Three quick tips to reduce your streaming costs
1. Subscribe selectively
Instead of subscribing to multiple streamers at once and watching a few things on each, pause subscriptions until there’s a lot you want to watch on a particular service (jump to our ‘subscription hopping’ guide below).
2. Drop down a level
If you don’t watch a lot of stuff filmed in 4K HDR with surround sound, you don’t really need the Super Mega Ultra tier for that streaming service.
3. Buy a bundle
Some streamers are cheaper if you buy them as part of a bundle – such as a phone contract with bundled streaming or a multi-service package like Apple One.
Streaming is a bit different from the days when all you needed was a single Netflix subscription. To watch all the big shows and movies today, you need a big budget to cover the cost of not only Netflix, but Disney+/Hulu, HBO Max or Now TV, Paramount+ and Apple TV and Prime Video and more.
With a little forward thinking and judicious use of your Reminders app, you can pause subscriptions that aren’t the best value, lower the price of the subs you want to keep, and share streaming with family members who don’t share the same roof. I’ve calculated that this will save me over 50% by 2026, and there’s no reason you can’t make similar savings.
In this piece I will mostly be quoting UK prices because that is where I live, but the tips and savings will be much the same elsewhere too. How to reduce the price of your streaming subscriptions without sacrificing the best shows and movies.
The basics
1. Drop down a level
The full Super Mega Ultra Plan with 4K UHD, HDR and surround sound is great, but how many of the shows you watch were filmed with these features?
Dropping from 4K to 1080p means a big saving on Netflix. The Premium 4K plan costs $24.99 / £18.99 / AU$28.99, while the standard is $17.99 / £12.99 / AU$20.99, a saving of 46% here in the UK.
Similarly, Disney+ costs £14.99 a month for up to 4K in the UK, but just £9.99 for 1080p. That’s a 50% savings per month if you drop a level.
If your TV isn’t massive and or very close to your couch, you might not see much of a difference between 1080p and 4K, especially if your TV does a decent job of upsampling from Full HD.
2. Embrace the ads
Yes, ads – especially randomly injected ads – are annoying. But moving ad-free to ad-supported plans can save you a ton of cash – for example, going from Netflix Standard to Netflix Standard With Adverts drops the price from $17.99 / £12.99 / AU$20.99 per month to $7.99 / £5.99 / AU$9.99 per month, saving 53%.
You can’t skip the ads, but if you’re like me, you’ll quickly develop muscle memory for the location of the mute button on your TV remote, or get really good at picking up your phone for exactly 60 seconds.
3. Deny your children
If, like me, you have a child who has moved out, you can save a lot of money by denying them. Or at least by not paying extra to share a streaming service with them.
Here in the UK, the extra membership accounts for people who don’t share the same roof add £4.99 a month to your streaming plan on Disney+ or Netflix (or £5.99 if you share a Netflix no-ads plan).
Don’t worry, I’m not completely depriving my children. My Apple plan is a family plan, so they have Apple TV (and Apple Music). And that brings me to bundling.
4. Buy a bundle
One way to get streaming for less is to get it in a bundle – for example, my Apple TV subscription is available as a standalone sub or as part of an Apple One bundle.
If you’re already an Apple Music subscriber, switching to Apple One seems cheaper than buying Apple TV separately: in the UK, Apple One costs £18.95 for an individual subscription, compared to £10.99 for Apple Music plus £9.99 for Apple TV. And you also get extra iCloud space and Apple Arcade.
The family subscription costs just £5 more and you can share your music, TV and arcade subscription with up to five people.
5. Subscription shopping
Look at
Got all the basics covered and still want to save money from streaming cash? Now we come to the biggest (and arguably best) way to cut your bills.
Pausing your monthly subscriptions can save you a fortune – although of course that’s not an option if you’ve paid upfront for an annual plan.
I think there are two kinds of streaming shows. There are the shows you absolutely have to watch right now because (a) they’re brilliant and (b) if you don’t, some clown on the internet will ruin it for you. And there are those shows that are… okay.
For me, the former includes shows like Slow horses, Down the cemetery road, Resignation and Multibuswhich all happen to be on Apple TV – so I’ll keep that subscription.
But I only subscribed to other services for specific shows: Nu TV for The last of usParamount+ for YellowjacketsNetflix for Stranger Things. And when those shows are done, I don’t mind pausing those subscriptions until there’s more TV to watch.
Let’s look at the numbers. For simplicity, I’ll quote the unbundled price of Apple TV and Prime Video, because otherwise it gets messy.
If I had not stopped or changed any of my 2025 subscriptions my monthly bill would be:
- Netflix (ads) £5.99
- Paramount+ £7.99
- Now TV (ads) £9.99
- Apple TV DKK 9.99
- Prime Video (ads) £5.99
- Disney+ (ads, extra person) £10.98
That’s in total £50.93 per month (about $68 / AU$103).
Pausing the first three subscriptions and removing the additional membership feature from Disney takes the monthly cost of this:
- Apple TV DKK 9.99
- Prime Video (ads) £5.99
- Disney+ (ads) £5.99
That’s in total £21.97 per month, a saving of 56%. And with subscription shopping, I can swap subscriptions throughout the year, for example, swapping Netflix for Disney Plus for a month or two.
There are a few caveats here. Streamers often offer promotional discounts that reduce the sticker price, especially for annual subscriptions – while this can save you money, it also stops you jumping on the bandwagon.
There are also other ways to get some streaming services for less, such as bundling them with a new phone contract or in the UK with Sky TV, Virgin Media or the like. But if you subscribe directly to individual streaming services, pausing them for a few months here and there can save you serious money.
Would you like to give something in 2026? Here’s our cheat sheet table for the first few months of the year to help you formulate your subscription shopping plan.
Our cheat sheet
Your tastes will likely differ from mine, so here’s a quick guide to some of the best new shows landing on Apple TV, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus and more in the next few months.
|
Month |
Service |
Displays / notes |
|
January |
Apple TV |
Hijack S2 (Jan 14), Drops of God S2 (Jan 21), Shrinking S3 (Jan 28) |
|
January |
Netflix |
Harlan Coben’s Runaway (Jan 1), His & Hers (Jan 8), People We Meet on Vacation (Jan 9), Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (Jan 15), The RIP (Jan 16), Bridgerton S4 Part 1 (Jan 29) |
|
January |
Prime video |
Steal (January 21) |
|
January |
Peacock |
Ponies (January 15) |
|
January |
HBO Max |
The Pitt S2 (January 8), Industry S4 (January 11), A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms S1 (January 18) |
|
January |
Disney Plus/Hulu |
Pole to Pole with Will Smith (January 14), Wonder Man (January 27) |
|
January |
Paramount+ |
Scream 5 (January 14), Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (January 15), Smurfs (January 15) |
|
February |
Apple TV |
The Last Thing He Told Me S2 (February 20), Monarch: Legacy of Monsters S2 (February 27) |
|
February |
Netflix |
The Lincoln Lawyer S4 (February 5), The Night Agent S3 (February 19) |
|
February |
Prime video |
Man of the Run (February 25) |
|
February |
Disney Plus/Hulu |
The Artful Dodger S2 (February 10), Paradise S2 (February 23) |
|
March |
Netflix |
One Piece S2 (March 10), Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (March 20) |
|
March |
Prime video |
Scarpetta (March 11), Deadloch S2 (date TBC) |
|
March |
Peacock |
Ted S2 (March 5) |
|
March |
HBO Max |
Rooster (date TBC) |
|
March |
Disney Plus |
Daredevil Born Again Season 1 (March 4) |
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