If you haven’t noticed, subscription streaming services have been getting more expensive.
Netflix, for example, now charges $15.50 a month for its no-ads Standard plan. Apple TV+, which started out at $5 a month, is now $10. Disney+ and Hulu without ads have jumped in price, too.
But you can still slim your streaming budget by choosing from the dozens of free services that let you stream movies and TV shows in exchange for watching ads. You can access these services through most streaming devices and smart TVs, as well as laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
There are some trade-offs, however. The number of ads you see will vary by service. And with most free services, you’re out of luck if you want 4K shows, including any with HDR. Instead, they provide regular high-definition video, just like most cable TV companies.
You’re not likely to find many recently released movies. And, of course, you won’t see newer original shows from paid services, such as "Wednesday" on Netflix or Hulu’s “The Bear.”
In this article
- Free streaming services: Amazon Freevee Amazon Fire TV Channels BLKFAM Crackle Hoopla and Kanopy Peaco*ck Pluto TV Redbox The Roku Channel Sling Freestream Tubi Vix WBTV Xumo Play More Free Streaming Services to Consider
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Still, in a world of $1,000 smartphones and $6 salted caramel mochas, it’s nice to know you can watch “Teen Wolf” or “Lethal Weapon” without having to pay. (Looking for another path to free content? Get a TV antenna.)
And if you haven’t checked lately, you might be subscribing to more paid streaming services than you realize. It’s easy to lose track. In fact, 42 percent of consumers admit they’ve forgotten about a streaming subscription that they were still paying for but no longer use, a recent C+R Research survey found.
Here’s a rundown of the best free streaming services, listed in alphabetical order. (You can scroll to the bottom for a simple list of even more to check out.)
Amazon Freevee
Previously called IMDb TV,Amazon Freeveeis an ad-supported service that offers a mix of live channels, on-demand classic TV shows and movies, and some original content. The company says it now offers more than 400 live channels. You’ll find shows such as “Schitt’s Creek” and “The Librarians,” alongside older classics like “Bewitched,” “Columbo,” and “All in the Family.” Movies currently available include “Gods of Egypt,” “Rise of the Guardians,” and “Sing 2.” Licensed content rotates in and out from month to month.
Original shows include “Judy Justice,” starring Judge Judy Sheindlin, “Modern Love,” and “Bosch: Legacy,” a spinoff of the popular Amazon Prime series. But “Judy Justice” is jumping from streaming to broadcast TV later this fall. Last year, Freevee started showing content that was once exclusive to Amazon Prime Video subscribers, such as ““Reacher” and “The Wheel of Time."
Amazon also announced plans to license some of its Prime content—including “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Hunters,” and “All the Old Knives”—to other streaming services and cable companies. It’s not clear whether those deals will keep these shows and movies off the Freevee service.
Check outAmazon Freevee.
Amazon Fire TV Channels
Amazon Fire TV Channels is a special option exclusively on Fire TV devices. This service aggregates free, ad-supported content from a range of popular sources, including MLB, Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, CBS Sports, NHL, Fox Sports, NASCAR, and more.
Amazon Fire TV Channels is adding extra sports coverage from beIN SPORTS by launching beIN Sports Xtra and video-on-demand content.
Earlier, Amazon bumped up its offering with content from Variety, Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and TV Line from Penske Media Corporation; GameSpot, Honest Trailers, and TV Guide from Fandom; Looper, Slash Film, and Nicki Swift from Static Media; along with Funny or Die and Outside. The service offers content from more than 400 different providers.
To find this content, ask Alexa to “Play Fire TV Channels” to open the app and browse free content. Or navigate to Fire TV’s Your Apps & Channels screen and click on the Fire TV Channels app.
Check out Amazon Fire TV.
BLKFAM
Promoted as the first and only Black-owned streaming service focused on Black American family entertainment, BLKFAM launched with a content library that includes more than 20 syndicated series, 1,000-plus hours of new animation titles, dozens of new animated characters of color and diverse gender experiences, and hundreds of hours of original music-driven content. Ten original live-action and animated series are in development and will premiere on the platform throughout the year.
BLKFAM’s content spans investigative journalism and news, fitness and wellness series, Black history, children’s and adult animation, sitcoms and reality shows, and music programs—all through the lens of Black experiences.
BLKFAM was founded by Larry Evan, a former WarnerMedia executive, with an equity investment by Whoopi Goldberg.
Check out BLKFAM.
Crackle
Crackle, which used to be Sony’s ad-supported streaming service, hosts a library of mainstream titles that include popular older TV shows such as “Father Knows Best” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” as well as some popular newer series, including “Hell’s Kitchen” and "Line of Duty." Movies include “Blitz," starring Jason Statham, and “Bordertown," starring Jennifer Lopez.
