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The best available number is $69 a month — and it only covers streaming video.
That figure comes from Deloitte’s 2026 Digital Media Trends report, published 25 March 2026 and based on a survey of 3,575 US consumers aged 14 and over, fielded in October and November 2025. Deloitte’s finding: “The average subscribing household reports spending $69 per month on streaming video services.”
Annualised, that’s $828 a year. And it excludes music, Amazon Prime, cloud storage, news, fitness apps, password managers, and everything else on the card.
What the survey actually found
Four numbers from the same report are worth having in front of you:
- 90% of US households have a paid streaming video service, and subscribers hold an average of four of them
- 68% of streaming subscribers now pay for an ad-supported tier
- 41% cancelled a streaming service in the last six months — and 22% cancelled one and then resubscribed to the same service
- 61% say they’d cancel their favourite service if its price rose by $5 a month
Two caveats matter before you build anything on the $69. It is self-reported — people are estimating from memory, not reading their statements — and it is streaming video only. Neither is a criticism of the research; both are limits on what the number can tell you about your own bill.
So rather than trust the estimate, we priced the stack ourselves.
What each service actually charges
Every price below was read from the company’s own pricing page on 30 September 2026. The annual column is the part that usually goes unexamined.
| Service | Cheapest paid tier | Cost over 12 months | Published annual plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netflix (Standard with ads) | $8.99/mo | $107.88 | monthly only |
| Disney+ (With Ads) | $12.49/mo | $149.88 | — |
| Disney+ & Hulu bundle (With Ads) | $12.99/mo | $155.88 | — |
| HBO Max (Basic With Ads) | $10.99/mo | $131.88 | $109.99 |
| Peacock (Select) | $8.99/mo | $107.88 | $89.99 |
| Paramount+ (from) | $8.99/mo | $107.88 | — |
| Apple TV+ | $14.99/mo | $179.88 | — |
| Spotify (Individual) | $12.99/mo | $155.88 | monthly only |
| Apple Music (Individual) | $11.99/mo | $143.88 | — |
| Amazon Prime | ~$15/mo | — | ~$140 |
Prime is the one approximation in the table. Amazon’s shopping pages can’t be read by automated tools, so we round its prices deliberately and never present them as exact — the reasoning is in our methodology. The rounded figures come from Amazon’s own newsroom.
The top tiers cost considerably more than the cheapest ones: Netflix Premium is $26.99, HBO Max Premium $22.99 ($229.99 a year), Disney+ Premium $21.49 ($214.99 a year), Peacock Premium Plus $19.99 ($199.99 a year).
The stack most people actually have
Take a household with five services — four streamers and music — all on lower-priced tiers, plus Prime:
| Item | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Netflix, Standard with ads | $8.99 | $107.88 |
| Disney+ & Hulu bundle, With Ads | $12.99 | $155.88 |
| HBO Max, Basic With Ads | $10.99 | $131.88 |
| Peacock Premium | $12.99 | $155.88 |
| Spotify Individual | $12.99 | $155.88 |
| Amazon Prime, annual | — | ~$140 |
| Total | ~$71 | ~$847 |
That’s a household nobody would describe as extravagant. No live TV, no sports package, no top tiers, nothing anyone would call a splurge. It costs about $850 a year.
Now run the same five services on their ad-free or top tiers — Netflix Standard at $19.99, the Disney+ and Hulu Premium bundle at $21.99, HBO Max Standard at $18.49, Peacock Premium Plus at $19.99, Spotify at $12.99. That’s $93.45 a month, or $1,121.40 a year, plus Prime at about $140.
Roughly $1,260 a year, against $847 for the same five services with ads. The upgrade costs $414 a year.
That is the single most useful number in this article, because it is a decision you can make this afternoon. $414 a year is what the top tiers cost you — better resolution, more simultaneous streams, and no advertising on the services that put it there. Deloitte found 68% of streaming subscribers are already on an ad-supported tier.
Annual billing is worth about $83 on three of these
Three services in the table publish an annual plan cheaper than twelve monthly payments:
- HBO Max Basic With Ads: $109.99 a year against $131.88 monthly — saves $21.89
- Peacock Select: $89.99 against $107.88 — saves $17.89
- Disney+ Premium: $214.99 against $257.88 — saves $42.89
Together, $82.67 a year for changing nothing about what you watch. Add Prime’s annual plan over its monthly rate, worth roughly $40 on Amazon’s rounded figures, and it’s over $120.
The catch is real, though, and we’ve written about it at length: an annual plan is only a saving if you’d have kept the service for the full year anyway. Otherwise it’s a prepayment on a decision you haven’t made. See annual vs monthly billing for where the break-even actually sits.
YouTube Premium, now confirmed
YouTube Premium belongs in any honest account of what people spend. When this article first ran we couldn’t read its price on any Google-owned page, because youtube.com/premium returns no pricing to automated requests. Read in a browser on 30 September 2026, Google’s own page lists the individual plan at $15.99 a month — $191.88 a year — or $159.99 for twelve months prepaid, and the family plan at $26.99. It’s left out of the stack above so the totals stay comparable with the original version; if you pay for it, add it to yours.
Work out your own number in ten minutes
The average is not your bill. Here’s the arithmetic that is:
- Open your card and bank statements for the last three months, not one. Quarterly and annual charges hide from a single month.
- List every recurring charge with its monthly price. Include the ones you’re certain about — the point is the total, not the surprises.
- Multiply each by 12. This is where the number stops feeling small. A $12.99 service is $155.88 a year.
- Add any annual charges at full value. A $109.99 annual renewal is not $9.17 a month; it’s $109.99 that left your account.
- Compare the total to $828. If you’re well above it, the gap is almost never one expensive service — it’s four cheap ones you’d forgotten were still running.
Step 5 is the one that changes behaviour. Most people can name their two most expensive subscriptions and are wrong about how many they have. Our list of the subscriptions people are most often still paying for is a decent prompt, and the cancellation guide covers the services that make leaving deliberately awkward.
Verdict
Cut the ad-free upgrade first. It’s the largest single line of discretionary spend in a normal stack — $414 a year across four services — and it changes nothing about what you can watch. If you cut one thing this year, cut this.
Downgrade Netflix before you cancel it. Premium is $26.99 against $8.99 for Standard with ads: $216 a year for extra streams and higher resolution. If you watch on one screen, that tier is the clearest overpayment in the table.
Prime is usually the one that survives the audit, because it isn’t only a streaming service — shipping, Prime Video and Amazon Music all sit under one fee of about $140 a year. Whether that holds for you depends entirely on how many orders you place; we work the break-even through in is Amazon Prime worth it.
Who should skip this exercise entirely: anyone paying for two or three services totalling under about $40 a month. You are already well below the average, the realistic saving is $100 or so a year, and an hour spent auditing it is an hour you won’t get back. This article is for the household at $70 a month and climbing, not the one at $35.
And don’t buy a subscription-tracking app to solve this. Three months of statements and a calculator produce the same list, and adding a $6-a-month subscription to manage your subscriptions is a joke the industry has been telling at your expense for years.
Survey figures from Deloitte’s 2026 Digital Media Trends report, published 25 March 2026. All non-Amazon prices re-read from each company’s own pricing pages on 30 September 2026 and exact as of that date; first published with figures from 21 August 2026, since when Disney+ and Apple TV have raised prices. Amazon Prime prices are rounded approximations taken from Amazon’s newsroom, not confirmed on Amazon’s shopping pages. YouTube Premium was read on Google’s own page in a browser. Prices change; check before you subscribe.