Sling TV Just Raised Prices: Here Are Cheaper Live TV Alternatives

Sling TV was supposed to be the affordable cord-cutting option. When it launched in 2015, the pitch was simple: live cable channels for $20/month without a contract. That number has climbed steadily since then, and the latest increase pushes the combined Orange+Blue package to $64.99/month. Close to what some people were paying for cable when they decided to cut the cord in the first place.

If you are feeling the squeeze, you are not imagining it. Sling's combined plan has gone up roughly 18% in a single jump. That is about $120/year in extra spending for the same channels you had last month. So the question becomes: is Sling still worth it, or is there something cheaper that covers what you actually watch?

We looked at six alternatives across different price ranges. Some are paid services, some are free. None is a perfect one-to-one replacement for Sling, but depending on your viewing habits, several could save you $20-50/month.

What Changed With Sling TV Pricing

Here is the breakdown of what happened:

• Sling Orange: $40/month → $42.50/month (+$2.50)
• Sling Blue: $40/month → $42.50/month (+$2.50)
• Sling Orange+Blue: $55/month → $64.99/month (+$9.99)

The individual plan increases are modest. About $30/year extra. But the combined plan took a disproportionate hit. Sling used to discount the bundle at $55 (saving $25 versus buying both separately). Now the bundle costs $64.99 while the two plans together would be $85, so the bundle discount shrank from $25 to $20.

Sling attributed the increase to rising content costs, particularly sports programming rights. ESPN alone reportedly costs distributors around $10-12 per subscriber per month. That single channel accounts for roughly a quarter of what you pay for Sling Orange.

The timing is notable. This increase arrived just weeks after YouTube TV announced its new tiered pricing structure, which introduced a sports-only plan that directly competes with Sling Orange at a similar price point. The live TV streaming market is reshuffling.

Price Comparison Table: Sling TV vs Alternatives

Philo: Entertainment Without the Sports Tax

Philo costs $25/month for its basic tier or $33/month with add-on channels. You get 70+ channels including AMC, Comedy Central, Discovery, HGTV, MTV, BET, Food Network, and Nickelodeon. The DVR is unlimited with one year of storage, which is genuinely impressive at this price.

The trade-off is obvious: zero sports channels and zero local channels. Philo made a deliberate decision to exclude them because sports rights are what drive prices up for everyone else. If you do not watch live sports or can handle those through a separate service, Philo saves you roughly $32/month compared to Sling Orange+Blue, that is $384/year.

What Philo does well

• Unlimited DVR with 12-month storage (Sling gives you 50 hours)
• Three simultaneous streams included
• Carries most of the entertainment and reality channels that Sling Blue offers
• No contract, 7-day free trial

Where Philo falls short

No ESPN, no Fox Sports, no NFL Network. No ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox either. If the Super Bowl, March Madness, or Monday Night Football matters to you, Philo is not going to work on its own. You would need to pair it with an antenna or a sports-specific service.

Frndly TV: The $7 Wildcard

Frndly TV starts at $6.99/month. Read that again. For roughly the cost of a single premium coffee drink, you get about 50 channels focused on family-friendly and lifestyle content. Hallmark Channel, GAC Family, Weather Channel, Game Show Network, and others in that category.

This is not a replacement for Sling in any conventional sense. The channel lineup is narrower, the content skews heavily toward home and lifestyle programming, and there are no sports or news channels. But for households where the Hallmark Channel and similar programming account for 80% of actual viewing time, Frndly TV replaces the most-watched part of Sling at roughly one-ninth the price.

Frndly offers three tiers:

• Basic ($6.99/month): 2 screens, limited DVR
• Classic ($8.99/month): 3 screens, more DVR hours
• Premium ($11.99/month): 4 screens, unlimited DVR

Even the top tier is cheaper than a single month of any Sling plan. The annual savings versus Sling Orange+Blue: around $636.

