When Netflix raised its standard plan to $17.99 last year, Maria Gonzalez, a teacher in Phoenix, finally added up every streaming charge on her family’s credit card. The total: $94 a month across five services, or more than $1,100 a year. “That’s what we used to pay for cable,” she said. “The whole point was to spend less.”

Her frustration is common. Multiple industry surveys now place the average American subscriber’s streaming tab between $71 and $83 a month, and federal price data shows those bills climbing faster than almost any other household expense. The silver lining: unlike the old cable bundle, streaming subscriptions are easy to downgrade, pause, or cancel. A few deliberate moves can realistically cut the annual cost in half.

How streaming bills crossed the $1,000 mark

The price squeeze shows up clearly in federal data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks a Consumer Price Index category called “Subscription and rental of video and video games,” which captures recurring streaming charges. According to the BLS monthly CPI tables, that category climbed at roughly double the overall inflation rate over the 12 months ending in early 2026, continuing a pattern that Ars Technica has described as a “meteoric rise.”

Industry surveys attach a dollar figure. A Bango report, based on a 2025 online panel survey of roughly 5,000 U.S. subscribers, found the average monthly bill sits at $77, which works out to $924 a year before taxes or add-ons. Parents pay more: $83.40 a month, or just over $1,000 annually. Separately, Deloitte’s Digital Media Trends survey (the 2025 edition; a 2026 update is expected but has not yet been published) pegged heavy streaming viewers at $71 a month across an average of four services, up from $69 in its prior edition. For comparison, Deloitte placed cable and satellite costs at roughly $125 a month, meaning streaming is closing the gap fast.

The audience absorbing those increases is enormous. A Pew Research Center survey published in mid-2025, the most recent nationally representative estimate available, found that 83% of U.S. adults use at least one streaming service, while far fewer still pay for cable or satellite. When that many households face the same round of price hikes, the ripple through monthly budgets adds up quickly.

Why the exact number is hard to pin down

The $1,000-plus figure is well supported, but it comes with caveats. No single government dataset isolates streaming-only spending at the household level for 2025 or 2026. The Consumer Expenditure Survey covers data through 2024, and the CPI series tracks price changes rather than absolute dollar amounts. How much any given household actually pays depends on the number of services, the tier chosen (ad-supported vs. premium), and whether any subscriptions come bundled free through a wireless or broadband provider.

Bango’s $77 average and Deloitte’s $71 figure also measure slightly different groups. Bango surveys all subscribers, including casual viewers who rarely open certain apps, while Deloitte focuses on self-described fans who actively watch. Neither report breaks out how much goes to ad-supported tiers versus premium plans, a distinction that matters for anyone trying to trim costs. And free, ad-supported platforms like Tubi and Pluto TV do not show up in either number at all, even though millions of viewers rely on them.

Password-sharing crackdowns add pressure

Another factor pushing household bills higher: the industry-wide crackdown on password sharing. Netflix began enforcing its paid-sharing policy in 2023, and by early 2026 Disney+, Max, and others have followed with their own restrictions. Households that once split a single subscription across extended family or friends now face a choice between paying for their own plan or going without. For a family that previously shared two or three services with relatives, the crackdown can add $20 to $40 a month in new charges, accelerating the climb toward that $1,000 annual threshold. The shift also makes strategies like rotating subscriptions and choosing ad-supported tiers more important than ever, because each household now bears the full cost of every service it uses.

Six practical ways to cut your bill in half

No federal agency publishes a guide to lowering your streaming tab, but consumer advocates and personal-finance experts have coalesced around a set of strategies that, combined, can realistically bring an $80-plus monthly bill down to $40 or less.

1. Switch to ad-supported tiers. Nearly every major service now offers a cheaper plan with commercials. Netflix’s ad-supported tier, for instance, runs $7.99 a month compared with $17.99 for the standard ad-free plan. If you subscribe to four services and downgrade each one, the savings alone can shave $20 to $30 off your monthly total.

2. Rotate instead of stacking. Most hit shows drop their full seasons within a few weeks. Subscribe to one or two services at a time, watch what you want, cancel, and move to the next. A household that rotates through four services over the course of a year, two months each, pays for roughly eight subscription-months instead of 48.

3. Look for bundle deals. Disney+, Hulu, and Max now offer a combined bundle at a discount. Verizon, T-Mobile, and other carriers frequently include streaming perks with wireless or broadband plans. Before you pay list price for anything, check whether your phone or internet provider already covers it.

4. Pay annually when you can. Several services, including Disney+, Hulu, and Peacock, offer annual billing at a discount equivalent to one or two free months. If there is a platform you know you will keep all year, prepaying locks in a lower effective rate and removes the temptation to let a monthly charge quietly renew.

5. Audit your subscriptions quarterly. It is easy to forget about a service you signed up for during a free trial. Set a calendar reminder every three months to review active subscriptions and cancel anything you have not opened in 30 days. The built-in subscription managers on iPhones and Google Play make this a two-minute task.

6. Use free, legal alternatives for casual viewing. Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, and library-linked services like Kanopy carry thousands of movies and older TV series at no cost. For households where not every viewer needs the latest prestige drama, these can replace one or two paid subscriptions entirely.

Applied together, these moves can bring a typical four-service household from roughly $80 a month down to $35 to $45, depending on which platforms you keep and which tiers you choose. That translates to $400 to $500 in annual savings, enough to cut the streaming bill roughly in half.

Streaming price hikes are not slowing down, but neither are subscriber options

Every major streamer has announced or implemented at least one price increase since the start of 2025, and analysts at MoffettNathanson expect another round of hikes across the industry before the end of 2026. At the same time, the number of ad-supported tiers, promotional bundles, and free alternatives available to consumers has never been larger. The gap between what a passive subscriber pays and what an informed one pays is widening with each rate change. Households that treat their streaming lineup the way they once treated a cable package, signing up and never looking back, will keep drifting toward that $1,000-plus annual mark. Those willing to revisit the lineup once a quarter stand to keep hundreds of dollars a year in their pockets, not the streamers’.