Crackle is now owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul and is part of a bigger brand called Crackle Plus, which operates several ad-supported and subscription networks, including EspañolFlix, FrightPix, and Popcornflix, among others. The company also recently acquired Redbox (see below).
Crackle’s original content includes “Outbreak,” a series about containing a dangerous virus; “Les Norton,” a 10-episode series starring Rebel Wilson; “The Uncommon History of Very Common Things,” an entertaining and often irreverent history of everyday objects; and season two of “In The Vault,” a suspense series set at a fictional college. Crackle also has a limited number of original movies.
Crackle’s parent company, ChickenSoup for the Soul, had been facing a bankruptcy filing, but recently received $175 million in additional working capital from two of its primary lenders.
Check outCrackle.
Hoopla and Kanopy
If you have a library card,HooplaandKanopymight be your ticket to free movies, music, audiobooks, and comics. Getting started is pretty simple. Just go to the site, find your local library, and create an account with your library card. You check out TV shows and movies as though they were books, using your library card.
The main difference between the two services is that Hoopla tends to focus more on popular entertainment than Kanopy does. It also includes media beyond videos, such as audiobooks, comics, e-books, and music.
With either service, once you’ve signed up you can browse by title or genre, or get recommendations based on what you’ve previously borrowed and what’s popular. With Hoopla, you have 72 hours to watch a movie. (Your library sets the limit on how many movies you can borrow each month. In my case, it recently jumped from four to eight.) Your movie will start streaming once you’ve made a selection.
If you access Kanopy through a library membership, you may be able to watch a limited number of titles per month. But members of educational institutions get unlimited access.
Peaco*ck
Peaco*ck, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, had a free, ad-supported tier of service, along with two paid tiers ($5 per month with ads and $10 per month without), but is no longer offering it to new subscribers. But anyone who already had the free tier can continue to use it.
However, NBCUniversal and Instacart announced that Instacart+ members in the U.S. will now get Peaco*ck Premium free.
Pluto TV
Pluto TV, owned by Paramount, has about 250 curated channels, drawing content from its Paramount properties (BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures), plus networks such as Bloomberg, Cheddar News, CNN, NBC News, and Fox Sports. Pluto TV also has a decent library of on-demand content, including now-classic movies—"Titanic,” “Saving Private Ryan”—and newer fare such as “Lady Bird.” TV shows run the gamut from “The Andy Griffith Show” and the original “Gunsmoke” to “The Twilight Zone” and “Criminal Minds.”
In addition to genre-based channels, Pluto TV has added channels powered by other providers, including CBS (“NCIS,” “FBI”), AMC Networks (“The Making of the Mob,” “NOS4A2: Ghost”), and Showtime (“Dexter,” “Billions”). It recently added 14 channels from NBCUniversal, including Bravo Vault and NBC Sports, as well as Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk channel. It also now has 25 channels dedicated to movies.
There’s now a Pluto TV Latino service, with over 45 curated Spanish- and Portuguese-language channels covering categories, including comedy, movies, music, reality TV, sports, telenovelas, and true crime.
Pluto will get the full previous season of select Paramount series before the newest seasons arrive on the premium Paramount+ service.
As part of a “Programmed By Humans” branding message, Pluto is touting its dedicated team of curators to help program for the platform.
Check out Pluto TV.
Redbox
Best known for its rental kiosks at grocery stores and shopping centers, plus a newer video-on-demand streaming rental and purchase service,Redboxnow has a free ad-based live service as well, which gets some of its content from Xumo Play.
Thanks to the Xumo Play partnership, Redbox’s free service includes Magnolia Pictures’ CineLife ad-supported channel, which features top-rated independent films and award-winning documentaries from the Magnolia Pictures catalog.
Redbox is owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul, which also owns Crackle (see above). The company recently received additional financing to avoid a bankruptcy filing.
The on-demand titles are available only for a limited time because of agreements with programming providers, and the service gains and loses shows and movies each month. Earlier this year the company announced that it was adding programs across eight new channels from Fremantle, Revry, and Love Stories TV to its free live TV service.
Check out Redbox Watch Free.
The Roku Channel
Thanks to a rapidly expanding roster of programming, you can watch free shows and movies via the company’s ad-supportedThe Roku Channel, which is now available outside of justRoku streaming playersandTVs.
