With more than two thirds of British households now subscribing to at least one paid streaming service (and many with multiple subscriptions), the days of just relying on the output of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 for our entertainment have long gone.
If you want to watch high-definition ad-free content across all the big streaming platforms, you can easily end up with a monthly bill of more than £50. Add to that the BBC licence fee, potential satellite or cable television costs and perhaps the occasional paid-for movie or pay-per-view event and television can end up being a rather expensive pastime.
But streaming doesn’t have to break the bank. Here are our seven top tips to watch great TV and films and keep the costs under control …
1. Use the free streaming services
Although Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV+ et al might seem like the obvious first ports of call for streaming because of their high-profile releases and huge marketing budgets, it’s worth remembering that there’s a vast amount of brilliant TV available to stream perfectly legally and free.
BBC iPlayer not only carries almost everything that’s been on BBC TV across the past month, it’s also home to a massive collection of brilliant box, sets from Peaky Blinders and Poldark to The Office and Gavin and Stacey. There’s also a rolling collection of modern films and cinema classics from Malcolm X to Citizen Kane.
ITVX does offer a premium tier (£5.99 a month/£59.99 a year) that is ad-free and has extra content, but the free version is still a treasure trove of box sets, including British classics like Minder and Doctor Foster as well as US imports like Parks and Recreation and Gilmore Girls. There’s also lots of decent films for all the family.
Channel 4 (previously known as 4OD) also offers an ad-free experience and early access to shows (£3.99 a month), but you don’t need to pay a penny to access the vast archive of quality shows from Peep Show and Skins to The West Wing and ER. There’s also a fabulous selection of foreign-language dramas available in the Walter Presents section and a good collection of British films from Film 4 and across the globe.
My5 has a number of notable box sets from The Good Wife and Blue Bloods to Dexter and Under the Dome as well as all the content broadcast on Channel 5.
U (previously called UKTV Play) is something of a hidden streaming gem with loads of free box sets to stream including Mad Men, Prison Break, Sons of Anarchy and Masters of Sex plus popular British series like the Bergerac reboot, The Chelsea Detective and Sister Boniface Mysteries.
You can also enjoy a wealth of free TV, films and hidden gems on services such as Amazon Freevee, Freely, Plex, Tubi and Pluto TV.
2. Get nearly 2 months of free TV and films with trials
If you want to watch content that’s exclusive to some of the paid streamers, make sure you check if they have a free trial before you sign up. Netflix and Disney+ no longer offer a try before you buy option in the UK, but many of the streaming services do offer a free trial, which is usually plenty enough time to binge watch a few of the biggest shows on offer.
Prime Video has a 30-day free trial — try Clarkson’s Farm if you like entertainment, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power if you like fantasy and Fargo if you love drama.
Apple TV+ has a seven-day free trial — try Severance if you like dystopian shows, Slow Horses if you want a spy drama or Ted Lasso if you’re looking for a laugh.
Paramount Plus+ offers a seven-day free trial — just enough time to enjoy the oil drama Landman starring Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Hamm or get hooked on the survival drama Yellowjackets.
NOW has a seven-day trial for its entertainment pass, giving you access to a wide range of Sky Originals and HBO content — try the satirical whodunnit The White Lotus, the brilliant disaster drama Chernobyl or the gritty British thriller Gangs of London.
3. Are you missing a freebie?
If you’re keen on a particular streamer, don’t immediately sign up at the advertised monthly rate. It’s always worth checking whether the service comes as part of a bundle through a service you already have like a phone deal or bank account.
For example O2 currently offers a free subscription to Disney+ for up to six months if you sign up to certain phone tariffs with them, Vodafone gives away Prime Video, Three bundles Paramount+ and Apple offers a year of free Apple TV+ to customers purchasing qualifying Apple hardware.
In addition, several of the biggest high street banks offer streaming service subscriptions as part of their reward accounts: qualifying Lloyds customers can get Disney+ as a reward and Barclays offers Apple TV+ as part of its Blue Rewards scheme.
You can even get a free three-month subscription to Paramount+ when you buy insurance through Confused.com or swap Tesco Clubcard vouchers for a Disney+ subscription, so it’s worth checking you might not be eligible for some free TV before you pay full price.
4. Watch the adverts
Although most of the streamers began with one premium subscription, the TV landscape has changed dramatically in the past year. Many providers are now looking to better monetise their content and have introduced multiple tiers to their subscriptions, often with a cheaper ad-funded option. As you can see below, being prepared to put up with occasional adverts (usually far fewer than you might get on terrestrial commercial television), these lighter versions of subscriptions can significantly reduce your streaming bill on certain services;
Netflix — the cheapest plan without adverts is £12.99 a month, but the ad-supported package is only £5.99, saving £7 a month.
