As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases, including a fee if you add a channel through a link here — including the Apple TV channel link, on the one entry where we conclude Amazon is the better buy. The links to HBO Max, Paramount+, Starz, AMC+, Peacock and Apple’s own sites pay us nothing — and for most of the year, going to them directly is the cheaper answer. See our methodology.
You can subscribe to HBO Max, Paramount+, Starz, AMC+, Peacock and a hundred other services in two places: through Prime Video Channels, billed by Amazon, or on the service’s own site.
The monthly price is the same either way. That’s why the comparison looks like a tie, and why so many people get it wrong — because the monthly price isn’t the only price on offer. Every one of these services sells an annual plan on its own site, and Channels doesn’t sell annual anything.
The gap, in numbers
Channels bills monthly. So the real comparison is twelve monthly payments against one annual payment, and every figure below came off the companies’ own pricing pages on 18 August 2026:
| Service (tier) | Monthly | ×12 through Channels | Annual, direct | You save |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starz | $11.99 | $143.88 | $69.99 | $73.89 |
| HBO Max Premium | $22.99 | $275.88 | $229.99 | $45.89 |
| HBO Max Standard | $18.49 | $221.88 | $184.99 | $36.89 |
| Paramount+ Premium | $13.99 | $167.88 | $139.99 | $27.89 |
| Peacock Premium Plus | $12.99 | $155.88 | $129.99 | $25.89 |
| HBO Max Basic With Ads | $10.99 | $131.88 | $109.99 | $21.89 |
| AMC+ Premium | $10.99 | $131.88 | $109.99 | $21.89 |
| Paramount+ Essential | $8.99 | $107.88 | $89.99 | $17.89 |
| Apple TV | $12.99 | $155.88 | no annual plan | $0 |
Everything except Starz clusters at almost exactly 16.6% off — the two-months-free convention that runs across the whole industry, which we break down in annual vs monthly billing.
Starz is the outlier and it isn’t close. Its own site advertises the annual plan as 51% off, and the arithmetic backs that up: $69.99 a year against $143.88 in monthly payments. Buying Starz through Amazon for a full year costs more than double buying it from Starz.
Run three services all year and the gap compounds. HBO Max Standard, Paramount+ Premium and Starz through Channels: $221.88 + $167.88 + $143.88 = $533.64. The same three on annual plans direct: $184.99 + $139.99 + $69.99 = $394.97. That’s $138.67 a year for identical access.
Do the check on yourself: count the months
Here’s the calculation that actually decides this, and it takes ten seconds.
A 16.6% annual discount pays for itself at ten months. Ten monthly payments cost more than one annual payment, so if you’ll keep the service for ten months or longer, annual wins. Under ten months, monthly wins — and Channels is monthly.
Starz moves that line a long way: $69.99 ÷ $11.99 = 5.84 months. Keep Starz for six months or more and the annual plan is already cheaper, even if you never open the app again.
So the question isn’t “Amazon or direct.” It’s “how many months will I actually keep this?” Answer that honestly and the rest follows:
- Ten-plus months (six for Starz) → buy direct, on the annual plan.
- Under that → Channels, and cancel when you’re done.
- You genuinely don’t know → Channels, because a wrong guess on annual costs you the whole unused remainder, and a wrong guess on monthly costs you one month.
That last case is more common than people admit at the checkout screen. Annual plans are sold at the exact moment you’re most optimistic about a subscription.
What Channels is actually selling
Not price. Friction — and less of it than anything else in streaming.
- One cancellation flow, in the same place for every channel, with no retention offers in the way.
- One list. Everything under Account → Memberships & Subscriptions, instead of scattered across six billing systems where forgotten subscriptions survive.
- No re-entering card details to come back. That’s the reason people don’t resubscribe after cancelling, and therefore the reason they never cancel in the first place.
- No extra apps. Amazon’s newsroom page on Channels makes the same point, and adds that you don’t need Prime to use them — anyone with an Amazon account can subscribe.
