As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases, including a fee if you add MUBI through Prime Video Channels using the link here. The links to mubi.com and the Criterion Channel pay us nothing — and the cheapest answer for most readers below is MUBI’s own annual plan, not Amazon.
MUBI costs $14.99 a month or $119.88 a year for its standard plan, which it calls MUBI Classic. MUBI GO, the same streaming service plus one cinema ticket a week, is $19.99 a month or $167.88 a year. Students pay $9.99 a month. All read from MUBI’s own US pages on 31 October 2026, and every plan starts with a free trial — 7 days, or 30 for students.
MUBI is a hand-curated arthouse service. That narrow brief makes the deciding question simple. How many films a month would you actually finish? At one, MUBI costs up to $14.99 a film. At four, it’s $2.50 a film on the annual plan.
The annual plan pays off in eight months
MUBI’s annual discount is bigger than most:
$14.99 × 12 = $179.88 paying monthly.
The annual plan is $119.88 — $9.99 a month.
That’s $60.00 saved, a 33.4% discount. MUBI rounds it to “Save 33%”.
The more useful number is the break-even: $119.88 ÷ $14.99 = 8.0 months. If you’d keep MUBI for eight or more of the next twelve months, annual is cheaper. If you’d keep it for seven or fewer, pay monthly.
That beats the usual “two months free” structure we pick apart in annual vs monthly billing, where break-even sits at ten months — as it does for Shudder’s annual plan. MUBI gives away four months, not two.
There’s a catch in the terms. MUBI’s help centre says plainly that subscriptions are non-refundable. If you prepay $119.88 and stop watching in March, the money is gone.
What each film actually costs you
A subscription price means nothing until you divide it by use. Take the annual plan at $9.99 a month and the monthly plan at $14.99:
| Films you finish a month | Annual ($9.99/mo) | Monthly ($14.99) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $9.99 a film | $14.99 a film |
| 2 | $5.00 | $7.50 |
| 4 | $2.50 | $3.75 |
| 8 | $1.25 | $1.87 |
Count honestly: arthouse films are easy to add to a watchlist and easy to skip. If last month’s real number was one, the top row is your price.
MUBI’s catalogue also rotates: films are flagged when they’re leaving within 14 days, so one you’re saving for later may not be there.
MUBI GO: $5 a month for a weekly cinema ticket
MUBI GO is the plan that makes MUBI unusual. Its help pages describe one free ticket each week to that week’s hand-picked “Film of the Week” at a partner cinema, claimed in the MUBI GO app on the day you go.
The upgrade costs:
Monthly: $19.99 − $14.99 = $5.00 a month, or $60 a year.
Annual: $167.88 − $119.88 = $48.00 a year, or $4 a month.
The arithmetic is simple. If a ticket at your local partner cinema costs more than $5, one use a month pays for the monthly upgrade. On the annual plan, divide $48 by your local ticket price. At an illustrative $15 a ticket — check your own cinema’s — that’s 3.2 films a year, so four trips covers it. Every week would be up to 52 tickets.
Now the restrictions, all from MUBI’s fine print:
- Twelve US cities only: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. Anywhere else, GO is $5 a month for nothing.
- One film, chosen for you. The ticket is for the Film of the Week only, one screening per Friday-to-Thursday window. You don’t pick the film.
- Same-day only. Tickets can’t be booked in advance, and the QR code isn’t a reservation. A sold-out screening means picking another showtime.
- No premieres, Q&As or premium-priced screenings, and it can’t be combined with other discounts.
- Students can’t get GO on the student plan. It means upgrading to the full $19.99 GO plan.
So GO suits someone in those cities who’d see a film they didn’t choose about once a month. If you only want specific films, the weekly pick will often miss.
GO’s own annual plan saves $72.00 (30%) against $239.88 paid monthly, and breaks even at 8.4 months.
