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Apple TV costs $14.99 a month. There is no annual plan — Apple’s own pages list a monthly price and nothing else. Twelve payments come to $179.88 a year, and unlike almost every rival there is no discount for committing.
One housekeeping note, because it confuses search results: Apple dropped the “+” in 2025. The service Apple now calls Apple TV is the thing everyone still types as “Apple TV+”, and it is not the black box under your television. Same subscription, shorter name.
The question that decides this isn’t whether the shows are good. It’s how many months a year you’ll actually keep it running — because with no annual plan, cancelling costs you nothing, and Apple has quietly made the standalone subscription the worst way to buy it.
The headline number, and the discount that doesn’t exist
Almost every streamer offers roughly two months free for paying yearly — the industry’s standard 16.6%, which we pull apart in annual vs monthly billing. Apple offers none of it.
| Route | Monthly | Annual cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple TV, standalone | $14.99 | $179.88 | Apple TV only |
| Apple TV + Peacock Premium | $17.99 | $215.88 | Both, Peacock with ads |
| Apple TV + Peacock Premium Plus | $22.99 | $275.88 | Both, Peacock ad-free |
| Apple One Individual | $21.95 | $263.40 | + Music, Arcade, 50GB iCloud+ |
| Apple One Family | $27.95 | $335.40 | Above, six people, 200GB |
| Apple One Premier | $39.95 | $479.40 | + Fitness+, News+, 2TB |
All six prices came off Apple’s own pages on 30 September 2026. When we first checked on 25 August, Apple TV was $12.99, the two bundles were $14.99 and $19.99, and Apple One Individual was $19.95 — so the standalone service, both bundles and Apple One Individual are each $2 to $3 a month dearer than five weeks ago. Apple One Family and Premier are unchanged.
At $179.88, Apple TV is not a cheap service. It sits above the mid-point of the American subscription stack we costed in how much Americans spend on subscriptions, for a library that is entirely originals — no back catalogue, no licensed reruns, nothing to leave on in the background.
The calculation: count the months, not the shows
Do this one on yourself. Apple releases its big shows in clusters, and most subscribers watch in bursts of a few weeks.
Months you’d genuinely watch × $14.99 = what it should cost you.
Three months of viewing is $44.97. Paying every month of the year instead costs $179.88 — a premium of $134.91 a year for the nine months you didn’t open the app.
Because there’s no annual plan, there is no penalty for stopping. That is the one genuine advantage of Apple’s pricing, and hardly anyone uses it. If you can’t name something you watched on Apple TV in the last month, that $14.99 is the exact charge our guide to cancelling forgotten subscriptions exists to find.
Family Sharing is the only real discount Apple gives
Apple’s FAQ is explicit: up to six people, you included, can share one subscription. Six people, one $14.99 charge.
$179.88 ÷ 6 = $29.98 per person per year, or $2.50 a month each.
That reframes the whole decision. As a solo subscription, Apple TV is expensive for what it holds. Split across a household of four, it’s $44.97 each a year and one of the cheapest per-head streaming subscriptions available anywhere. If you’re paying for it alone while family members sit outside the share, you are choosing to pay four to six times the necessary rate.
The Peacock bundle: Apple TV for $3 a month
This is the finding worth the whole article, and both halves of it can be checked in ninety seconds.
Peacock lists three tiers on its own site: Select at $8.99 a month or $89.99 a year, Premium at $12.99 or $129.99, and Premium Plus — the ad-free tier — at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year. Which of those tiers is worth paying for on its own is the subject of our Peacock review.
Apple sells two bundles: Apple TV plus Peacock Premium at $17.99 a month, and Apple TV plus Peacock Premium Plus at $22.99.
Peacock Premium Plus on its own: $19.99. The bundle with Apple TV included: $22.99. Buying Apple TV through Peacock’s ad-free tier adds $3.00 a month — $36 a year — against $179.88 for the standalone subscription. For anyone who’d have paid for ad-free Peacock anyway, that’s Apple TV at a fifth of its list price.
The cheaper bundle works the same way. Apple TV + Peacock Premium (with ads) is $17.99, against $27.98 for the two bought separately — a saving of $9.99 a month, $119.88 a year. Add Peacock Premium to an Apple TV subscription you already pay for and it effectively costs you $3.
