Streaming Costs Have Increased
Even if you’ve “cut the cord,” you might feel as if you need to subscribe to more streaming services than ever before in order to enjoy your preferred programs. That’s because many of the country’s largest media companies launched their own streaming services featuring popular original content in the last few years, instead of licensing their shows and movies to services like Amazon Prime and Netflix. This is not only a pain to keep track of (how many times do you find yourself asking, “which app do I watch that on?”) but it’s getting increasingly expensive.
A 2025 Consumer Reports survey found that 30% of households had used four or more paid streaming services at some point in the last year. At the same time, the cost of subscriptions keeps climbing, with many of the most popular services, including Apple TV, Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix, raising monthly prices regularly. Netflix’s top ad-free plan, for example, currently costs $25 per month, which is up from $16 per month in 2019. Multiple streaming plans quickly add up; according to a Deloitte study, US consumers spend $69 per month on streaming services alone.
Additionally, the more subscriptions you have make it increasingly likely that you could be paying for services you no longer use without even realizing it. In a 2022 Consumer Reports survey, 42% of consumers said they’d forgotten about a streaming subscription that they were still paying for but no longer use. (I’m guilty of this, myself. I just had to eat $89 because a subscription app that I’d forgotten all about auto-renewed, and I didn’t notice until the transaction appeared in my bank statement.)
Do a Streaming Services Spring Cleaning
For DIY-ers
Take the time to sit down and do a manual audit. Make a list of all your streaming service subscriptions, starting with the apps you have downloaded on your TV and digital devices, and then look at all of your credit card bills from the last year. If you’re spreadsheet-savvy, create a table that lists each subscription and what you paid — this is a great tool for monitoring any rising hikes in subscription costs, as well as comparing monthly versus annual plan options.
Digital Help Options
If poring over bank statements and making spreadsheets sounds like the worst form of torture, you can have online services or apps do this for you.
Services like Trim and Hiatus monitor your online accounts — with your permission — and use AI to figure out which of your payments are likely to be subscription-based services. (These services come recommended by AARP, in case the AI aspect makes you nervous.) Added bonus: they can help you discover whether you’ve double-subscribed to a magazine or other publications.
Similarly, the apps Bobby, Rocket Money, and Subby (which are free, with in-app purchases or optional upgraded features) are specifically designed to keep track of your subscriptions and remind you when payments are due.
Try Service Hopping
Once you’ve got your subscriptions organized, it’s time to assess whether you’re paying too much for what you’re actually using.
Many people sign up for a streaming service to watch a particular series, and then continue to subscribe even after the show has run its course; it just becomes a part of their monthly expenses, like a utility bill. But unlike some other services, it doesn’t cost anything to cancel a streaming subscription, and there’s no penalty for coming back if you change your mind later. (Well, the one “penalty” is having to start over with the algorithm that decides which shows you like, but that’s hardly a deal-breaker for most people.)
So, by all means, pay an annual subscription for any streaming service you consistently use on a regular basis — it’s cheaper. However, for anything else, you could consider “service hopping,” and only subscribe to certain services for a few months at a time.
Service hopping isn’t illegal, unethical, or even a novel idea. According to Antenna, a subscription research firm, more than 29 million Americans — about ¼ of paying streaming subscribers — have canceled three or more services over the past two years. (They call these show-chasers “serial churners.”)
The idea is that you watch your preferred shows on one app until you run out of content and then switch to another service and catch-up on their programming. Using this method takes a bit more effort, but paying for one service at a time versus several you only use occasionally is much cheaper.
Third-Party Payments
Some people manage their streaming services by paying through a third party, which can make it easier to see them all in one place. For example, if you subscribe to a streaming service through Apple’s App Store, you are billed by Apple, which emails monthly payment receipts. (Many streaming services do not send monthly payment receipts, noted the New York Times in an article about streaming companies’ harmful design patterns. They ostensibly do this on purpose, making it easier to “forget” you’re paying them.) Within their app’s settings, Apple also makes it simple to see all of your subscriptions and renewal dates in one place, so you can cull them more easily.
Stay Diligent
The best part about the apps that help you manage subscriptions is that they take most of the guess-work out of the whole process. However, if you choose to do it yourself, stay aware of price hikes, renewal schedules, and which subscriptions you’re currently paying for, especially if you take advantage of any promotions where you receive a block of subscription time for free. (In that’s the case, be sure to enter the end date of the free period on your calendar (or set a phone reminder) in case you want to cancel before the charges begin.)
Top image source: Proxima Studio, via Canva.com
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