The Roku Channel has a lot of licensed TV shows and movies, plus some live channels from ABC, AMC, Fox, NBC, Hallmark, and others. It now has more than 400 live channels, and tens of thousands of free on-demand movies and TV shows. One big focus going forward will be Roku Originals, with new shows rolling out regularly. Current examples include "The Spiderwick Chronicles," “Reptile Royalty,” and “UFO Cowboys.“
Recently, Roku (and Tubi) licensed hundreds of movies and TV shows, including “Raised by Wolves” and “Cake Boss,” from Warner Bros. Discovery. Other new channels include “Barney” and “Pickleball TV.”
In addition, Roku has a multiyear deal with Lionsgate that gives it rights to stream Lionsgate’s theatrically released films. Exclusive to Roku, it’s the first time Lionsgate titles are available free anywhere. Roku is also teaming up with a private equity company to acquire up to a 20 percent stake in the premium channel Starz, which was acquired by Lionsgate in 2016.
Roku also lets you access AMC Networks’ paid streaming services— AMC+, Shudder, and Acorn TV—through the Roku Channel’s Premium Subscriptions.
Roku has started moving aggressively into sports. Last season, it teamed up with the NFL to create the NFL Zone within its Sports section on the main Roku app, a centralized location to find live and upcoming games. This season Roku and the NFL teamed up for a new 24/7 NFL Draft Vault channel, where you can watch the best moments of previous drafts. Roku also has a free NBA channel called NBA Zone.
It also secured a multiyear deal for MLB’s "Sunday Leadoff games," which last year was on Peaco*ck. These earlier games will be free—last year you had to have a paid Peaco*ck subscription—and run through September 15.
Check out The Roku Channel.
Sling Freestream
Sling Freestreamis a new ad-supported service from Sling TV. The service has been adding more content and now claims to have more than 500 free channels and over 44,000 on-demand titles, with genres ranging from news, sports, game shows, and crime dramas to sitcoms, home improvement, cooking, and more. Popular channels and programming include ABC News Live, CBS News, ESPN on Demand, FilmRise, “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Heartland,” “Forensic Files,” “The Walking Dead” universe, and “VH1 I Love Reality.”
Through Freestream, you’ll be able to subscribe to more than 50 stand-alone streaming services, including AMC+, Discovery+, and Showtime.
This spring, Sling TV extended its Watch & Win rewards program, which lets you win prize money the more you watch television, to Sling Freestream users. You have to have a Freestream account to be eligible.
One interesting development: Freestream is now the first free service to offer a free cloud DVR.
Check outSling Freestream.
Tubi
This ad-supported service, owned by Fox, has more than 50,000 titles, including selections from the libraries of Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros., plus networks, including A&E, Lifetime, and Starz. It also offers access to many Fox shows, such as "Hell’s Kitchen" and "Lego Masters," after they broadcast.
Tubi is ramping up its original content with 100 new film and TV titles slated to appear over the course of this year. Newer originals include “Prisoner of Love” and “Corrective Measures,” the latter starring Bruce Willis. These join other Tubi Originals, such as “10 Truths About Love,” “War of the Worlds: Annihilation,” and “Mysteries From the Grave: Titanic.”
Tubi’s options range from old (and probably best forgotten) Chuck Norris films to classic indie titles (“Requiem for a Dream”) to somewhat more recent movies such as “Black Adam.” You’ll also find full seasons of TV shows ranging from oldies (“The Honeymooners”) to more recent fare (“The Masked Singer”).
Tubi now has more than 250 live channels and content from more than 450 partners. Tubi acquired the rights to BBC’s dramedy “Boarders,” which follows five talented Black inner-city London teens who get scholarships to a prestigious boarding school.
Warner Bros. Discovery is now providing 15 live channels and licensed hundreds of movies and TV shows, including “Batman Returns” and “Gotham,” to Tubi (and Roku). Newer titles available this year include “The Batman,” “Suicide Squad,” “Wonder Woman” and “Aquaman,” as well as the series, “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.”
Tubi’s latest news is that it’s using an AI-powered search tool, called Rabbit AI, to help viewers find content they want to watch. Rabbit AI, found on the Tubi mobile app, lets you go beyond simple keyword searches and ask questions in a more natural, conversational manner.
Tubi also recently launched a new logo, with a purple-and-yellow color scheme. The design features a circle, meant to symbolize falling into a streaming rabbit hole.
Check outTubi.
ViX
ViX is a free, ad-supported Spanish-language service owned by TelevisaUnivision and formerly called PrendeTV. Unlike PrendeTV, which was exclusively a free, ad-supported service, ViX also has an ad-free subscription version called ViX Premium, which costs $7 a month. In addition, it’s rolling out a newer lower-priced tier called Vix Premium with Ads, which costs $5 a month.