Disney+ — you pay £8.99 a month (£89.90 a year) with adverts but just £4.99 a month with commercials, saving £4 a month.
NOW — the entertainment pass falls from £15.99 to £9.99 a month if you accept the ad-funded tier, saving £6 a month without the “boost” feature.
Apple TV+ and Paramount+ are among the streamers that don’t offer a tiered membership, but just swapping to the ad-supported option on the three services above would save a total of £17 a month.
5. Rotate your streaming services
Even if you did nothing but watch TV all day and all night, you would struggle to exhaust the quality content — both new and old — on the big paid-for streaming services, so it doesn’t make sense to be subscribed to them all at the same time.
With the exception of Netflix, which still generally drops entire series at once, most of the big streaming services now release their new content across a number of weeks and even months to keep subscribers coming back. It’s a smart move on their part, but in an increasingly fragmented TV landscape, do you really need to watch every show the minute it comes out? And in reality how many shows can you watch at once anyway?
The obvious answer is to wait until there are enough shows you want to watch on a service and then subscribe for a month and watch them all back to back. This doesn’t work if you want to be the first to see every new episode of a show the day it comes out or you’re paranoid about spoilers, but if you’re relaxed about these things it makes sense to rotate your subscriptions.
How about a month of Apple TV giving you time to watch Bad Sisters, Masters of the Air, The Morning Show, Severance and Disclaimer? That’s a lot of TV for £8.99. Then you can cancel your subscription and move across to Disney+ for a month and try the excellent Paradise, Rivals, The Patient and The Mandalorian.
Many of the streamers actually make this even easier for you by allowing you to pause your membership and therefore not lose your viewing data. Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ all have a pause function built into their options. However, with Apple TV+ and Paramount+ you’ll have to cancel your subscription and start again, so don’t do it halfway through a show or you’ll lose your place.
6. Pay upfront
If there is one streaming service that you really can’t do without and you know that you’re going to want access to it all year (perhaps the kids are addicted to Pixar films on Disney+ or you’re going to try to complete every Taylor Sheridan show on Paramount+) it’s worth paying upfront to make a saving.
Disney+ — although there’s no annual version of the £4.99 ad-free plan, you can save almost £16 a year by buying an annual membership of £79.90 rather than paying £7.99 a month.
Paramount+ — if you pay £69.90 for a year, you’ll save £14 compared with paying the £7.99 monthly fee.
Prime Video — If you get your TV subscription as part of the full Amazon Prime subscription you can save £13 a year by paying the £95 a year rather than £8.99 a month.
7. Your patience may be rewarded…
If you’re able to resist the temptation of the new and shiny, one of the best ways to save money on streaming is simply to wait it out.
Just because a show began its life on one service doesn’t necessarily mean it will stay there exclusively for ever.
Increasingly, more TV shows are crossing between the streaming services, or even ending up on terrestrial television (and by extension on the free streaming services).
In the last year a swathe of excellent Disney+ shows including Dopesick and The Dropout have broadcast on BBC1 (and remained on iPlayer for sometime) while another fine Disney show, Welcome to Chippendales, is currently on ITVX. Yes, the shows may be a few years old, but they’re still great — perhaps even better when they’re free.
Elsewhere, a number of Paramount+ shows have been broadcast on Channel 5 (owned by the same company) including The Castaways starring Sheridan Smith and The Flatshare featuring Jessica Brown Findlay.
Sky Originals like Gangs of London and Brassic have even started popping up on Netflix, meaning you don’t necessarily need NOW and Netflix at the same time. Similarly, the Paramount+ original Yellowstone has arrived on Netflix, with everything except the current season available.
While it remains unlikely that you’ll see any of Netflix’s global hits like Stranger Things or Squid Game on iPlayer or HBO hits like Succession or The Last of Us on Channel 4 in the near future, this trend of older content moving across platforms seems to be gaining momentum as the streaming world evolves.
With film, the wait may be longer, but eventually most things end up on free to air TV (even if it’s many, many years after they were released). So if you’re happy to wait by the banks of the digital river long enough, the Oscar winners will eventually float past on the free streaming platform.
Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix, the best Prime Video TV shows, the best Disney+ shows , the best Apple TV+ shows, the best shows on BBC iPlayer , the best shows on Sky and Now, the best shows on ITVX, the best shows on Channel 4 streaming, the best shows on Paramount+ and our favourite hidden gem TV shows. Don’t forget to check our critics’ choices to what to watch this week, the best shows of 2024 so far and browse our comprehensive TV guide.
