It may not be quite as politically buzzy as the price of gasoline or eggs, but another household expense is going up for millions of people. Disney has brought the price-gouging experience of its theme park home again by raising the prices of most iterations and bundles of its Disney+ and Hulu streaming services. Whether you pay to watch them with or without ads, separately or bundled together, you’re probably getting a price hike of a couple of bucks per month.
The few bundles that will remain the same price feature ad-supported versions of both services (plus ESPN). Don’t worry, though; paying extra to avoid the ad-supported versions of those services won’t mean that you’re missing out on some cross-promotional opportunities. Disney’s terms of service note that they reserve the right to insert ads before and after programming on whatever subscription tier they want, regardless of what you’re paying for.
This particular magic isn’t reserved for Disney, though. Price hikes among streaming services have become so common that The Verge has a dedicated page aggregating the news of them, which tends to arrive every few months. Apple, apparently high on Emmy fumes, has raised its prices four times in four years, keeping pace with many of its competitors despite a vastly smaller dedicated catalog.
Depending on which version of Peacock subscribers use, they’ve seen their bills padded by five or six dollars a month just since the summer of 2025, including another increase last month. Netflix, meanwhile, hasn’t gone up since March 2026. That’s not a reprieve; that’s a sign another hike must be around the corner.
Reportedly an estimated 39% of Americans canceled a streaming service in the past six months due to what’s been dubbed “streamflation”. Another survey indicates that a majority of people subscribe to at least three such services, which is consistent with estimates of streaming households spending about $70 per month. Access to the six big streaming services (Netflix, Disney+/Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+, Apple TV, Peacock) will boost that number somewhere in the neighborhood of $120, on top of which subscribers need broadband internet for the services to actually work.
For the total price, you might as well call the whole thing Cable+, in that it’s like your old cable bill, only there’s more of it. No wonder cancellations are rampant. To retain subscribers without putting the screws directly to them, it might be viable for streaming companies to stabilize annual prices – typically a discounted lump-sum payment covering a full year of a service – even when raising monthly costs.
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