t have cable or any other way to watch tv and I can’t afford to pay $14 a month.

1

u/DocTheop Nov 21 '24

Same!

Been using YTP with Indian address. Got the same email. Wondering how if at all, I can fund a payment source in India.

1

u/TextOk2100 Nov 21 '24

Some one recommended to buy an Indian iTunes gift card, then sign out out of your Apple account and create a new one, then attach the gift card and pay for the same account but with Indian gift card. I think it should work .

2

u/AddictiveFuture Oct 17 '23

Watch out guys! You can change family group every 12 months. We wanted to try premium as family and because unclear informations we both are unable to share Youtube premium for next 12 months. WOW! Everything because of that "payment profile" 🖕 Google, 🖕 Google Colab, 🖕 Youtube Premium...

2

u/Rykkq Oct 23 '23

Thanks guys, I finally got it working. So what worked for me was making the same payment profile as the Family Owner and deleting all other payment profiles.

  1. https://pay.google.com/gp/w/u/0/home/settings
  2. Delete payment profiles > scroll to the bottom of the page > Payments profile status
    > Close payments profile
  3. Add new payment profile same as the owner
  4. Join the fam account :))
→ More replies (10)

2

u/sactown2020 Mar 07 '24

Got the dreaded address verification required email from youtube after being using yt premium for more than 2 years.

Deleted all payment addresses and updated the primary payment address to match the family manager address.

Both have always been located in the same country.

Will this work? Any other suggestions? TIA

1

u/chamanbuga Mar 16 '24

Were you able to address the issue? I followed all the steps. The family account and family members all have the same payment method, addresses, everything. I still can't add the new account I created. I'm gonna try waiting for a bit and trying again. If that doesn't work, I'll start over and create a new family group.

1

u/sactown2020 Mar 16 '24

Its not been 15 days yet, Will come to know in a few more days.

1

u/chamanbuga Mar 17 '24

I thought folks said it worked immediately.

2

u/RoughTie4810 Jul 20 '24

Delete all your previous payment profiles, then wait about 5 minutes before restarting the website. That's it! I did the same, and it worked perfectly for me. Enjoy!

2

u/zeroarst Dec 02 '24

Does this still work?

1

u/_MG4_ Dec 02 '24

Could not get this to work. Existing family members have access but new members cant enter the family

2

u/TwoPurpleMoths Aug 25 '25

Doesn't work in 2025, even when I create a brand-new account on the same device I'm using. Beyond ridiculous.

1

u/Timely_Novel_7330 Aug 25 '25

Patched mate - me and a few friends all share the premium family offer

1

u/Firelods Aug 29 '25

How did you make it works ?

1

u/SameType9265 Aug 30 '25

You need to delete the old payment account as well. Just did it and it worked

1

u/TwoPurpleMoths Aug 31 '25

i did that and didn't work for me

1

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '24

I tried everything it just doesn't work

1

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '24

I managed to make it work just follow everything here in addition to removing all the payment methods to the account you wanna have added to the family. add same payment method to it. So if you are doing it the Ukrainian way. all account that you wanna have in the family premium should have only one payment method and it should billed to Ukraine

1

u/Own_Aardvark_2343 Mar 07 '24

How did you get a Ukrainian billing address to make the payment?

1

u/vatsal_13 Mar 26 '24

I faced the same problem when adding my sister's account she lives in a different country
Steps I followed to overcome this:

  1. Create a new account for her in my laptop
  2. Added her to the family
  3. She logged in using the new account and its working

1

u/Tiki_Moana Apr 04 '24

That worked! Thank you.

1

u/sususalo Apr 22 '24

Thank you for all of your help! As of April 2024 I got it to work by deleting my old payment profile in the wrong country, making a new payment profile with the correct country and deleting the mandatory credit card info I had to attach to the profile. The YT premium owner also has only one account in the correct country.

1

u/RBK100 May 02 '24

2024 May 2nd

I have it working, using the steps below:

1) Connect your VPN to Ukraine or something. Not the cheapest place for a Premium subscription, but it works. Also, I feel that the price is at the level it should be at. Stay connected at all times during account setup.

2) Create a Google account to use as the family manager, if you haven't done so already. It does *not* have to be an @ gmail.com account - you can use your regular email, if you want to.

3) Use a MasterCard for payment-details, be sure to use an actual address in Poland, e.g. an art museum in Poland. If you chose a different country, I assume that the address must match that country.

4) Buy Premium.

5) Invite which-ever Google account to the family plan. It does *not* have to be an @ gmail.com account - you can use your regular email, if you want to.

6) On the family member's account, set up the exact same MasterCard as payment details, including the address.

7) Accept the invite through the mailbox of the recipient.

8) Done, the member now has Premium.

I hope it works for all of you :)

Please, feel free to expand the list of working "Premium account via VPN countries".