YouTube TV New Tiers: Sports-Only Starting at $55

YouTube TV recently restructured its pricing into multiple tiers, which is significant for anyone comparison-shopping against Sling. The new structure looks like this:

• Sports Only ($54.99/month): Focused on sports channels including ESPN, ESPN2, FS1, CBS Sports, NFL Network, and more. Drops most entertainment channels.
• Entertainment ($64.99/month): Entertainment-focused channels without the full sports lineup.
• Base ($72.99/month): The traditional YouTube TV package with 100+ channels, unlimited DVR.
• Premium ($77.99/month): Base plus 4K streaming and additional features.
• NFL Sunday Ticket add-on: Priced separately on top of any plan.

The Sports Only tier is the interesting one here. At $54.99, it undercuts Sling Orange+Blue by $10/month and offers a broader sports channel lineup than Sling Orange provides. It also includes unlimited DVR storage and local channels in most markets, two areas where Sling has historically been weak.

The downside is that YouTube TV Sports Only strips out the entertainment channels. If you want Comedy Central, HGTV, and Food Network alongside your ESPN, you are looking at the $72.99 Base plan. And at that point you are paying more than Sling combined.

Free Options: Pluto TV and Tubi

Before spending anything, it is worth knowing what is available for free.

Pluto TV

Pluto TV operates as a FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television) service with over 250 channels organized by category. The channels are not traditional cable channels, they are curated content streams. You will find dedicated channels for shows like CSI, Star Trek, and MTV reality, plus news from channels like CNN and Bloomberg.

The experience is closer to old-school channel surfing than to cable. You cannot rewind, pause, or DVR anything on the live channels. On-demand content is available but more limited. Still, for someone who just wants background television and does not need specific cable networks, Pluto TV is surprisingly watchable.

Tubi

Tubi focuses on on-demand movies and TV shows rather than live channels. The library is large. Roughly 50,000+ titles. Though heavily weighted toward older content and B-movies. Fox acquired Tubi in 2020, and the content mix has improved since then with more recognizable titles.

Neither Pluto TV nor Tubi replaces live cable channels in any meaningful way. But combined, they can fill a lot of casual viewing time for zero dollars per month. If you cancel Sling and add one of these alongside a paid service like Philo, you get entertainment coverage that is broader than you might expect.

Hulu + Live TV: The Premium Fallback

Hulu + Live TV costs $76.99/month with ads or $89.99/month without ads. That is more expensive than Sling combined, but you get quite a bit more: 95+ live channels, local channels in most markets, unlimited DVR (up to 9 months), ESPN+, Disney+ Basic, and the full Hulu on-demand library included.

This is not really a "cheaper alternative" to Sling. It is the opposite direction. But it is worth mentioning because the value calculation shifts when you consider what is bundled. If you are currently paying for Sling Orange+Blue ($64.99) plus Disney+ ($7.99) plus Hulu ($7.99) plus ESPN+ ($10.99) separately, that totals $91.96/month. Hulu + Live TV bundles all of those for $76.99.

The catch: Hulu + Live TV has limited simultaneous streams (2 without the Unlimited Screens add-on at $9.99/month), and the ad-free tier is steep.

Annual Cost Breakdown

What You Lose With Each Alternative

Every cheaper option involves giving something up. Here is exactly what:

• Switching to Philo: You lose ESPN, NFL Network, Fox Sports, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and local channels. You gain unlimited DVR and more entertainment channels.
• Switching to Frndly TV: You lose almost everything except lifestyle and family channels. No sports, no news, no general entertainment like AMC or Comedy Central.
• Switching to YouTube TV Sports Only: You lose most entertainment channels (Comedy Central, AMC, HGTV, etc.) but gain local channels and unlimited DVR. Sports coverage is actually broader than Sling.
• Going free (Pluto/Tubi): You lose all traditional cable channels, DVR, and on-demand access to current shows. You gain $780/year.

There is no alternative that matches Sling Orange+Blue channel-for-channel at a lower price. The savings come from dropping categories of content. The question is whether you are paying $65/month for channels you actually watch or for channels that sit unused.

