Tech Talk: Streaming Subscriptions and What You’re Actually Paying For
Mark McNease
If you’re like we are, so many of the shows you want to see are on separate streaming services. At some point, subscribing to them all costs more than the old cable service we got rid of in part to save money.
Somewhere along the way, cutting the cord stopped being less expensive. A household with Netflix, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, and Peacock—all without ads, which they now make you pay an additional charge not to see—is paying more than $130 a month, which is close to what a full cable package used to run. The subscriptions didn’t get more expensive one at a time; they crept up together, a dollar or two at a renewal here and there, and most of us never sat down to add it all up.
The first place to look isn’t the biggest bill, it’s the ad-supported version of a service you already have. Nearly every major streamer now offers a version with commercials for roughly half the price of the ad-free plan, and the actual library of shows and movies is usually identical. Netflix’s ad tier runs about nine dollars a month against twenty for its ad-free Standard plan; Paramount+ is about nine dollars with ads against fourteen without. Unless a service auto-enrolled you in ad-free at signup—and most do—you may be paying double for something you can turn off in a settings menu, not a phone call.
The second place is overlap you didn’t ask for. Paramount+ folded Showtime into its Premium tier a while back, so a lingering separate Showtime subscription is now paying twice for the same shows. Warner Bros. Discovery merged Discovery+ into Max the same way—if you’re still paying for both, one of them is redundant. And if you already pay for Amazon Prime for the free shipping, you already have Prime Video included at no extra cost; only the ad-free upgrade costs anything on top of that.
The third place is your phone bill. Verizon and T-Mobile have both built streaming perks into their higher-tier plans for a while now—sometimes a full Netflix or Max subscription bundled in for just a few dollars more than the plan alone. If you’re paying full price for a service separately while your carrier already includes it, that’s money going out twice for the same login.
None of this requires canceling everything and starting over. It requires one evening with a bank statement, a legal pad, and one honest question: which of these have I actually opened this month? For most households, two or three services cover nearly everything they watch. The rest is just habit—sitting quietly on autopay.
Somewhere along the way, cutting the cord stopped saving anyone money. A household with Netflix, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, and Peacock—all without ads—is now paying more than $130 a month, which is close to what a full cable package used to run. The subscriptions didn’t get more expensive one at a time; they crept up together, a dollar or two at a renewal here and there, and most of us never sat down to add it all up.
The first place to look isn’t the biggest bill, it’s the ad-supported version of a service you already have. Nearly every major streamer now offers a version with commercials for roughly half the price of the ad-free plan, and the actual library of shows and movies is usually identical. Netflix’s ad tier runs about nine dollars a month against twenty for its ad-free Standard plan; Paramount+ is about nine dollars with ads against fourteen without. Unless a service auto-enrolled you in ad-free at signup—and most do—you may be paying double for something you can turn off in a settings menu, not a phone call.
The second place is overlap you didn’t ask for. Paramount+ folded Showtime into its Premium tier a while back, so a lingering separate Showtime subscription is now paying twice for the same shows. Warner Bros. Discovery merged Discovery+ into Max the same way—if you’re still paying for both, one of them is redundant. And if you already pay for Amazon Prime for the free shipping, you already have Prime Video included at no extra cost; only the ad-free upgrade costs anything on top of that.
The third place is your phone bill. Verizon and T-Mobile have both built streaming perks into their higher-tier plans for a while now—sometimes a full Netflix or Max subscription bundled in for just a few dollars more than the plan alone. If you’re paying full price for a service separately while your carrier already includes it, that’s money going out twice for the same login.
None of this requires canceling everything and starting over. It requires one evening with a bank statement, a legal pad, and one honest question: which of these have I actually opened this month? For most households, two or three services cover nearly everything they watch. The rest is just habit—sitting quietly on autopay.