Both the paid (ViX Premium) and free (ViX Gratis) versions offer more than 100 entertainment channels, including movies, sports, and children’s programming. (ViX Premium also has 10,000 hours of premium programming and some exclusive live sporting events, including 7,000 hours of live soccer.) ViX has more than 40,000 hours of on-demand content, which includes shows from Univision, plus content from large media companies based in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. It also has deals with Disney, Lionsgate, and MGM to offer more than 150 films to viewers.
Other programming includes several soccer channels, nature and wildlife channels from Blue Ant Media, nine telenovela channels, and seven movie channels. There are also three family channels.
Check out ViX.
WBTV
This new ad-supported service from Warner Bros. Discovery hasn’t yet launched. Details are slim, but it will likely leverage content from Warner Bros., including Max (HBO), Discovery, and Scripps. Warner Bros. Discovery recently licensed hundreds of movies and shows to Roku and Tubi, but those types of deals may end when the free service begins operation. So far, no launch date or content has been announced.
Xumo Play
Xumo Play, a joint venture between Comcast and Charter, is an ad-powered streaming video platform that offers live and on-demand content from more than 300 channels and 10,000 titles across multiple genres, including sports, action and drama, news, kids and family entertainment, live events, comedy, lifestyle, and movies.
Content on Xumo includes news programming (ABC News Live, Bloomberg, CBS News Latest Headlines, LiveNow from Fox); movies from FilmRise, Hallmark, and Crackle; TV shows ranging from classics (“My Favorite Martian”) to kids (“Garfield and Friends”); and sports (CBS Sports HQ, Fox Sports). Movies also run the gamut from older classics (“The Snows of Kilimanjaro”) to modern classics (“Donnie Darko”). The service also has channels created specifically for Black and Latino audiences.
Last summer it struck an exclusive deal with Magnolia Pictures to have Xumo Play stream a new Magnolia movie almost every month, with a three-month exclusive window. Xumo also has some originals (“The Killing of Billy the Kid,” “Andromeda”) and a few exclusives (“The Right Kind of Wrong,” “Alone”) that rotate in and out.
Xumo first partnered with Element Electronics to launch a line of Element 4K Xumo TVs in the U.S., which are sold at Best Buy, Walmart, and a few other retailers. There are also Xumu TVs sold under the Hisense and Pioneer brands.
Earlier, Comcast and Charter announced that they’d be rebranding XClass smart TVs as Xumo TVs. The Flex streaming player will be rebranded as the Xumo Stream Box.
Check out Xumo Play.
More Free Streaming Services to Consider
There are dozens of free ad-supported alternatives to paid streaming services. In fact, most smart TVs either offer their own free services or access to ones on this list directly from the set.
Here are some more options to consider:
• Fawesome.tv is a newer ad-supported streaming service, owned by FutureToday, that offers more than 250 free channels, with movies and series in HD quality across 25 genres, including action, comedy, family and kids, health and lifestyle, horror, and thriller.
• Google TV—available on Chromecast or Android devices or TVs that use the Google TV smart system—offers more than 800 free channels, from new providers such as Tubi, Plex, and Haystack News. They join an existing lineup of free, ad-supported channels from Pluto TV, plus Google’s own free built-in channels. Programming includes streaming news channels from all the major broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC—as well as more than 10 channels in foreign languages, including Spanish, Hindi, and Japanese. Like other so-called FAST (free ad-supported television) services, Google’sLive section uses an old-school cable TV-style menu with TV shows and movies that run at scheduled times, with ads that you can’t skip.
• Haystack News—formerly called Haystack TV—provides local, national, and global news from more than 400 content partners, including ABC News, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance. The company says the service now provides more than 50 live news and weather channels, covering more than 90 percent of local U.S. markets. An expanded partnership with Hearst Television includes the company’s Very Local local news and information channels. A Newsline feature has an interactive news ticker with local news headlines, weather conditions, forecasts and alerts, and stock market data, plus top business, tech, and entertainment stories.
• LG Channels is a free streaming service for LG smart TV owners, with content from both Xumo and Pluto TV. It has more than 300 live and on-demand news, sports, and entertainment channels, which you can access using an integrated program guide. It recently added several new channels, including Free Movies Plus, a 24/7 big-budget movie channel, as well as video-on-demand movies. If you’re using an antenna, free over-the-air channels and Channel Plus options appear together in the same program guide.
