Hulu drops base price from $8 to $6 per month
Hot on the heels of Netflix's price increase, Hulu's cheapest plan gets cheaper. As long as you're OK with ads.
- Although still awaiting his Oscar for Best Picture Reviewer, David does hold certifications from the Imaging Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology on display calibration and evaluation.
It's now cheaper than ever to stream Hulu originals like The Handmaid's Tale.
The price of streaming TV is changing all the time, and Hulu's latest price adjustments are bringing the price up... and also down.
It all depends on which flavor of Hulu you want to subscribe to.
- The cheapest Hulu plan, with ads, is going down by $2 per month, from $8 to $6
- The ad-free Hulu plan price remains the same at $12
- The cost of Hulu's Live TV plan is going up by $5, from $40 to $45
Hulu's $2 price drop for its cheapest plan, which offers Hulu's on-demand catalog of network and cable shows and movies as well as Hulu originals such as The Mindy Project and The Handmaid's Tale, matches the $2 price increase just instituted by Netflix on its most popular plan, the one with HD video quality and two simultaneous streams. It went up from $11 per month to $13 in the US.
One big difference between the two? Hulu's cheapest plan makes you watch ads while Netflix is entirely ad-free. To get the ad-free version of Hulu you'll have to pony up twice as much: $12 per month.
Hulu's live TV plan offers a slate of national and local channels designed to replace traditional cable TV -- and also includes the entire Hulu on-demand library including the ads. It follows price changes at competitors too. Last year all of the major live TV streamers bumped up the prices of their cheapest plans, including Sling TV (now $25), DirecTV Now, YouTube TV (both now $40) and PlayStation Vue (now $45).
The Hulu price changes go into effect Feb. 26.
The $6 price matches some past promotions, including during several months in 2018. They typically lasted for a year before reverting to the standard $8 price. Hulu's best promotional price, however, offered the service for $1 per month for a year last Black Friday.
Price drops and promotions often coincide with increased subscriber counts, and like every other streaming service, Hulu is striving to catch up to the "big N." Hulu recently announced an increase of 8 million subscribers across all of its devices in 2018, bringing its total subscriber base to 25 million. That total still lags far behind Netflix, which had 137 million members worldwide at the end of September.
Disclaimer: CNET may get a share of revenue from the sale of products featured on this page.
What we know about the Disney+ streaming service: It's getting ready to rival Netflix.
Culture: Your hub for everything from film and television to music, comics, toys and sports.