One among all streaming services stands tall as the most cost-effective

Here’s a thought: while we could sit here all day arguing about which among all streaming services provides the most value for money based on personal preferences or overall quality – most probably not arriving to any conclusion in particular – there’s another metric, cost effectiveness, that’s considerably easier to quantify. The most cost-effective streaming service would be the one featuring the highest number of movies or TV shows to watch “per dollar” of its monthly subscription cost. Variety aside, the amount of content offered while taking access cost into account should point to the most “bang for the buck” streaming service currently available.

So the good folks at digital marketing agency Searchbloom did just that: they analyzed historical data for the top 10 streaming services available in the US and sourced the cheapest subscription prices from Kaggle (as well as the current number of titles available on each service from JustWatch), to discover which is the most cost-effective one, i.e. which one offers the highest number of titles per US dollar.

Rank	Service	Start Price (USD)	End Price (USD)	Avg. Price Increase per Year	Catalogue Size	Titles per USD
1	Prime Video	8.99	11.99	3.8%	17,265	1,440
2	Netflix	7.99	15.49	5.4%	8,023	518
3	Peacock	9.99	11.99	5.3%	5,403	450
4	Disney Plus	6.99	13.99	18.1%	2,742	196
5	Crunchyroll	7.99	7.99	0.0%	1,524	191
6	Hulu	11.99	17.99	5.0%	2,835	157
7	HBO Max	14.99	15.99	1.8%	1,854	116
8	Paramount Plus	9.99	11.99	2.0%	840	70
9	Shudder	5.99	6.99	2.2%	459	66
10	Apple TV Plus	4.99	9.99	18.1%	238	23.8

Well, the table included in this article leaves little room for doubt – and it’s not even close: Amazon Prime Video ranks first, offering 1.440 titles per US dollar. Its 2024 subscription price is $11.99 (reflecting an average annual increase of 3.8% since its 2016 launch at $8.99) but, with a catalogue of 17.265 titles, it boasts the largest selection on the list by far. Netflix comes in second place, providing 518 titles per US dollar, nearly three times fewer than Prime Video. The platform currently offers 8.023 titles for a subscription cost of $15.49 (up from $7.99 when it debuted in 2011). Over the past 12 years Netflix has increased prices no less than three times, averaging one every three years and two months.

Peacock takes the third spot, delivering 450 titles per US dollar: priced at $11.99, Peacock’s catalogue includes 5.403 titles. The service’s average annual price has increased by 5.3% since its introduction (from $9.99 to $11.99 over three and a half years), with an adjustment happening approximately every 21 months. Further down the list, Disney Plus takes fourth place offering 196 titles per US dollar in a catalogue of 2.742 titles total. Its current subscription price is $13.99 per month – a significant jump from the initial $6.99 at launch back in 2019, reflecting an average annual increase of no less than 18.1%.

The top five closes with Crunchyroll, with 191 titles per dollar. Notably, Crunchyroll is the only streaming service on this list that has maintained its original price of $7.99 since its launch in August 2020. Paramount Plus, HBO Max and Apple TV Plus are, as expected, way less effective than the five leading services since they have gradually increased their prices to comparable levels while featuring much smaller content libraries.

Again (as stated at the beginning of this story), content quality, content variety and audiovisual quality are deliberately left out of this particular comparison – and, to some people, those may mean more than content quantity in terms of value – but for consumers who put “bang for the buck” above everything else when it comes to streaming services, Prime Video currently reigns supreme. What’s more, it doesn’t look like this will be changing anytime soon. Will that matter in terms of consumer choice between the various streaming services on offer, especially long-term? Only time will tell.