Netflix Just Raised Prices Again: Here Are the Alternatives That Actually Save Money

What Netflix Changed and What It Costs Now

On March 26, 2026, Netflix increased prices across every US plan tier. No one was spared. Here is what happened:

The Standard plan. The one most US households are on. Now costs $239.88/year. That is almost $240 for a single streaming service. Two years ago it was $185.88. Netflix has raised US prices eight times since 2014, and the Standard plan has climbed from $8.99 to $19.99. A 122% cumulative increase over twelve years.

According to CNBC, Netflix framed the hike as necessary to fund its expanding content pipeline, which now exceeds $17 billion annually. That investment shows in the output, Netflix released over 1,500 hours of original content in the past twelve months alone. Whether that volume justifies a $20/month price tag is a different question, and one that only your own viewing habits can answer.

For a broader look at how every major service has raised prices recently, our streaming price comparison tracks the full picture across all platforms.

Netflix vs. Alternatives: Full Price Breakdown

At $19.99/month for the Standard plan, Netflix is now the most expensive mainstream streaming service without a premium HBO/Max-style brand justification. Here is how the field looks right now:

*Amazon Prime Video standalone price; if you already have Prime membership ($14.99/mo), video is included. Some ads were introduced in early 2025 for the base tier.

Netflix's ad-free Standard at $19.99 now costs more than Hulu (no ads), Max (no ads), Disney+ (no ads), and Apple TV+. Each of which runs between $9.99 and $18.99. The gap is not enormous on any single comparison, but it adds up when you are stacking three or four services.

Ways to Keep Netflix Without Paying Full Price

If you are not ready to cancel Netflix entirely — and honestly, most people are not. There are a few ways to reduce what you pay.

Shared Family Plan Slots

Netflix's password-sharing crackdown killed the old "borrow your cousin's login" approach. But legitimate shared plans still work. GamsGo connects you with an existing Netflix family plan holder and assigns you your own dedicated profile. You get full ad-free access on a Standard or Premium plan at roughly $3-4/month, compared to paying $19.99 or $26.99 directly.

The savings are substantial: about $192/year if you are coming from the Standard plan. The trade-off is that you are sharing a plan with people you do not know, and if the plan holder cancels or changes their subscription, you need to be reassigned. GamsGo handles that reassignment, but there can be brief gaps. For most casual-to-moderate Netflix viewers, the minor inconvenience is worth saving roughly $16/month.

Use promo code WK2NU for a discount on your first GamsGo order.

T-Mobile and Carrier Bundles

T-Mobile's Go5G Plus plan ($90/month for a single line) includes Netflix Standard with ads at no additional cost. If you are already on T-Mobile or were considering switching carriers, this effectively makes Netflix free. Verizon's myPlan also offers Netflix and Max as optional add-ons for $10/month combined. A meaningful discount versus subscribing to both separately.

The catch: these bundles only make financial sense if the carrier plan itself is competitively priced for your usage. Switching carriers to save $9/month on Netflix while paying $15/month more for your phone plan is not actually saving money.

Downgrade to the Ad Tier

Netflix's ad-supported plan at $8.99/month is still less than half the Standard plan price. The ad load is roughly 4-5 minutes per hour. Tolerable for most viewers, though noticeably more than it was at launch. You lose the ability to download content for offline viewing, and video quality maxes out at 1080p. If you watch primarily on a phone or laptop and do not care about 4K, this is the most straightforward way to cut your bill in half without leaving Netflix at all.

For more on how the password-sharing crackdown changed the economics of sharing accounts, our password sharing survival guide covers what still works and what does not.

Alternatives Worth Considering

If you have decided Netflix is not worth $20/month. Or you want to try canceling for a few months to see if you miss it, here are the services that fill the most overlap.

Hulu. $9.99/Month (with Ads)

Hulu's biggest advantage over Netflix is next-day access to current-season broadcast TV shows from ABC, NBC, Fox, and FX. If you follow shows as they air rather than waiting for full-season drops, Hulu is genuinely more useful than Netflix for that use case. The library also includes a strong film catalog and Hulu originals like The Bear, Only Murders in the Building, and Shogun. At $9.99/month with ads, it is half the price of Netflix Standard.

