The price of streaming just hit an unfortunate milestone

The pitch from streamers has been pretty simple for the last ten years: drop the cable box, pick the four or five services you actually want to watch, and pocket the price difference. But after a swathe of major market changes, Disney raised the price of ad-free Disney+ and Hulu by $2.50 each on Sept. 23. It’s the sixth round of streaming price increases in six years, and it compounded that sneaking feeling that the math has stopped working.

Add up the price of the eight biggest US services at their cheapest ad-free rates, and the bill comes to $144.41 a month, which is about what the average 2016 cable bill would cost in today’s money. That’s before anyone goes near live TV streaming services, where those numbers get even worse.

The numbers we have are already stale

But the direction things are going is what matters

Fortune recently calculated the totals on Sept. 8 and landed on $139.41 a month for eight major services on their cheapest ad-free plans, or $1,672.92 a year. It wasn’t too long before that figure spread across the internet, and it was absolutely correct when it was published. Unfortunately, it lasted just two weeks.

Then, Disney’s recent increase moved ad-free Disney+ and Hulu from $18.99 to $21.49 apiece, taking the same basket to $144.41 a month and the annual total past $1,730. The eight services are Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, Apple TV, and Prime Video, each on the cheapest plan without commercials (Deadline has a great price tracker here).

Prime Video is also even more awkward, since removing ads means buying Prime Video Ultra at $4.99 on top of the $8.99 standalone subscription, so ad-free Prime Video is really $13.98.

Leichtman Research Group, which has surveyed what Americans actually pay for television every year for two decades, put the mean pay-TV bill at $103.10 a month in 2016, right in the middle of the cord-cutting boom. Its most recent figure, from 2023, is $112.70. So the real cable bill has risen by about 9% over seven years, while general prices rose closer to a quarter, meaning cable has actually gotten a little cheaper in real money, while streaming has done the opposite.

Set that $144.41 against that $112.70, and the ad-free stack isn’t just closing in on the cable bill; it passed it a while ago, and it is now running roughly 28% clear of it.

What you actually got with the old cable bill

The comparison is where the value gets clearer

Credit: Alexander Grey / Unsplash

Now, that $103.10 bought live local channels, a sports tier, a DVR nobody had to think about, and a box that worked even when the internet went out. It also came with broadcast TV fees, regional sports surcharges, and equipment rental stacked on top, none of which was clear when you signed up for the thing. Streaming prices also don’t include tax, another piece missing from most arguments.

Of course, nobody is obligated to have eight subscriptions at once, and most households don’t. Four or five is closer to the normal range, but the eight-service figure isn’t meant to describe a typical bill so much as the ceiling, and that ceiling is what used to make streaming vs. cable seem like a no-brainer swap. When the worst case was $60 and cable was $100, the decision wasn’t difficult.

Meanwhile, what you’re buying has gotten considerably smaller over time. FX Research counted roughly 600 scripted originals at the 2022 peak and 516 the year after, which is a decline of about 14%, and the streamers have leaned harder on returning hits and unscripted ever since. Despite the benefits of quality over quantity (which is a charitable take), paying more per month for fewer new shows a year means paying considerably more per show no matter how you look at it.

Ads have become the only way to save

If you take the same eight services as above and choose the standard ad-supported plan wherever one exists, the bill drops to a little under $91 a month. Sadly, it isn’t a better deal for having fewer services or less content, because you get the same catalog, just with commercials in front of them. To its credit, Apple TV, which still has no ad tier, costs the full $14.99 either way.

Cable bundles have reappeared in a different form as a way to save some cash. Disney left the ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu bundle untouched at $12.99 while raising both services individually by 50 cents, and the ad-free bundle now costs $21.99 against $42.98 for the two bought separately.

You may notice a pattern: every route back under the old cable number involves accepting something cable used to be criticized for, whether that’s too many commercials or a package of channels you wouldn’t have chosen otherwise.

How to actually keep those numbers down

Mostly, it’s more admin

Credit: Photo by cottonbro studio at pexels.com

If you have all eight streaming services right now, I wouldn’t even bother asking which is the best value. Instead, ask which two you opened most often in the last month. Cancellation is the only lever that works instantly and costs nothing, and streaming cycling (where you subscribe for the weeks you need and drop it afterward) is still the biggest savings avenue available. Unfortunately, you have to do it monthly.

Beyond that, an antenna gets you local channels at no recurring cost, and the free ad-supported apps already on your TV cover a surprising amount of news and back catalog, so you can watch local news for free before you pay anything. A NextGen TV tuner is also worth a look if your set lacks ATSC 3.0 support, though coverage still varies by market, and if the shows you rewatch most are ones you’d actually miss, buying them on disc stops being a luxury at around the third year of any subscription.

Live TV is the one area where none of this really helps. YouTube TV’s basic plan costs around $83 a month, and while the genre-based plans introduced this year start nearer $55, anyone who wants a full channel lineup has been paying cable money for a while now. If live sports and local affiliates are non-negotiable in your house, the comparison you want isn’t streaming against cable, but one live TV streaming service against another.

None of this makes cord-cutting a bad choice. The compelling case for it was never really the monthly figure anyway, but the ability to easily cancel, and that’s still true. But $103.10 in 2016 was a number you couldn’t argue with, and $144.41 is a number almost nobody actually pays in 2026. The biggest difference is that the bill is more flexible now, as long as you’re willing to spend part of every month looking at the numbers.