Can You Use Your Netflix Account in Another Country?

What changes when you use Netflix abroad

Your account, profiles and plan stay the same. The library around them changes:

• Catalog. You get the shows and movies licensed for the country you’re in, with that country’s audio and subtitle options. A series you started at home can drop out of Continue Watching until you’re back.
• Downloads. Netflix warns that downloaded titles “may not be available while in a different country”. If a title isn’t licensed where you are, you get error 22004, and it won’t play “until you connect to the internet in a country where it is available”. Downloading before the trip helps on the plane, less so at the hotel.
• Maturity ratings. Netflix shows the ratings of the country you’re in, so the labels on a kids’ profile can change.
• Ad plan. Standard with ads is sold in only 12 countries: the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain and the UK. Anywhere else Netflix shows error E120, “Your ad-supported plan is not available in this region”. Its advice is to watch in the country where you started the plan or to change to an ad-free plan.
• Payment. No change. The account keeps the country you signed up in, because “The country on your account can’t be changed unless you move to a new one”. Gift cards and other cash methods are the exception: they “may not be available or eligible for use in your travel location”, so top up before you leave.

Inside the EU, accounts from EU countries get more. Netflix’s help page for those countries says “For countries within the European Union, we provide the same content as your home country for a limited period of time”, in line with the EU’s portability regulation. UK accounts shouldn’t count on it. Netflix’s UK page carries the same sentence, but the UK government says the regulation “no longer applies to UK-EEA travel”.

Hotel and holiday-rental TVs: the Netflix Household check

Netflix ties an account to one household, which it describes as “a collection of devices connected to the internet at the main place where you watch Netflix”. It works that out from IP addresses, device IDs and account activity. A TV in a hotel or a holiday flat sits outside it, so after you sign in you may read “Your TV (or device) isn’t part of the Netflix Household for this account.”

Getting past it takes a minute:

1. On the TV, choose I’m Traveling, from a profile that isn’t a Kids profile.
2. Netflix sends a link to the account owner’s email address, or a text if there’s no email on file.
3. The owner opens the link and selects Get Code. The 4-digit code expires after 15 minutes, so the owner has to be reachable.
4. Enter the code on the TV.

Each TV gets a limited number of code requests. When the I’m Traveling button disappears, you’ve used them up for that TV. Several wrong codes in a row block the TV for 24 hours.

Netflix doesn’t say how long the TV stays unlocked after a correct code. Many sites quote seven days, but none of the Netflix help pages we read gives a number.

Phones, tablets and laptops rarely need any of this; Netflix’s travel page says to use them “as usual”. Its household page does show the same message on a phone or computer, with a Watch Temporarily button and the same code. To keep that rare, Netflix advises opening the app on your home Wi-Fi “at least once a month”.

Sign out of the hotel TV when you leave. Netflix names being “still signed in to your account from a recent hotel stay or someone else’s home” as one reason a household gets set to the wrong place.

Using Netflix at a vacation home or second home

A holiday home doesn’t become a second household. Netflix allows one per account, and with several Wi-Fi networks it says “we may only associate one with your Netflix Household”. For people with a second home, or a place they visit often, its travel page gives a routine instead:

1. At your main home, once a month, open Netflix on a phone or a computer and stream something for a few seconds.
2. Do the same when you arrive at the second place.

Netflix says that lets you “continue watching Netflix without interruption”. If a TV at the second home still says it isn’t part of your household, the I’m Traveling code from chapter 2 works there too.

Don’t choose Update Netflix Household on the holiday-home TV. That would move your household there, and the TVs at your main home would become the outsiders.

Sharing your account with someone in another country

Not on your plan. Netflix’s Terms of Use say the service “may not be shared with anyone outside of your household unless you purchased an Extra Member account”, and extra members don’t cross borders. They “need to be in the same country where the account owner signed up”, and the Terms let them activate the account “only in the country where the Account Owner created their account”.

So a parent who pays for Netflix in the UK can’t add a son studying in Canada as an extra member. He needs his own account, at Canadian prices.

Extra members come with conditions of their own:

• Only on the Standard and Premium plans, never on the ad plan.
• In the US they cost $7.99 a month with ads or $9.99 without; in the UK £5.99 or £6.99.
• One device at a time and one profile.

Someone who leaves your household doesn’t have to start from scratch. Netflix’s profile transfer moves a profile into a new account, with viewing history, My List and settings. Payment details don’t come along.

People who live with you are a different case. Netflix says everyone in the household can use the account “wherever they are — at home, on the go, on holiday”, so a family member travelling abroad is fine.

Is it legal? Sharing with someone abroad breaks Netflix’s Terms of Use, and Netflix enforces its household rule with the device checks in chapter 2.

Moving to another country

An account can’t simply change countries. Netflix’s moving page lists the steps:

1. Cancel your membership.
2. Wait until it ends.
3. Restart it while you’re in the new country.

Until you do, you “continue to be charged the Netflix plan price in the currency of the country you signed up in”. After the restart, the new country sets the price, the currency and the payment methods you can use, as well as the catalog and the maturity ratings. Check your parental controls once you’ve moved.

Your history survives the restart. Netflix keeps viewing activity, recommendations, ratings and account details for 24 months after an account closes, so you pick up where you left off.

Moving within the same country is a smaller job: update your Netflix Household from a TV at the new place.

Watching your home catalog while abroad

Get ExpressVPN

Netflix’s Terms say you may watch “primarily within the country in which you have established your account”, and its rights deals are made country by country. A VPN makes your connection look as if it came from another country, your home country included. When Netflix detects one, it shows error E106, “You seem to be using a VPN or proxy. Please turn off any of these services and try again.”, or, in the words of its help page, you “may only be shown TV shows and movies Netflix has worldwide licensing for”. On the ad plan, and for Live events on any plan, Netflix doesn’t support VPNs at all.

Inside the EU, accounts from EU countries don’t need a VPN for this (chapter 1).

That doesn’t make a VPN useless. Miklos Zoltan, who fact-checked this page, has used ExpressVPN for the US catalog for years. When a server is blocked, he switches to another until one works, and with a dedicated IP it works almost every time. ExpressVPN itself is more careful: its Netflix FAQ says that a detected VPN gets “content that it has global rights for”, and its dedicated-IP FAQ that dedicated IPs “may not work as well as shared IPs for streaming”.

Our guide on unblocking Netflix covers the errors and the fixes in more detail, and our Netflix VPN comparison covers other VPNs.

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN has servers in “113 countries, spread across 214 server locations”, so there is usually one in your home country. A dedicated IP is an add-on on Basic and Advanced and included in Express Pro. On November 5, 2026 its pricing page showed only two-year plans: Basic at $2.99 a month, $83.72 for the first 28 months, then $99.95 a year. The 30-day money-back guarantee is for first-time users and doesn’t cover purchases through the App Store or Google Play.