The downside: Hulu's interface is noticeably worse than Netflix's, and the ad experience on the cheaper tier is more aggressive, around 8-10 minutes of ads per hour on some content. The no-ads plan at $18.99 closes the price gap with Netflix considerably.

Peacock Premium. $7.99/Month

Peacock quietly built one of the larger streaming libraries, roughly 80,000 titles. At one of the lower prices in the market. It carries NBC originals, Bravo reality shows, live Premier League soccer, WWE content, and Universal films. The content skews toward comfort viewing and reality TV rather than prestige originals, but there is an enormous amount of it.

Amazon Prime Video. $8.99/Month (Standalone)

If you already have an Amazon Prime membership for shipping, Prime Video is included at no extra cost. The standalone video plan at $8.99/month includes Thursday Night Football, a growing slate of originals (Reacher, The Boys, Fallout), and a decent catalog of licensed content. Amazon introduced ads to the base tier in early 2025. You can remove them for an additional $2.99/month.

The Disney Bundle, $16.99/Month

Disney's trio bundle (Disney+, Hulu with ads, and ESPN+) at $16.99/month gives you three services for less than Netflix Standard alone. If you have kids, follow any Disney/Marvel/Star Wars content, and want Hulu's broadcast TV catalog, this bundle is genuinely hard to argue against on a value-per-dollar basis. It is the closest thing to a one-stop replacement for households that currently subscribe to Netflix plus one or two other services.

We covered the full space of streaming bundle deals. Including some less obvious combinations — in our streaming bundle deals guide.

Free Streaming Services That Are Actually Watchable

Before spending anything on a Netflix replacement, it is worth knowing what is available for zero dollars. These services are entirely ad-supported and free to use. No credit card, no trial period, no catch beyond the ads themselves.

Tubi has quietly grown into the largest free streaming service in the US, with over 200,000 titles including films, TV series, and Tubi originals. The content skews toward catalog titles, think 2000s-era action films, classic sitcoms, and B-tier horror. But there is genuine volume here. It will not replace Netflix's original content pipeline, but for background watching and casual browsing, Tubi fills more gaps than you would expect.

Pluto TV takes a different approach. Linear channels that mimic the cable TV experience, plus on-demand content. It is owned by Paramount and carries a fair amount of Paramount-adjacent content. If you are someone who misses the experience of flipping through channels and landing on something unexpected, Pluto TV scratches that itch.

Neither service will satisfy someone who subscribes to Netflix specifically for its originals. But for households where Netflix was primarily background noise or a fallback option, free services cover that use case entirely.

The Rotate-and-Cancel Strategy

One approach that has become increasingly popular: instead of paying for multiple streaming services simultaneously, subscribe to one at a time and rotate monthly.

A practical rotation might look like this:

1. Month 1: Netflix ($19.99). Catch up on new releases, binge one or two series.
2. Month 2: Hulu ($9.99), work through current-season broadcast shows and Hulu originals.
3. Month 3: Max ($9.99). HBO's prestige catalog, new seasons of your shows.
4. Month 4: Disney+ ($9.99), Marvel/Star Wars releases, kids' content backlog.
5. Repeat, or skip months where nothing interests you.

Over a year, this costs roughly $150 total. Versus $240 for Netflix alone or $500+ for subscribing to all four simultaneously. The discipline required is real: you need to actually cancel at the end of each month and resist the inertia of auto-renewal. But for viewers who watch in bursts rather than continuously, rotation is the single most effective way to cut streaming costs without missing the content you care about.

The honest downside: rotation requires planning. You need to track what is releasing when, manage cancellations, and accept that you will occasionally miss something in its first week. For households with multiple viewers who watch different things on different schedules, pure rotation can create friction. A hybrid approach, one permanent service plus one rotating slot. Works better for most families.

Our streamflation survival guide goes deeper on the rotation approach and other strategies for managing rising streaming costs across the board.

Cutting Your Whole Streaming Bill

The Netflix price increase is worth about $24/year if you are on the Standard plan. Annoying, but not ruinous on its own. The real problem is that every service raises prices, and most households carry four or five subscriptions simultaneously. The cumulative cost is what hurts.