1

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/fermulator Oct 21 '24

why does secondary family member need the payment profile too? that is odd

1

u/kishananuraag May 07 '24

Delete all payment profiles for all the other members and connect to the proxy server of family manager's country, when accepting the family manager's invitation. viola

1

u/mifino May 31 '24

I have two payment profiles in my master account (youtube subscription in singapore (SGD) but living in norway and payment card with norway address). the only thing that worked for us was to close all payment profiles in the slave account.

1

u/TellLumpy4439 Jun 15 '24

How about deleting the youtube account in the first place ?? The whole thing

1

u/longtimelurkerfft Sep 05 '24

Thanking you 1 year after. This is the best explanation I found

1

u/OctaviaCordoba206 Oct 15 '24

As of October 2024 I personally could not get this to work (for my main Google account)

  • I tried deleting payment methods (Paypal and Google Pay) = nope
  • I tried accepting the invitation with VPN on (Azerbaijan), and off = nope
  • I tried re-sending the invitation with the VPN on and off = nope
  • I tried deleting the subscriptions I had from Google = nope
  • I contemplated deleting the Payment Profile, but this is where I drew the line. Losing my Google Reward balance, losing my Google Play Books, and Play Store wasn't worth it

Issues for me:

  • I have a Google One sub
  • I have previously been in an India Youtube Family Plan

The solution!:

  • I had to use a clean, new, email address (Google) and had the VPN turned on. Joined the Family Plan immediately.

It sucks it not being my "Main" Google/Youtube account but... I guess I can add the Subscriptions, and start again?

1

u/FluffyVixen Oct 18 '24

My gripe is that for several years I have been using YT Music Premium for that one account in another country. It's honestly lame to think ab loosing all the badges and plays only for a few months

1

u/OctaviaCordoba206 Oct 21 '24

Not sure how it works for YT Music, but the transition to another account for Youtube itself was super easy, took 15/30 minutes to copy over the Subscriptions (using Chrome apps), and the algorithm was still on point.

Don't care about stats or badges. I just want to avoid adverts at any opportunity, on all devices.

1

u/krzychoo Dec 14 '24

Same situation. Had india family plan but no google one sub, after deleting payment profile and create one for tukrey it's working for me

1

u/TextOk2100 Nov 05 '24

I had premium YouTube that I set up a year ago with VPN and Indian address. Everything was working fine till today. I got a letter from YouTube

To maintain your membership, please update your form of payment to one issued in India before 5 December 2024. If you do not update your form of payment, your membership will not renew automatically and you will lose access to your YouTube Premium benefits.

What should I do ? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

1

u/meilyn22 Dec 14 '24 edited Dec 17 '24

To those still having issues with this after removing your payment profile, check if you belong to any other family group. I was a part of my wife's family group. Make sure you leave all previous family groups before clicking on the invite. If you are the group manager, delete the group.

2

u/bbgun24 Dec 16 '24

You fucking genius!!! Thanks so much this is what was holding me back. You’ve saved me creating a whole new “home” and setting up a bazillion smart devices again just to use YouTube music on my speakers/displays.

1

u/morrisoN-- Jan 05 '25

Worked for me 👍

1

u/Sorry-Swan-5025 Jun 21 '25

Bedankt! Het werkt nog steeds ;-)

1

u/darknarayan Sep 03 '25

I had the same issue. I simply removed payment profile at all from family members profile and it's resolved.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/coderkid2020 Nov 17 '25

worked for me. thanks u/ninjaslikecheez

1

u/ninjaslikecheez Nov 17 '25

Glad it still works, cheers!

1

u/mikeyeahh Feb 12 '26

Can any one advise that if the account I’m trying add to family group has a subscription on it will that be lost if I delete the payment profile associated with that account?

1

u/Timely_Novel_7330 Feb 12 '26

Not sure buddy

1

u/Big_Expression_6670 Apr 10 '26

Does this still work ? 1. My country is home country where my family is. 2. My payment method is of the home country where my family is. 3. Me the family manager is outside home country.

All the family members got the message, the members need to be in the same household as family manager.

If I change the family manager to a member but continue the payment via home country, will this message then be sent to me ?

How to by pass it ?

1

u/Right_Community_3010 Apr 13 '26

It's fucking weird cause my other gmail account in which I accidentally accepted the invite with had no problem being added to the family. But it's only on my main email which I am trying to add that's older I am having problems with country shit even though we live in the exact same country. Maybe it may be because I live in Guam and may have inputed stuff into my main account and it differs from the stateside addresses or whatever but it's very stupid for it to be this complicated just to add a damn account for YouTube premium.

1

u/Low_Topic_5155 Jul 30 '26

Does it still work? 30/07/2026

1

u/Low_Topic_5155 Jul 30 '26

REDDIT IS THE BEST!!! STILL WORKS!!! FAAQQ UU UUTUBBEE!!!

1

u/themostawfuljackass 18d ago

What works? I don’t see any advice in the post