How We Tested

We subscribed to or trialed each service mentioned in this article. Price data comes from each service's website as of March 2026. Channel counts are approximate because lineups vary slightly by region and plan tier. We compared DVR functionality, streaming quality (1080p minimum), simultaneous stream limits, and device compatibility. Annual cost figures assume 12 consecutive months with no promotional discounts.

Saving on Your Other Streaming Subscriptions

Whichever live TV service you land on, most households run 3-5 additional streaming subscriptions alongside it. Netflix, Spotify, YouTube Premium, Disney+, they stack up. One approach to offset costs is sharing subscriptions through official family or team plans.

GamsGo matches people into shared slots on legitimate family and team plans for services like Netflix, Spotify Premium, YouTube Premium, and others. The result is typically 30-40% off retail pricing. Spotify Premium for around $2-3/month instead of $11.99, for instance.

The Verdict

Sling TV at $64.99/month is no longer the budget play it used to be. Whether it is still worth it depends entirely on what channels you use:

• Sports fans who do not need entertainment channels: YouTube TV Sports Only at $54.99 is the better deal. More sports channels, unlimited DVR, and local channels included.
• Entertainment viewers who skip sports: Philo at $25/month saves $480/year with a bigger entertainment channel lineup and unlimited DVR.
• Households that mostly watch Hallmark and lifestyle: Frndly TV at $6.99/month is almost embarrassingly cheap and covers that niche well.
• Casual viewers who just want something on: Pluto TV and Tubi cost nothing and fill more viewing time than most people expect.
• People who need sports AND entertainment AND locals: YouTube TV Base at $72.99 or Hulu + Live TV at $76.99. These cost more than Sling, but they include everything Sling offers plus local channels and unlimited DVR.

The live TV streaming market is not going to get cheaper. Content costs keep rising, and every service is passing those costs along. The most effective way to save is to audit what you actually watch, drop the channels you do not use, and pick the service that covers the narrowest range that still works for your household.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did Sling TV prices go up?

Sling Orange and Blue each went from $40 to $42.50/month. The combined Orange+Blue plan increased from $55 to $64.99/month — a $9.99/month or roughly $120/year jump. This is Sling's largest single price increase since launching in 2015. The individual plan increases are relatively modest ($2.50 each), but the combined plan took a disproportionate hit because Sling also reduced the bundle discount.

What is the cheapest live TV streaming service right now?

Frndly TV starts at $6.99/month with about 50 family-friendly channels. It is the cheapest paid live TV option available. Philo starts at $25/month with a broader 70+ channel lineup. For completely free options, Pluto TV offers 250+ FAST channels and Tubi has a large on-demand library. None of these include sports. The cheapest option with sports channels is YouTube TV Sports Only at $54.99/month.

Does Sling TV still offer a free tier?

Sling Freestream gives you roughly 400 on-demand titles and some free ad-supported live channels at no cost. However, it does not include the cable channels from the paid Orange or Blue plans, no ESPN, no HGTV, no AMC. Think of it as a competitor to Pluto TV rather than a preview of the paid service. It is watchable for casual browsing but will not replace a paid Sling subscription.

Is YouTube TV cheaper than Sling TV now?

With the new tiered pricing, YouTube TV's Sports Only plan at $54.99/month undercuts Sling Orange+Blue ($64.99) by $10/month while offering broader sports coverage, local channels, and unlimited DVR. However, YouTube TV Base at $72.99 and Premium at $77.99 are more expensive than Sling combined. The answer depends on which tier you compare: for sports viewing specifically, YouTube TV is now the better value.

Can I share streaming subscriptions to save money on alternatives?

Yes. Many streaming services. Netflix, Spotify, YouTube Premium. Offer family or group plans that reduce per-person costs. Platforms like GamsGo coordinate shared slots on these official plans at 30-40% off retail. Saving $5-8/month on two or three subscriptions this way can effectively offset the cost of a cheaper live TV service like Philo or Frndly TV, bringing your total streaming budget down even if your live TV costs stay the same.