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Streaming prices move — but “everything went up again this year” is a line that gets repeated without anyone checking it. We have no primary source for a category-wide increase, so we won’t assert one. Every figure here is read off the company’s own site and dated.
What our checks show: between 10 August and 30 September 2026, Netflix and HBO Max did not change a single tier. Hulu did, and this time there’s a date on it — Hulu’s own help centre lists new prices for new subscribers from 23 September 2026, with existing subscribers moving from 21 October.
So the useful question isn’t which service is best. It’s which one you should keep, because keeping all three is a genuinely expensive line item.
What all three cost right now
| Service | With ads | Ad-free | Top tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netflix | $8.99 | $19.99 (Standard) | $26.99 (Premium, 4K) |
| Hulu | $12.49 | $21.49 | — |
| HBO Max | $10.99 | $18.49 | $22.99 (Premium) |
| Disney+ / Hulu / ESPN Select bundle | $21.99 | $32.99 | — |
Verified 30 September 2026 — Netflix from its own help centre, HBO Max from hbomax.com, Hulu and the bundle from Hulu’s own help-centre price list. Netflix and HBO Max match our August check exactly. Hulu’s standalone prices rose from $11.99 and $18.99 on 23 September; the ESPN Select bundle didn’t change.
Add it up:
- All three, ad-free: $19.99 + $18.49 + $32.99 = $71.47/month — $857.64 a year
- All three, with ads: $8.99 + $10.99 + $21.99 = $41.97/month — $503.64 a year
(The third figure is the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN Select bundle rather than Hulu alone, because that’s how most people end up holding Hulu. Its price didn’t move on 23 September, so neither total did. Hulu on its own is $12.49 with ads.)
For context, $858 a year is more than the cable packages people cancelled streaming to escape. If your household is paying anything close to that, the rest of this page is worth ten minutes.
The two upgrade decisions that cost the most
Before picking a service, get these two right — they’re worth more money than the choice between platforms.
Ads vs no ads on Netflix: $11/month. Going from Standard with Ads ($8.99) to Standard ($19.99) costs $132 a year. That’s the single largest optional charge in streaming. Whether it’s worth it comes down to how many hours you actually watch. If you watch a couple of hours a week, you’re paying over a dollar per hour to skip commercials. If the TV is on every night, the math is much friendlier. Nobody can answer this for you, but almost nobody actually does the arithmetic — and it is the biggest lever on the page.
4K on Netflix: $7/month more. Premium at $26.99 is the only Netflix tier with 4K. That’s $84 a year for resolution that, on most screens at most viewing distances, most people can’t reliably distinguish from 1080p. If you have a large, genuinely 4K TV and you sit close to it, it’s real. On a laptop, phone, or a mid-size living room set, you are paying $84 a year for a spec sheet.
Get both of these right and you can cut your streaming bill by more than switching services ever would.
Buying one as a gift? Amazon sells prepaid gift cards for Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max. These are store credit, not a subscription — useful for giving someone a few months without handing over card details, but not the way to sign up yourself.
What each service is actually for
Prices are close enough that catalog fit decides it:
Netflix — breadth and the cultural default. The largest general catalog and the service most likely to have the thing someone mentions to you. It’s also the most expensive way to be ad-free at $19.99. Keep it if it’s the one that gets opened by default when nobody has a specific plan. It’s the hardest to cancel without noticing, which is exactly why it’s worth questioning.
Hulu — current-season TV and the bundle. Hulu’s real strength is next-day network television, which is a genuinely different product from Netflix’s originals-first catalog. At $12.49 with ads it is now the most expensive ad tier of the three, above Netflix at $8.99 and HBO Max at $10.99 — if you’re carrying an older, cheaper Hulu number in your head, check it. Structure matters more than the headline price here. Disney pushes you toward the $21.99 Disney+/Hulu/ESPN Select bundle, a $9.50/month upsell if you only wanted Hulu. But the sharper catch runs the other way: the Disney+ & Hulu bundle is $12.99, just 50 cents more than Hulu alone, which makes the monthly standalone plan close to pointless. Hulu does now sell an annual plan for the ad tier at $124.99. Full arithmetic in is Hulu worth it on its own.
