- Netflix has raised its prices again for all its plans in the US
- It hasn’t yet confirmed if other regions like the UK will see price rises
- ‘Subscription hopping’ is becoming an increasingly popular coping strategy
Netflix has welcomed everyone into the new year with a move that wouldn’t be out of place on its new WWE Raw show – a pricing drop-kick in the US that brings the cost of its monthly plans to new painful levels.
If you missed the news, the cheapest Standard (with ads) monthly plan is rising from $6.99 to $7.99, the Standard (without ads) plan is going up from $15.49 to $17.99, while Premium is hitting the heights of $24.99 (previously $22.99). We don’t yet know if the UK will see similar price rises, but it seems highly likely (if not now, then soon).
Clearly, Netflix has done its research and is confident that these latest price rises won’t see it hemorrhage subscribers – and the markets agree, as Netflix share prices soared following the news. It has also hit a record of 300 million global subscribers.
But I can’t be the only person feeling the heat of being slow-cooked by streaming prices. This year, like many others on TechRadar, I’m taking action – and not by sailing the murky waters of piracy or questionable Plex servers.
The great Netflix password-sharing crackdown (which was aped by the likes of Disney Plus) removed one possible avenue for savings. Still, there is one big lever we can pull – the increasingly popular practice of subscription hopping.
One policy that the likes of Netflix haven’t (yet) imposed on subscribers are lengthy contract lock-ins – and it’s this freedom that subscription hopping exploits to bring streaming subscription costs to more manageable levels.
TechRadar contributor Esat Dedezade recently laid out his subscription hopping plan for 2025, which we worked out will slash his subscription hopping bills by 71% this year.
In fact, he’s stuck with Netflix for January to catch Castlevania: Nocturne season 2, but he will cancel and switch to Apple TV Plus in February for Severance season 2.
I’m actually doing the opposite, staying exclusively with Apple TV Plus right now to minimize my chance of Severance spoilers before switching back to Netflix for my fill of Cobra Kai season 6 and (possibly, if it’s more exciting than the trailer) Zero Day.
Of course, your tastes may vary, so we’ve put together the cheat sheet below to help you form your own streaming saving plan, for the first few months of 2025 at least…
The tactics
The only downside of subscription hopping is that it involves a little planning, but that’s nothing that your favorite reminders app can’t fix. The main things to remember are to cancel a service immediately after subscribing (to avoid auto-renews) and to track the latest release date news (see our 2025 streaming wishlist for starters), and to note down your targeted shows for each month.
We’ve done some of that for you with the table below, which picks out some of the biggest highlights across the main streaming services in the first few months of this year. Use it to make a plan for January, February, and March, and you’ll make some decent savings in those months alone.
| Month | Service | Shows / notes |
| January | Apple TV Plus | Severance season 2 (Jan 17), Prime Target season 1 (January 22), Mythic Quest season 4 (Jan 29) |
| January | Netflix | Cunk on Life (Jan 2), Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Jan 3), American Primeval season 1 (Jan 9), Castlevania: Nocturne season 2 (Jan 16), The Night Agent season 2 (Jan 23), The Recruit season 2 (Jan 30) |
| January | Prime Video | The Rig season 2 (Jan 2), You’re Cordially Invited (Jan 30) |
| January | Peacock | The Traitors season 3 (Jan 9) |
| January | Max | The Front Room (Jan 3) Harley Quinn season 5 (Jan 16), A Different Man (Jan 17) |
| January | Disney Plus / Hulu | Goosebumps: The Vanishing season 1 (Jan 10), High Potential season 1 (Jan 23), Paradise season 1 (Jan 30) |
| February | Apple TV Plus | Love You to Death (Feb 5), The Gorge (Feb 14), Surface season 2 (Feb 21), Earthsounds (Feb 23) |
| February | Netflix | Witcher: Sirens of the Deep (Feb 11), Cobra Kai season Six, part three (Feb 13), Zero Day (Feb 20) |
| February | Prime Video | Invincible season 3 (Feb 6), Reacher season 3 (Feb 20) |
| February | Disney Plus | Win or Lose (Feb 19), A Thousand Blows (Feb 21) |
| February | Max | The White Lotus S3 (Feb 16) |
| March | Apple TV Plus | Dope Thief season 1 (March 14), The Studio season 1 (March 26) |
| March | Netflix | The Electric State (March 14), The Residence season 1 (March 20) |
| March | Prime Video | Wheel of Time season 3 (March 13) |
| March | Disney Plus | Daredevil Born Again season 1 (March 4) |
Subscription hopping may not be for everyone, but the practice has inspired other members of the TechRadar team to take the plunge. Matt Evans, our Fitness, Wellness, and Wearables Editor, says: “My wife and I switch our subscription TV services several times a year. Last year, I canceled my 11-year Netflix subscription and the anime streaming service Crunchyroll in favor of Disney Plus’s £4.99-with-ads minimum tier.
“Now it’s January, we have cancelled Disney and renewed Netflix, so we can watch the shows we’ve missed. Next month, Now TV (the UK’s answer to HBO Max) is on the chopping block, but we’ll cycle back to it later in the year. Our constants are Amazon, Audible and Spotify, which we renew each month.”
While choosing one streaming service per month can be the best for simplicity, this shows that you can adapt it to your situation. Even cutting three unnecessary months of Netflix over a year, particularly if you prefer the Premium 4K tier, would give you big savings – of around $74.97 / £53.97 / AU$77.97, at current prices.
In fact, that isn’t far off what an entire year of Netflix cost back in 2012 (when monthly prices sat at just $7.99 / £5.99 / AU$8.99). Those days may be long gone, but the tactics above are the best way to get your streaming costs back down closer to their golden age levels.
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