- The ideal cost of a streaming subscription for US consumers is $12, a Morning Consult survey found.
- The survey found that the price deemed acceptable by consumers is $11 to $16 per month.
- The standard Netflix plan is $15.50, making it the most expensive plan among the major platforms.
The ideal
streaming
-subscription price among US consumers is less than the price of
Netflix
.
A new survey from data-insights company Morning Consult, published on Wednesday, found that $12 per month is the preferred price point for ad-free streaming platforms that offer unlimited access to their content libraries. $10 per month is the ideal cost for an ad-supported service, the survey also found.
Morning Consult surveyed 2,210 US adults from January 28 to January 31, and determined the optimum pricing for streaming services by asking what prices respondents thought were “too expensive” or “too good to be true.”
The desired prices didn’t budge from a similar January 2019 survey. And, since then, a slew of of streamers from media companies like Disney and WarnerMedia have launched.
But the respondents in the 2022 survey also said that the acceptable price range for an ad-free plan was $11 to $16, which gives the major services in the space some wiggle room (some more than others).
Netflix is the priciest of the major US streamers, at $15.50 per month for a standard plan
Netflix recently raised the price of its most popular plan in the US, the standard plan, to $15.50 per month, up from $14 per month (the basic, non-HD plan also rose from $9 to $10). It’s now the most expensive plan of the major platforms, but Netflix has the most original content.
Netflix’s growth has slowed recently. It added 8.3 million subscribers in Q4 2021, slightly below projections, sending the stock tumbling last month. Its subscriber miss has spooked Wall Street. When the company Paramount, formerly ViacomCBS, laid out its streaming plans last week, its stock took a dive.
Netflix is still far ahead of its rivals, with 222 million subscribers worldwide, 75 million of which are in North America. But other companies have seen progress. Disney+ ended 2021 with 130 million subscribers;
HBO Max
and HBO have a combined 73.8 million subscribers; and Paramount+, which was rebranded and expanded from CBS All Access last year, has 32.8 million subscribers.
Here are how the per-month prices of the major streaming platforms compare in the US:
- Apple TV+: $4.99
- Disney+: $7.99
- Amazon Prime Video: $8.99 ($14.99 for full Prime membership)
- Paramount+: $9.99 ($4.99 for ad-supported version)
- Peacock Premium Plus (ad-free, with all content unlocked): $9.99 ($4.99 for ad-supported Peacock Premium)
- Hulu: $12.99 ($6.99 for ad-supported version)
- HBO Max: $14.99 ($9.99 for ad-supported version)
- Netflix: $15.50 (standard plan)
Some of these services can be bundled together. The Disney streaming bundle, which includes Disney+ and
Hulu
along with ESPN+, costs $13.99 per month. Paramount+ subscribers will soon be able to upgrade their subscriptions to an in-app bundle with Showtime that will cost $14.99 a month for the ad-free plan —the same price as HBO Max — or $11.99 for the ad-supported version.