If you are auditing your streaming spend. And a Netflix price hike is a reasonable trigger to do so. GamsGo offers shared family plan slots for Netflix, Spotify Premium, YouTube Premium, Disney+, and several other services. The savings on a single service are meaningful; the savings across two or three are significant for your monthly bill.

Switching Netflix and one other service to GamsGo shared plans saves roughly $300-350/year. That is not a rounding error, it is a meaningful chunk of an annual entertainment budget redirected.

How We Verified This

All Netflix pricing was confirmed directly from netflix.com/signup as of March 28, 2026, two days after the price change took effect. Competitor prices were verified on each service's official pricing page on the same date. We cross-referenced the Netflix price increase details against reporting from CNBC, Variety, and TechCrunch to confirm the effective date and scope.

GamsGo shared plan pricing was checked by browsing available Netflix slots on the platform on March 28, 2026. Pricing ranges ($3-4/month) reflect the range of Standard and Premium shared slots available at time of writing — exact prices vary based on plan tier and slot availability.

Library size estimates (Netflix ~18,000+ US titles, Peacock ~80,000 titles, etc.) are sourced from JustWatch aggregate data and may shift with licensing changes. We use these as relative scale indicators, not exact counts. The GamsGo link in this article is a paid affiliate relationship, disclosed with rel="sponsored".

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did Netflix prices increase in March 2026?

Netflix raised all US plan prices on March 26, 2026. The Standard plan went from $17.99 to $19.99/month (+$2), Premium from $24.99 to $26.99/month (+$2), and the ad-supported tier from $7.99 to $8.99/month (+$1). The extra member add-on also increased from $5.99 to $6.99/month. That works out to roughly an 11% average increase, making this the eighth US price hike since Netflix introduced its streaming service.

What is the cheapest way to watch Netflix after the price increase?

The cheapest official option is the ad-supported tier at $8.99/month. You get the full Netflix library with about 4-5 minutes of ads per hour and 1080p max resolution. For ad-free access at a fraction of the price, shared family plan slots through GamsGo run approximately $3-4/month with your own dedicated profile. T-Mobile Go5G Plus customers also get Netflix Standard with ads included in their phone plan.

Is Netflix still worth $19.99 a month?

For households where multiple people watch regularly, Netflix's content volume and originals pipeline justify the price, it still has the most original programming of any single service. For solo viewers or households that mainly watch out of habit, the math is harder to defend. At $240/year, Netflix costs more than Hulu, Peacock, and Paramount+ combined at their ad-supported tiers. If you watch less than about 5 hours per week, cheaper alternatives or a rotate-and-cancel approach will save you money without a noticeable quality drop.

What are the cheapest alternatives to Netflix?

Peacock Premium at $7.99/month offers roughly 80,000 titles with ads. Paramount+ Essential at $7.99/month carries Star Trek, Yellowstone, and live NFL games. Amazon Prime Video at $8.99/month (standalone) includes originals like Reacher and The Boys plus Thursday Night Football. For free options, Tubi (200,000+ titles) and Pluto TV (linear channels plus on-demand) cost nothing. None match Netflix's original content depth, but any two of these services cost less combined than Netflix Standard alone.

Does Netflix offer any discounts or bundles?

Netflix does not offer student discounts, annual billing, or promotional pricing of any kind. The only official discounts come through carrier partnerships: T-Mobile Go5G Plus includes Netflix Standard with ads, and some Verizon myPlan configurations include Netflix as a $10/month add-on bundled with Max. There is no Netflix-specific bundle deal comparable to the Disney+ / Hulu / ESPN+ trio. For unofficial savings, shared plan services like GamsGo provide Netflix access at roughly $3-4/month.

How often does Netflix raise prices?

Netflix has raised US prices roughly every 18-24 months since 2014. The March 2026 increase is the eighth hike in twelve years. The trajectory is consistent: Standard went from $8.99 (2014) to $9.99 (2015) to $10.99 (2017) to $12.99 (2019) to $13.99 (2020) to $15.49 (2022) to $17.99 (2024) to $19.99 (2026). Netflix typically announces increases alongside quarterly earnings, and new subscribers see the price immediately while existing subscribers see it on their next billing cycle.