Your Streaming Bill Went Up $762 a Year Since 2021. Here's the Receipt.

The short version

Nine flagship streaming services cost $159.41 a month in the US today. In March 2021, the exact same nine cost $95.91. Nobody added $762 a year worth of shows you asked for, the bill just grew quietly while you were busy watching. Every figure below is US pricing, checked in October 2026, and linked to its source.

The damage, line by line

Read that Apple TV+ row again. The service that launched as the cheapest in the bundle at $4.99 now costs triple. Disney+ has raised prices four times in four years. Peacock's ad-free tier has doubled since 2020. This isn't one company getting greedy. It's the entire industry discovering, in unison, that you'll pay more.

A note on the numbers: a popular tracker (HonestlyRanked) puts the current basket at $154.41, but its Disney+ and Hulu figures ($18.99) missed the September 23, 2026 hike to $21.49. The table above uses the current prices, which means the real increase is bigger than the number going around.

2026: the year they all came for your wallet

There wasn't a single quiet quarter this year:

• January: Paramount+ Premium $12.99 → $13.99. A gentle opener.
• February: Spotify Individual $11.99 → $12.99. Twelve years at $9.99, then three hikes in three years.
• March: Netflix Standard $17.99 → $19.99. "Because it can," as one outlet put it.
• June: YouTube Premium Individual $13.99 → $15.99. Announced by email, not a press release. They didn't even want the attention.
• August: Peacock Premium Plus $16.99 → $19.99, then Apple TV+ $12.99 → $14.99 eleven days later. A two-for-one month.
• September: Disney+ Premium and Hulu ad-free $18.99 → $21.49. The fourth hike in four years, just in time for fall TV season.

Notice the pattern: nobody announces these loudly anymore. Emails, help-center updates, a quiet line on the billing page. The frog-boiling strategy is working.

"But inflation, right?"

Sure, partly. US consumer prices rose about 26.5% between March 2021 and August 2026. If your nine subscriptions had merely kept up with inflation, the $95.91 basket would cost around $121.29 a month today.

It costs $159.41.

That gap, about $38 a month, $457 a year, is the part that has nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with pricing power. Your groceries got more expensive because the world got more expensive. Your streaming got more expensive because they checked what you'd tolerate.

What everyone else is doing about it

You're not the only one staring at the bill. Here's what the rest of the country is up to:

• 35% of Americans have shared a streaming password with someone outside their household (Reviews.org, 2026). The crackdowns haven't ended sharing, they've just made it awkward.
• When the crackdowns hit, 19% went without the service entirely and 13% found another workaround. Only 18% just paid up.
• 52% have cancelled or downgraded a service specifically because of a price increase.
• 42% say they simply have too many subscriptions.

The passive subscriber, the one who signed up in 2019 and never looked at the bill again, is going extinct. In their place: the canceller, the rotator, the ad-tier downgrader. And the splitter.

The four ways out

1. Cancel and rotate. Subscribe for the one show, cancel, come back next season. A quarter of subscribers now churn and return within six months. The services hate this. It works anyway.

2. Surrender to ads. Netflix with ads is $8.99. Disney+ and Hulu with ads are $12.49. You trade your time for your money, an honest deal, at least.

3. Bundle up. The Disney+/Hulu ad-free bundle is $21.99, fifty cents more than either service alone. They're not even hiding the upsell anymore.

4. Split a family plan. The option nobody talks about enough. Family plans are priced for up to six people, and the per-person math at today's prices is almost rude:

A Spotify splitter saves about $112 a year. A YouTube Premium splitter saves about $138 a year. Stack three or four of these and you've clawed back a serious chunk of that $762, without giving up a single service.

A note on countries: these are US prices

Every figure above is US pricing. Canada, the UK, Nigeria, India, everywhere has its own tiers, currencies, and catalogs. The direction is the same nearly everywhere (up, faster than inflation), but the exact numbers are local.

It's also why sharing works best inside one country: prices, billing, and libraries differ across borders, and most services require family members to be in the same country anyway. Famshare matches hosts and members within your country for exactly this reason.

The honest caveat (read this before you split anything)

Splitting only works if you stay inside each service's rules, and the rules are not all the same:

• No checks: Microsoft 365, Apple, Nintendo. Invite by email, done, nobody asks where you live.
• Address checks: Spotify and YouTube Premium ask members to confirm the plan manager's address. Get it wrong on Spotify and you're locked out of family plans for 12 months. Save the address somewhere.
• Home network checks: Netflix and Disney+ tie TVs to the plan owner's home Wi-Fi. Sharing a TV login from another house now means a paid extra member slot ($9.99/month on Netflix), the free ride is over.

Two rules that never change: never hand over your main password (every plan above has a proper invite system, anyone asking for your Google or Apple password is running a scam), and agree on payments on day one. The technical setup is rarely what kills a shared plan. Money is. One person pays the whole bill, two people "forget," and three months later the host is quietly covering everyone.

That's the actual problem Famshare was built for: it finds hosts and members in your country, shows every seat and who's in it, keeps the group conversation in one place, and sends reminders before payment day so nobody has to play debt collector. The subscription itself always stays with the service provider.

Cut your share of the $762 with Famshare

• Looking for a seat? Join a family in your own country, keep your own account, and pay only your share.
• Paying for a plan with empty seats? List them in a couple of minutes and let members cover part of the bill, with reminders handled for you.

Browse open families

List your spare seats

FAQ

How much has streaming gone up since 2021? A basket of nine flagship services went from $95.91 to $159.41 a month (US pricing) between March 2021 and October 2026, up 66%, or $762 a year.

Which streaming service raised prices the most? Apple TV+, up 200% (from $4.99 to $14.99). Then Disney+ Premium, up 169% (from $7.99 to $21.49).

How much does streaming cost per year now? $1,912.92 a year in the US for these nine services at their standard tiers, versus $1,150.92 for the same nine in March 2021.

Is splitting a subscription legal? Family plans are built for sharing, that is what the extra seats are for. Each service sets its own rules about who qualifies (same household, same address, or same country), so check the terms for the specific plan. Use the service's built-in invite system and never share your main password.

What is the cheapest legitimate way to get Spotify Premium? Split a Spotify Premium Family plan: $21.99 a month for six accounts works out to $3.67 per person, versus $12.99 solo.

What is the cheapest legitimate way to get YouTube Premium? Split a YouTube Premium Family plan: $26.99 a month for six accounts works out to $4.50 per person, versus $15.99 solo.

Sources

• Current prices verified October 2026: Netflix via Cloudwards; Disney+ and Hulu via 9to5Mac; Apple TV+ via Parade; Peacock via TechCrunch; YouTube Premium via Engadget; Spotify via NerdWallet; Paramount+ via TechDows; HBO Max via Parade.
• 2021 baseline and inflation figures via HonestlyRanked (CC BY 4.0); inflation is US CPI-U via the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Sharing and cancellation behavior via Reviews.org 2026 streaming habits survey.