Ad-free streaming can now run you $137 a month as another major service hikes prices

Hit shows like "Love Island USA" have helped Peacock. Ben Symons/Peacock via Getty Images Streaming services are steadily raising prices, and Peacock is the latest example. The à la carte price of eight top streamers totals $137 a month, though bundles can bring costs down. Consumers are canceling ad-free versions of paid streamers and favoring free services like YouTube. The cost of streaming without ads is adding up. Peacock just hiked prices for the fourth time in four years in the latest example of stream-flation. As of Tuesday, NBCUniversal's streamer costs $12.99 a month for its main ad plan, up from $10.99, while its ad-free plan rose from $16.99 to $19.99 a month — the same price as Netflix's standard ad-free plan. Every major streaming service has raised prices in the last 12 months. It would cost over $137 a month total to individually buy the ad-free versions of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video. However, savvy consumers can save by bundling or trading down to ad-supported versions. It would cost just over $100 a month to get all eight of those ad-free streamers by getting the HBO Max-Hulu-Disney+ bundle — which costs $32.99 a month instead of $56.47 à la carte — and by pairing Peacock with Apple TV for $19.99 a month (which is how much Peacock costs on its own after its new price hike). Ad-free streamers' increasingly lofty prices seem to be leading many viewers to select ad plans instead. Nearly half of all premium streaming subscriptions are ad-supported, at 48%, according to the subscription data firm Antenna's June report. That's up from 39% in the first quarter of 2024. Antenna also found that 59% of new subscriptions were for ad-supported plans, in line with levels from the past two years. One major red flag for paid streamers is that ad-free subscription cancellations outpaced sign-ups in the first quarter, Antenna found. Ad-free streaming services lost more customers than they gained in the first quarter, Antenna found. Antenna It costs about $75 a month for the à la carte ad-supported versions of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and Amazon Prime Video (Apple TV doesn't have an ad tier). With bundles, consumers could bring that sum down to just under $60. Free streamers are gaining amid stream-flation Viewers are also gravitating toward free services like YouTube, Tubi, and The Roku Channel. Those leading free streamers made up 19.1% of viewership on US TVs in May, Nielsen found, compared to a 17.2% share in May 2025. In response, Hollywood giants like Disney, Paramount Skydance, and Netflix are exploring free offerings to lure cost-conscious viewers. There are risks to giving audiences free access to content that they're used to paying for, though. "Give away too little, and consumers will not engage," media industry analyst Paolo Pescatore of PP Foresight said of streamers' free tiers. "Give away too much, and the company risks undermining the very subscription model it is trying to support." Read the original article on Business Insider

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