HBO Max — the highest hit rate, the smallest catalog. (It was called just “Max” from 2023 until July 2025, when Warner Bros. Discovery reverted to the HBO name.) HBO Max has the strongest prestige library of the three and the most consistent quality per title, but far less of it. It’s the best service to subscribe to for something specific and the worst to keep running in the background. HBO Max’s tiers are unchanged from our August check, and it sells an annual plan on every tier — $109.99 a year against $131.88 paid monthly on the ad tier, a saving of about 16%. Hulu now offers one too, on its ad tier only; Netflix offers none. We go deeper on the tiers and when to subscribe in is HBO Max worth it.
The rotation strategy
Here’s the thing the pricing tables above make obvious: these services are month-to-month, and nothing about them requires continuity.
Instead of paying $71/month for three services you use unevenly, subscribe to one at a time and rotate when you run out of things you want to watch. Four months of each, ad-free the whole way:
| Block | Service | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 4 months | HBO Max ad-free @ $18.49 | $73.96 |
| 4 months | Netflix Standard @ $19.99 | $79.96 |
| 4 months | Disney+/Hulu/ESPN ad-free @ $32.99 | $131.96 |
| Annual total | $285.88 |
That’s about $24/month against $71 — a saving of roughly $570 a year for a change in habit, not a change in what you watch. You still see everything; you just see it sequentially instead of simultaneously. Prestige TV does not expire.
Three things make this work in practice:
- Cancel immediately on signup. Every one of these lets you cancel and keep access until the end of the paid period. Cancel the day you subscribe and you get the full month with zero risk of forgetting.
- Keep a list. When you hear about a show, write down which service it’s on. When one service’s list hits three or four items, that’s the month to subscribe.
- Rotate on binge, not on calendar. Don’t switch monthly out of discipline. Switch when you’ve watched what you came for.
Prime Video Channels makes rotation much easier
The practical obstacle to rotating is admin: three logins, three billing relationships, three cancellation flows, and card details to re-enter every time you come back.
Prime Video Channels removes most of that. HBO Max, Paramount+, Starz, AMC+, Discovery+ and 100+ others can be subscribed to as add-ons inside Prime Video, billed through your Amazon account. That means one place to subscribe, one place to cancel, no re-entering payment details, and everything appears in a single list under Memberships & Subscriptions.
For a rotation strategy this is a genuine advantage — the reason people stop rotating is friction, and Channels removes the friction. It also means these subscriptions show up somewhere you’ll actually see them, rather than scattered across four billing systems.
Three honest caveats:
- It requires a Prime membership, so it only makes sense if you have one already. Don’t buy Prime to save admin on streaming.
- Netflix and Hulu are not available this way. Netflix has never sold through Channels, and Hulu is Disney-owned and sold direct. So Channels can consolidate part of your streaming, not all of it.
- Check the price matches. Channel add-on pricing usually mirrors the direct price, but compare before subscribing — the convenience isn’t worth a premium.
The main argument against rotation is household friction — it’s harder if four people want four different things on four different nights. If that’s you, pick two and drop the third rather than trying to rotate. Even two ad-free is $38/month against $71.
The verdict
If you keep exactly one: Netflix, on the ad tier at $8.99. It’s the broadest catalog and the cheapest way to have a general-purpose streaming service that usually has what someone’s talking about.
If you keep two: Netflix plus HBO Max. The catalogs overlap the least — general breadth plus prestige depth — and you skip the bundle upsell entirely. If you already have Prime, adding HBO Max through Prime Video Channels keeps it in the same billing list as everything else, which makes it far easier to cancel when you’ve finished what you came for.
If you’re a sports household: the $21.99 Disney+/Hulu/ESPN Select bundle does more work than any single subscription on this page. Look at bundles before standalone services; that’s increasingly where the value is.
If you’re currently paying for all three ad-free: you’re spending $858 a year. Start by dropping to ad tiers ($504) or rotating ($286). Either is a bigger win than switching services.
And check whether you’re already paying for a fourth without realizing — Prime Video comes bundled with an Amazon membership many people forget they have, and now shows ads unless you pay roughly another $5 a month. We break that down in is Amazon Prime worth it. If you’re not sure what you’re subscribed to at all, start with the 30-minute subscription audit.
Prices re-verified 30 September 2026 at each company’s own site. Hulu’s standalone prices rose for new subscribers on 23 September 2026, per Hulu’s own help centre, and are updated here; the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN Select bundle, Netflix and HBO Max are unchanged, so every total on this page still holds. Confirm the current rate with the provider before you subscribe.