The trend is only going in one direction.
You don't have to look far to find digital subscriptions for just about anything now: From AI chatbots to photo editors, from cloud storage to music streaming, most of us are paying multiple monthly subs to access our content and tools. What's more, the prices on these products, especially the streaming services, are only going in one direction.
Over time it can be difficult to remember just how many price rises there have been, and you can easily find yourself with a significantly bigger monthly bill because of them. Here then, in cold black and white, are all the video streaming service price hikes we've seen over the last 18 months—since January 2023.
Tracking these price rises isn't an exact science, as sometimes the service you're getting changes together with the price—you might get a broader selection of movies, for example, or access to an extra bundled service—but these are the changes in the monthly prices over time. Head to the end to see what the overall shift has been.
All the numbers mentioned are monthly payments, though some of these services offer discounts for paying full years in advance. The monthly price rises are often, but not always, matched in what you'll pay for a year in advance.
The only Netflix price hike of this period came in October 2023, when the cheapest ad-free Basic plan went up $2, from $9.99 to $11.99, and the most expensive Premium plan went up $3, from $19.99 to $22.99. There have been rumors that we're going to see further increases sometime in 2024, but nothing is official yet.
Like Netflix, Disney+ raised its prices in October 2023, with the standard ad-free plan going up from $10.99 to $13.99, a jump of $2. That's the only price rise we've had in the U.S. over the last 18 months, and while further price rises before the end of the year are always possible, we haven't heard anything about them.
Disney also owns Hulu, and at the same time as the 2023 Disney+ increases, there were ones for standalone Hulu subscriptions as well: The ad-free plan went up by $3, from $14.99 to $17.99 a month. The Hulu + Live TV packages both went up by $7 as well, to $76.99 a month with ads and $89.99 without.
In February 2023, Max saw its first ever price hike, with the standard ad-free package getting a $1 bump to go from $14.99 to $15.99 a month. Further price hikes then followed in June 2024, with the standard ad-free and ultimate 4K ad-free options both going up by $1 a month, to $16.99 and $20.99 respectively.
Last year, monthly prices for Paramount+ went up from $4.99 to $5.99 for the Essential tier, and from $9.99 to $11.99 for the ad-free plan with Showtime. In August 2024, the price goes up again: $7.99 for the Essential plan (though only for new subscribers, for now), and $12.99 for the Showtime one.
Peacock has given us advance notice of July and August 2024 price hikes: The ad-supported Premium plan is up to $7.99 from $5.99 a month, while the Premium Plus plan goes to $13.99 from $11.99. Those plans got bumps in 2023 too: $1 for the cheaper plan and $2 for the more expensive one.
In October 2023 Apple TV+ went up from $6.99 a month to $9.99 a month, following a 2022 bump (the Apple One bundle, including Apple TV Plus, went up from $16.95 to $19.95 a month at the same time). As yet there haven't been any murmurings of further price increases happening in 2024.
Right at the end of 2023, Amazon announced that if you didn't want to see ads on Prime Video, it would cost an additional $2.99 on top of the $8.99 monthly subscription (or $14.99 for the general Prime subscription, which includes Prime Video). That's the only price rise over the last 18 months.
If you were subscribed to all of the subscription services we've mentioned here at the start of 2023—ignoring bundles, trials, and special offers, and assuming you were signed up for the cheapest plans that have been affected by increases—you would've been paying $76.92 a month. Late in 2024, you'll be paying $98.91.
That's close to a rise of 30% in 18 months, a sign of the pressures on these companies to squeeze more and more money out of the same number of customers. If you've been noticing your bank account apparently draining faster and faster each month, it's really no surprise.
Admittedly, those numbers are simplified for our purposes. You can get Disney+ and Hulu bundled together for less money, for example, and some plans haven't changed prices but have introduced advertising. There are also annual plans at varying rates, and certain tiers have remained at the same level while others haven't.
It's a complicated picture, which is probably how the streaming services prefer it—but it's clear that price hikes have affected just about every platform in the business. What's more, they show no sign of stopping, which means you might have to be even more picky about what you're signed up to going forward.