If you rotate — one service at a time, cancelled when the show ends — Channels is the better product and the price difference never arises, because you were never going to pay for twelve months. That strategy is the backbone of our guide to which channels are worth adding, and it’s worth far more than the 16.6% you’re giving up.
The reverse is also true, and it’s the trap: Channels makes it easy to keep paying, because one Amazon bill hides five subscriptions inside it. If your “rotation” has quietly become a permanent stack of channels, you’ve bought the convenience and paid the annual-plan premium for nothing. That’s exactly the pattern we go looking for in a subscription audit.
Where the published prices disagree
Two things worth flagging, because they change what you should trust.
Amazon’s own numbers don’t match the services’ own numbers. Amazon’s newsroom explainer on Channels lists Paramount+ Essential at about $8 and AMC+ from about $7 — we round Amazon figures deliberately, for reasons we explain. Paramount’s own site says $8.99 for Essential today, and AMC+’s says $7.99 for its ad tier. Newsroom posts are announcements, not live price lists, and they go stale. Take the service’s own page as authoritative.
AMC+ contradicts itself. Its homepage carries two plan modules with different figures — one showing $10.99 a month or $109.99 a year, another showing $8.99 and $6.99 tiers. We’ve used the first set, which is the one on the current “Find Your Plan” panel, but check the price on the checkout screen before you commit. Our full breakdown is in is AMC+ worth it.
And one thing we could not fully confirm: that no channel anywhere in the Amazon catalogue offers annual billing. Amazon’s storefront listed monthly rates only when we read it, and its newsroom page quotes monthly prices exclusively — but most of Amazon’s shopping pages don’t render for us at all, so treat “Channels is monthly-only” as strongly indicated rather than proven. If you see an annual option at signup, take it.
Where Channels isn’t the expensive choice
Three cases where the gap closes to nothing:
Apple TV has no annual plan — $12.99 a month is $12.99 a month wherever you buy it. Channels costs the same and cancels more easily. Straightforward win for Amazon.
Bundles run both ways. Apple sells Apple TV with Peacock Premium Plus for $19.99 a month, confirmed on Apple’s own page, and Amazon’s newsroom announced the same bundle on Prime Video at about $20 — with a discounted rate of roughly $17 showing on the storefront when we looked. Amazon prices are approximate here by policy, but a Channels bundle that beats buying the two separately is real.
Some bundles only exist direct. HBO Max sells itself packaged with Disney+ and Hulu for $19.99 a month with ads or $32.99 ad-free — $9 more than HBO Max alone for two extra services. Nothing on Amazon’s storefront matched it. If a bundle is what you want, the service’s own site is where to look.
The verdict
Rotating one or two services at a time? Use Prime Video Channels. The cancellation flow is worth more than 16.6%, and you’ll never reach the break-even month anyway.
Keeping something all year? Buy it from the service. Starz is the extreme case at $69.99 a year against $143.88 monthly — if you’re a year-round Starz subscriber, buying it through Amazon is the single most expensive mistake on this page, and it’s worth reading whether Starz earns a full year at all before you commit to one. Paramount+ at $139.99 for Premium and Peacock at $129.99 for Premium Plus are the same argument in smaller numbers.
Watching one show? Channels, and cancel the day you finish. Also check whether HBO Max is worth it at all first — the cheapest version of this decision is not making it.
Don’t use Channels if you’ve had the same three services for over a year and have no intention of cancelling any of them. You are paying a convenience premium for a cancellation button you don’t press — around $139 a year on the three-service example above. Move those to annual plans direct, or accept that you’re paying $139 for tidier billing and say so out loud.
And don’t buy an annual plan on a service you started this month. You don’t have enough information yet. Pay monthly through Channels for a few months, see whether you still open it, and buy the year when the answer is obvious.
Verified 18 August 2026. HBO Max, Paramount+, Starz, AMC+, Peacock and Apple TV prices were read from those companies’ own pricing pages on that date and are exact. Figures attributed to Amazon are rounded and approximate: Amazon requires exact prices to come from its API with a timestamp, and most of its pages can’t be read by us to check. Where we couldn’t verify something at source — including whether any Channels subscription offers annual billing — we say so above rather than presenting it as fact.