Two cautions, both from Apple’s own page. There’s no free trial and no annual billing on the bundles, so the comparison against Peacock’s annual plans is closer than it looks: Peacock Premium Plus yearly at $199.99 plus Apple TV at $179.88 is $379.87, versus $275.88 for twelve monthly bundle payments — still $103.99 a year cheaper, but the gap narrows.
And check Apple’s percentages rather than trusting them. Apple advertises savings of “over 30%”. Against the two companies’ current list prices the real figures are 36% on the Premium bundle ($9.99 off $27.98) and 34% on Premium Plus ($11.99 off $34.98), so the claim holds — but the comparison prices Apple prints beside each bundle don’t match Peacock’s own published rates, so we’ve used the two companies’ list prices throughout.
Apple One only wins if you already pay for Apple Music
Apple One Individual is $21.95 a month. Apple’s own breakdown values the parts at $34.96: Apple TV $14.99, Apple Music $11.99, Apple Arcade $6.99, iCloud+ 50GB $0.99.
Ignore the headline saving and use the threshold instead:
$21.95 − $14.99 = $6.96. Apple One beats a standalone Apple TV subscription if — and only if — you’d otherwise spend more than $6.96 a month on Apple Music, Arcade or iCloud+.
Apple Music alone clears that bar on its own. If you currently pay for Apple TV, Apple Music and the 50GB iCloud+ tier separately, that’s $27.97 a month; Apple One Individual makes it $21.95 and saves $72.24 a year. Apple raised both Apple One Individual and Apple TV by $2, so those two figures haven’t moved. If you use none of them and just want the shows, Apple One is $83.52 a year of services you didn’t ask for.
Apple One Premier at $479.40 a year is the one to be most careful with. It’s genuinely good value against its $74.94 component price — but only counted that way if you would truly have bought Fitness+ and News+.
Three ways to pay less or nothing
- New subscribers get 7 days free. Enough for one season of most Apple shows.
- Buy an Apple device and get 3 months free, redeemed within 90 days of activation. On a phone you were buying anyway, that’s $44.97 of viewing at no cost.
- Students do best. Apple’s page says the Apple Music Student Plan renews at $6.99 a month and includes Apple TV at no extra charge. Music plus TV for $83.88 a year, against $179.88 for the shows alone.
Buying it through Amazon
Apple TV is also sold as a Prime Video Channel, which keeps the billing and cancellation inside Prime Video. We confirmed the Channels listing on Amazon’s own page on 30 September 2026. We have not stated its Channels price: Amazon requires exact prices to come from an API we don’t have, and we haven’t confirmed whether Amazon has matched Apple’s increase to $14.99. Check the figure at signup.
With no annual plan to forgo, the usual penalty for buying through Prime Video Channels doesn’t apply here — which is why Apple TV is one of the few services where Channels isn’t the more expensive route, as we found when comparing Channels against subscribing direct.
The verdict
Don’t buy the standalone $14.99 subscription if you want ad-free Peacock too. The bundle is $22.99, just $3 more than Peacock charges alone. Paying both separately costs $143.88 a year more than the bundle.
Don’t keep it running year-round if you watch in bursts. Three months of viewing is $44.97. There is no annual plan to lose, no penalty, and no reason to fund the other nine months.
Don’t buy Apple One Premier for the television. At $479.40 a year it’s a bet on Fitness+ and News+ that most people lose.
Do share it. Six people, $29.98 each a year, is the cheapest per-head deal in premium streaming.
Do take the device offer and the student route if either applies. Three months free, or $6.99 a month for music and television together.
For a solo viewer paying full freight all year, Apple TV is $179.88 for a catalogue you can exhaust in a fortnight. That’s the group who should cancel.
Verified 30 September 2026, after Apple raised its prices; first published with figures from 25 August 2026. Apple TV’s $14.99 price, the absence of an annual plan, the 7-day trial, the 3-months-free device offer, sharing with up to six people and the $6.99 student plan are exact, read from apple.com/apple-tv-plus and tv.apple.com that day. Both Peacock bundle prices and their no-trial, no-annual terms are exact, from Apple’s own bundle page the same day. Every Apple One tier and component figure is exact, from apple.com/apple-one. Peacock’s Select, Premium and Premium Plus prices are exact, from peacocktv.com the same day. Apple TV’s Prime Video Channels listing was confirmed on Amazon’s own page; its Channels price is deliberately not stated. Promotional rates change; confirm at signup.