With the announcement this week of the HBO Max price of $14.99 a month, being a cord-cutter is becoming an expensive proposition.
When the cord-cutting revolution began, it was a welcomed relief from the price of sky-high cable bundles. Now, as companies are losing more and more cable subscribers, and seeing the success of Netflix‘s original content, there is a flood of streaming services fighting for our dollars.
Using a mixture of older catalog content and original content, all of them seem to have something to appeal to you, and choosing which ones to go with is becoming that much more difficult as more deals are struck moving the content around. Were you happy with Seinfeld on Hulu? Too bad, it’s on its way to Netflix. HBO Max won the South Park bidding war for all of the older content and the next several seasons.
Now, as we enter more streaming services launching, it’s getting even more expensive. We’ve compiled what the pricing for all of the major streaming services as well as some of the more popular niche services so you can start comparing what to keep and what to cut. (A few notes, we went with commercial-free versions of the services where available. We also included Peacock although we don’t know the price just to remind you it’s coming.)
| Monthly | Year-by-Month | Annual Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acorn TV | $5.99 | $71.88 | $59.99 |
| Apple Plus | $4.99 | $59.88 | – |
| BritBox | $6.99 | $83.88 | $69.99 |
| CBS All Access | $9.99 | $119.88 | $99.99 |
| Criterion | $10.99 | $131.88 | $99.99 |
| Crunchy Roll | $7.99 | $95.88 | $79.99 |
| DC Universe | $7.99 | $95.88 | $74.99 |
| Disney Plus | $6.99 | $83.88 | $69.99 |
| HBO Max | $14.99 | $179.88 | – |
| Hulu | $11.99 | $143.88 | – |
| Netflix | $12.99 | $155.88 | – |
| Peacock | ?? | ?? | ?? |
| Prime Video | $8.99 | $107.88 | – |
| Shudder | $5.99 | $71.88 | $56.99 |
Wasn’t cutting the cord supposed to save me money?
As you can see, if you use even a few services it adds up very quickly. Choosing which ones to subscribe to is getting more complicated as you have to chase down the older content you’re looking for, or what original content you’re interested in.
Even when picking original content it isn’t always going to be easy. Take HBO Max for instance. It’s going to have multiple original shows based on DC properties including a Green Lantern series. Well, then you might want to pick that one up to get your DC fix. But not so quick, DC Universe has Titans, another popular DC property. So you may want both of them.
On the Marvel side of things, you’re going to have original content split between Hulu and Disney Plus. Which one do you go with?
Despite these choices you’re going to have to make, there is still one thing that makes streaming stand well above the traditional cable bundles and that is the lack of contracts. If you want to turn Netflix on for a month and then turn it off again for three, there is nothing stopping you. There is nothing saying you can’t build up content until you have a good binge-worthy amount to go after.
Sure, it may be an inconvenience turning subscriptions on and off, but we’ll take that over being tied down to a contract any day.
