What’s the Most Expensive Streaming Service? We Compared Price Hikes
Apple TV+ announced another price increase on Wednesday, October 25 — its second in the last calendar year. Any new subscribers will pay $9.99 per month (up from $6.99), and the price will increase for current subscribers on their next billing cycle. With Netflix announcing its second price hike of 2023 earlier this month and the seemingly endless price hike announcements, it feels like users are being nickled and dimed at every turn. A password-sharing fee here, an up-charged ad-free subscription there. When will the price hikes stop?
It’s hard to keep up with the increasingly frequent rise of subscription costs. In the chart below, we’ve compiled the major streaming services that have increased its prices in 2023 — Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and Apple TV+ — into one info-graphic so you can compare monthly prices.
View this post on Instagram
There are other services, such as Prime Video and Starz, that have announced increases that aren’t in the graphic above. Starting in 2024, the first ad-supported Prime Video subscription will become available, and watching Prime TV shows and movies ad-free will cost an extra $2.99 per month (a Prime Video subscription is included in an Amazon Prime subscription, which costs $14.99 monthly, and Prime Video costs $8.99 per month on its own). Starz is perhaps the only streaming service to lower a price; its annual cost decreased from $74.99 annually to $69.99 in August. But its monthly subscription increased from $9 to $10 monthly in June 2023.
Netflix increases its prices the most of any streaming service by far. It introduced its password-sharing crackdown earlier this year, forcing users to pay $7.99 per extra account per month if they wanted to share their password with someone outside of their household. And only two of its available subscriptions allow password sharing at that (Standard subscribers can add one extra profile, while Premium subscribers can add up to two).
Earlier this month, Netflix announced another price hike for the Basic and Premium plans in an earnings call to investors (the price of Netflix Standard went up from $13.99 to $15.49 in 2022). Starting October 18, Basic costs $11.99 (was $9.99) and Premium costs $22.99 (was $19.99, but Basic is no longer available to new subscribers. Current subscribers can remain on the plan until they want to change their subscription.
Netflix Standard with ads is $6.99 monthly, and Standard’s price remains the same at $15.49 monthly. Factor in the additional $7.99 charge for extra accounts, and Standard subscribers are looking at a $23.48 monthly fee, while Premium users would pay $30.98 to have one extra account and $38.97 for two. With this Premium cost, Netflix offers the highest monthly subscription price of any streaming service. (Is its catalogue worth that much?)
Paramount+ merged platforms with Showtime in 2023, bringing new prices along with it. Starting in June, the Paramount+ Essential Plan (with ads but without Showtime) increased from $4.99 to $5.99. Paramount+ with Showtime went from $9.99 to $11.99. In July, Peacock Premium (the ad-supported tier — confusing, we know) went up from $5 to $6 per month. The Peacock Premium Plus subscription (no ads) went up from $10 to $12 monthly. In January, Max raised its price for the first time since it was created. As of January 12, Max without ads went from $14.99 to $15.99 per month. Max with ads stayed at $9.99 per month.
One saving grace is that annual prices for these services typically amount to a discounted monthly rate, but not everyone has the money to drop around $100 for a yearly package. And the cost racks up when you’re purchasing multiple annual subscriptions. Given that, the future of streaming is possibly in bundles.
Disney is already on top of this, offering packages including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ that are more appealing in price than getting the apps on their own (Paramount+ with Showtime is also a package deal, but the standalone Showtime app will shut down by the end of this year). Disney+ by itself costs $7.99 per month with ads and $13.99 per month without. That’s reasonable enough. It’s the Hulu price that really makes your jaw drop.
Disney raised Hulu’s standalone price by 20 percent in Summer 2023, taking it from $14.99 to $17.99 for the ad-free tier. Hulu with ads costs the same as Disney+ with ads ($7.99 per month). Bundle it with Disney+, however, and you pay just $9.99 per month with ads and $19.99 per month without. Add ESPN+ to that bundle and the monthly cost is still lower than Netflix’s highest cost (and remember, you don’t get additional streaming services with Netflix’s priciest offer, just the ability to add two people to your account). The Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ bundle with ads costs $14.99 monthly and without ads costs $24.99. Unfortunately, Disney+ will soon crack down on password sharing, taking a page from Netflix’s book.
Much like cable packages before them (and whether we like it or not), streaming service bundles seem to be the next frontier of streaming. Let’s just hope the free TV broadcast networks stay free. For now, use the info-graphic above to help keep track of the current price of streaming services.