The student plan costs the same as annual
The student plan is $9.99 a month, and $9.99 is exactly what the Classic annual plan works out at monthly. Over a full year:
Student, monthly: $9.99 × 12 = $119.88
Classic, annual: $119.88
Identical. The student plan’s real advantages are the 30-day trial and the freedom to stop: a student who watches during term and cancels for three summer months pays $89.91 for nine months instead of $119.88 up front. If you’re eligible and you’d ever take a break, the student plan is the better buy. If you’d stay all year, it makes no difference.
Pausing instead of paying for empty months
MUBI lets you pause for one or three months from your subscription settings, per its help centre. The pause starts at the end of your current billing period, and the subscription resumes and charges you automatically when the pause ends.
That changes the monthly-plan maths. Someone who watches six months a year and pauses the rest pays:
$14.99 × 6 = $89.94 — $29.94 less than the annual plan.
The risk is the automatic restart — the same trap as a trial that converts, covered in how free trials catch you out. Diary the restart date the day you pause.
MUBI or the Criterion Channel?
The obvious alternative for the same viewer is the Criterion Channel, whose plan picker showed $10.99 a month or $99.99 a year on 31 October 2026.
| MUBI Classic | Criterion Channel | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $14.99 | $10.99 | $4.00 a month |
| Paid monthly for a year | $179.88 | $131.88 | $48.00 |
| Annual | $119.88 | $99.99 | $19.89 a year |
| Annual break-even | 8.0 months | 9.1 months | — |
Criterion is cheaper at every row, though MUBI’s annual plan narrows the gap to under $20 a year. Which library suits you is taste, which pricing pages can’t answer. If you only want one, MUBI’s 7-day trial is a cheap way to find out whether its selection suits you before paying for either.
Subscribing through Amazon instead
MUBI is carried as a Prime Video Channel, which we confirmed on Amazon’s own site on 31 October 2026, with a free trial offered there. Channels puts the charge and the cancel button on your Amazon account — see our list of Prime Video Channels worth paying for.
We haven’t confirmed MUBI’s price through Channels and won’t quote one we haven’t read on Amazon’s page. Three points hold either way. Channels needs an active Prime membership, roughly $140 a year if you don’t already pay for it. Channels bills monthly as far as we’ve been able to see, so assume MUBI’s $119.88 annual plan isn’t available that way. And nothing on MUBI’s help pages suggests GO’s cinema tickets come with the Amazon channel — GO is described as a MUBI GO membership. As we set out in Channels vs subscribing direct, that’s a fair trade for a month or two and a poor one for a year-round habit.
The verdict
Skip MUBI if you finish fewer than two films a month. At one film a month you’re paying $10 to $15 a film from a rotating catalogue, so check whether renting the one film you wanted costs less.
Don’t buy MUBI GO if you live outside its twelve US cities, or only want to see films you’ve chosen yourself. Either way the $5 a month buys nothing most weeks.
Don’t prepay the annual plan if you’d watch fewer than eight months. It’s non-refundable, and a monthly plan with a three-month pause is cheaper for a seasonal viewer.
Buy the annual Classic plan if you’d watch two or more films a month, most months. At $119.88 that’s $5 a film or less, and the eight-month break-even is one of the easier ones on this site.
Upgrade to GO if you’re in one of the twelve cities and would see the Film of the Week once a month. One ticket covers the monthly difference.
Students: take the $9.99 plan. It costs the same as annual over a year and lets you stop for the summer.
Verified 31 October 2026. MUBI’s $14.99 and $119.88 Classic prices, $19.99 and $167.88 GO prices, $9.99 student price and the 7-day and 30-day trials were read from MUBI’s own US pages (mubi.com/en/us/memberships, /go and /student) on that date. MUBI GO cities and rules, the pause option, the no-refund policy and the 14-day leaving notice are from help.mubi.com the same day. The Criterion Channel’s $10.99 and $99.99 were read from criterionchannel.com/subscribe the same day. MUBI’s availability on Prime Video Channels was checked on amazon.com the same day; its price there is unconfirmed. The Prime figure is approximate. The $15 ticket price is an illustration, not a quoted price. Confirm every number at signup.