As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases — the HBO Max and Apple TV links in the “making it stick” section, and the Prime Video Channels link beside them, go through Amazon and can earn us a fee. Every other link goes direct to the company, including the HBO Max and Apple TV links where we cite their prices, and pays us nothing. Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+ earn us nothing in this article. See our methodology.
Holding six ad-free streaming subscriptions all year costs $1,313.28. Holding the same six one at a time, two months each, costs $218.88. You see the same shows. You just see them in an order.
The question that decides whether this works for you isn’t which services you like. It’s whether your household can live with watching one service’s catalogue at a time — and whether you’ll actually cancel on schedule.
Every price below was read today, 2 November 2026, from each company’s own pricing or help page.
The six services and what they cost
These are the ad-free monthly prices, because ad-free is where holding everything gets expensive. Disney+ and Hulu appear as one row: Disney’s own price list sells the two together without ads for $21.99, against $21.49 for either one alone, so buying them separately makes no sense for a rotation.
| Service | Ad-free monthly | Annual plan | Held all year, monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netflix Standard | $19.99 | none | $239.88 |
| Disney+ and Hulu bundle, no ads (Disney+, Hulu) | $21.99 | none for the bundle | $263.88 |
| HBO Max Standard | $18.49 | $184.99 | $221.88 |
| Apple TV | $14.99 | — | $179.88 |
| Peacock Premium Plus | $19.99 | $199.99 | $239.88 |
| Paramount+ Premium | $13.99 | — | $167.88 |
| Total | $109.44 | $1,313.28 |
All prices read 2 November 2026 from the linked pages. Apple TV is $14.99 after a 7-day trial for new subscribers. Disney+ and Hulu’s prices apply to new subscriptions from 23 September 2026; existing subscribers move to them from 21 October. A dash means we didn’t find an annual price on the page we read.
That $1,313.28 is close to the stack we priced in streaming prices 2020 vs 2026, where the same services held ad-free came to $1,397 a year with Disney+ and Hulu bought separately.
The schedule: one service, two months, six times
Six services into twelve months gives each one two months. Here is a calendar for a household that watches the NFL, because football is the one thing on this list with fixed dates — the regular season runs from September into early January.
| Months | Service | Two-month cost |
|---|---|---|
| Sep–Oct | Peacock Premium Plus | $39.98 |
| Nov–Dec | Paramount+ Premium | $27.98 |
| Jan–Feb | Netflix Standard | $39.98 |
| Mar–Apr | HBO Max Standard | $36.98 |
| May–Jun | Disney+ and Hulu, no ads | $43.98 |
| Jul–Aug | Apple TV | $29.98 |
| Year | $218.88 |
The arithmetic: $109.44 a month for all six, times two months each, is $218.88. Against $1,313.28 for holding everything, that’s $1,094.40 saved — 83%.
The football months are there because those two services carry NFL games, which our football streaming guide maps game by game: Sunday Night Football on Peacock, CBS games on Paramount+. If you don’t watch football, the order of the other rows is arbitrary. Put each service where your own watchlist puts it.
One football refinement. Peacock’s own price page says Premium Plus is ad-free with limited exceptions, and that ads remain in live sports. If Peacock is in your rotation for Sunday nights, Premium at $12.99 gets you the same games with the same ads, and drops the year to $204.88.
How to build your own
The method fits on an index card:
- List what you actually want to watch, and next to each title write the service it’s on. Ignore anything you’d only watch because it’s there.
- Count months per service, not shows. Two films and a ten-episode season is about one month for most people.
- Multiply each service’s months by its price and add them up. That’s your rotation cost. Compare it with the “held all year” column above for the same services.
- Order the slots around anything with a date — a sport, a final season you’ve been waiting for — and fill the rest in any order.
If your counts come out uneven, that’s fine. Three months of HBO Max and one of Apple TV is still twelve months of one-at-a-time.
Two-at-a-time, if one service is non-negotiable
Plenty of households have one service someone watches every week. Keep that one all year and rotate the rest through a second slot. With Netflix as the anchor:
- Netflix, twelve months: $239.88
- Second slot: Disney+/Hulu three months ($65.97), HBO Max three ($55.47), Apple TV two ($29.98), Peacock Premium Plus two ($39.98), Paramount+ two ($27.98)
- Year: $459.26 — about $38.27 a month
That is more than double the one-at-a-time schedule, and still $854.02 less than holding everything. For most households it’s the realistic version.
Why the annual plans don’t fit a rotation
Three of these services sell a yearly plan, and each one is priced the same way: about ten months’ money for twelve months. HBO Max Standard is $184.99 a year against $18.49 a month; Disney+ Premium $214.99 against $21.49; Peacock Premium Plus $199.99 against $19.99. Divide each annual price by its monthly price and you get 10.0 months, every time.
So an annual plan only wins if you’d otherwise hold that service for more than ten months. In a rotation you hold it for two. Two months of HBO Max is $36.98; the annual plan is $184.99 for the same two months of watching. Our annual vs monthly billing guide covers the general rule; for rotating streamers the answer is simply no.
What it costs when you forget to cancel
Rotation fails at one point: the handoff. If you forget to cancel the outgoing service every single time and pay one extra month at each of the six switches, you add about one month of the full stack — $109.44 — and the year becomes $328.32. That is still a quarter of holding everything, which is the honest reason this is worth trying even if you’re not organised.
Two habits close most of that gap:
- Cancel on the day you subscribe. Netflix’s own help centre says that if you cancel with time left in your billing period, you can keep using it until the period ends. We read that wording today; we didn’t check every service’s equivalent, so confirm on the cancellation page before relying on it elsewhere.
- Keep your watchlist with the dates on it. A list that says “HBO Max: March” is the reminder.
Making it stick: put the channels in one place
Re-entering card details six times a year is the friction that makes people give up. Amazon’s Prime Video Channels lets Prime members add some of these services to their Amazon account and cancel them from one list. HBO Max and Apple TV are both sold this way. Netflix isn’t sold through Channels, and Disney+ and Hulu aren’t among the channels we’ve been able to confirm there, so those slots stay direct.
Channels requires Prime, so it only helps if you already pay for it — don’t buy Prime to save a few logins. Whether a given channel costs the same as going direct is a separate question, which we work through in Prime Video Channels vs subscribing direct.
One more option for the Apple TV slot: Apple’s own page advertises an Apple TV and Peacock bundle, saying “Plans start at $17.99/month.” The page we read didn’t say which Peacock tier that starting price includes, so check before counting it as a saving.
Verdict
Rotate if your household watches one or two services in any given month anyway and the rest sit idle. That describes most people paying for five or six. The one-at-a-time schedule turns $1,313.28 into $218.88; even the forgetful version lands at $328.32.
Don’t rotate if several people in the house watch different services every week. A rotation that leaves someone without their show for ten months will be abandoned by March, and you’ll be back to paying for everything plus the admin. Pick the two that get used and drop the rest — the two-slot schedule above at $459.26 is the realistic ceiling.
Don’t buy an annual plan for anything you rotate. At ten months’ money for twelve months, it costs more than the rotation it’s meant to save on.
If you’re starting from three services rather than six, the shorter version is in Netflix vs Hulu vs HBO Max.
Prices for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV, Peacock and Paramount+ were read from each company’s own US pricing or help page on 2 November 2026 and are exact, before tax. Confirm the current rate with the provider before you subscribe.