• Plex Watch Free is an ad-supported free streaming service from Plex with more than 50,000 on-demand free movies, TV shows, extreme sports films, music documentaries, Bollywood musicals, and more. It has deals for content from Crackle, Lionsgate, Magnolia, MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros., and other studios. Live TV on Plex features about 300 channels across multiple genres. Plex recently started offering a $5-a-month upgrade, called Plex Pass, that works with an antenna to give you live local channels, plus a DVR, the ability to pause and rewind shows, and a program guide. You can also now rent movies, starting at $4
• Samsung TV Plus—a free streaming service available on Samsung smart TVs—offers more than 350 ad-supported channels featuring news, sports, and entertainment, plus thousands of movies and TV shows on demand. A strength is its roster of news channels, including ABC News Live, CBS News, Cheddar News, LiveNow from Fox, NBC News Now, and Newsy, among others. Samsung has also partnered with Bloomberg Media to launch Bloomberg TV+, a 4K business/finance channel, and it has a deal with Vevo for a music-video channel, and with FIFA+ for men’s and women’s soccer games. Last summer it added a Conan O’Brien TV channel, an exclusive deal that brings "Conan" to the platform. Newer content includes an A&E and Pickleball TV channels. All Samsung smart TVs dating back to 2016 are able to access TV Plus.
• Stirr is an ad-supported streaming service launched by local TV broadcaster Sinclair. However, early this year it was sold to Thinking Media, a startup focused on ad-supported content. Stirr offered local content, plus a mix of national news, sports, entertainment, and digital-first channels, as well as a library of on-demand video titles. It had over 100 channels and more than 5,000 hours of programming, but right now there are no longer any live local news channels.
• TCLtv+ is a new free streaming service from TCL that’s exclusive to its smart TVs. Although it’s billed as TCLtv+, on my TCL 6-series Roku TV it’s just called TCL TV Channel. (It’s called TCLtv+ on TCL Google TVs.) It includes more than 300 free, ad-supported channels and an on-demand content library offering more than 1,500 movies and TV shows. The library is buoyed by both independent and major studios, including Scripps Media, NBC Universal, FilmRise, Fremantle, Banijay, and more. More recently, TCL’s deal with the NFL includes bringing the NFL Channel and on-demand programming to the TCLtv+ app. The service is built atop an upgraded version of the IDEO platform, which offers interactive viewing options such as online meal ordering, personalized recipes from virtual chefs, and dynamic summaries and recaps of shows you’re watching. You can find your next binge using the voice-activated remote.
• TiVo+ is available only via TiVo devices, either a TiVo DVR or a TiVo Stream 4K. TiVo+ has more than 160 free channels. The service is powered by several services, including Pluto TV and Tubi. It includes more than 40 channels of TV shows and series, 12 live news channels, and 12 live sports channels, including Major League Baseball. TiVo is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Xperi, the parent company to home entertainment brands, including DTS and Imax Enhanced.
• Vizio WatchFree+, different from Plex’s Watch Free, is an ad-supported streaming service from Vizio and Pluto TV with more than 260 channels, including nine new streaming channels and 150 on-demand films from AMC. It has also added its own roster of channels along with ad-supported video-on-demand titles, so Vizio SmartCast users can now access thousands of on-demand titles, along with hundreds of current WatchFree+ live streaming channels, all with no subscriptions or log-ins. The big news, though, is that Vizio has been purchased by Walmart.
• Vudu’s “Free” section offers a growing selection of free, ad-supported movies and TV shows from a wide range of genres, including action, comedy, horror, kids and family, romance, sci-fi, and more. To access the free content, you’ll need a Vudu account, but you don’t have to provide payment information. The most recent news is that Vudu, part of NBC Universal’s Fandango division, has been renamed Fandango at Home, with the Vudu name going away.
• YouTube’s “Free With Ads” section, found under the Movies & TV heading, has free, ad-supported offerings that are different from those on YouTube Premium, which bundles videos, original movies, TV shows, and music as part of an ad-free plan that costs $14 per month or $120 per year. YouTube’s free TV roster now has about 100 shows, with almost 4,000 episodes in all. As with many of these services, the content lineup changes periodically.
If you need a new streaming player, consider one of these.
James K. Willcox
James K. Willcox leads Consumer Reports’ coverage of TVs, streaming media services and devices, broadband internet service, and the digital divide. He's also a homeowner covering several home improvement categories, including power washers and decking. A veteran journalist, Willcox has written for Business Week, Cargo, Maxim, Men’s Journal, Popular Science, Rolling Stone, Sound & Vision, and others. At home, he’s often bent over his workbench building guitars or cranking out music on his 7.2-channel home theater sound system.
