What The Tech: Which is cheaper – cable tv or streaming subscriptions?
BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Technology Reporter
Start with Hulu’s Live TV bundle, once under 40 bucks a month, will top $90. YouTube TV is $83 a month.
Disney Plus, launched at just $7 a month in 2019. But Disney just notified its customers it’ll jump to $12.
And Netflix? Its standard plan was $14 a month, today, it’s 18 with the premium tier pushing 25.
How does this compare with cable? Traditional cable still averages over a hundred dollars a month once you add fees and equipment. But if you’re stacking multiple streaming services, like Netflix, Prime, Hulu, or YouTube TV, you’re paying more than what you’d pay for cable.
And even if you only replace cable with a live streaming TV service, it’s still only about $10 less.
So how can you save a couple hundred dollars a year? By staggering subscriptions. Want to see the new Stranger Things series? Pay for Netflix, binge everything, and then pause it and switch to something else.
It’s called churning. And about half of all American subscribers are doing it to save $20-$50 a month.
