It depends on the mix, but an American household with four services at the ad-free tier typically pays $55 to $70 a month, or $660 to $840 a year. The same four with ads run about $30 to $35 a month. Pick your services above to see your own number.
Free tool
Streaming cost calculator
Tap the services you pay for, pick the tier, and see the real monthly and yearly bill, what each hour of watching costs you, and what rotating would save.
Used for the cost per hour. Be generous or brutal, the number will tell you either way.
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$0 a year, across 0 services
$0.00per hour watched
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Rotate instead. Keep the services you open every week and buy the rest one month at a time. How many would you keep?
Approximate US list prices, August 2026, rounded to the dollar. Bundles, annual plans, and taxes will move your real bill a few dollars either way.
Why the bill creeps
Four small charges add up to a cable bill
Nobody decides to spend $70 a month on streaming. It happens one service at a time: a free trial for one show, a bundle that was cheaper than the two parts, a subscription someone else in the house added. Each charge is small enough to ignore, which is exactly why the total never gets looked at. The average American household now pays for three or four services at once, and the ad-free tiers push the combined bill toward $60 to $80 a month.
The cost per hour is the number worth knowing. Most households watch 70 to 80% of their hours on two services, even when they pay for five. Divide your bill by the hours you really watch and the third and fourth services often cost more per hour than a cinema ticket. That is the case for rotation: keep the one or two you open every week, and buy the others for a month when they have something you want, then cancel on day one so it does not auto-renew.
The part people skip is checking what a service has before paying for it. Licences move constantly, and the show you subscribed for last year may have left. Limelight shows where any movie or show is streaming in your country on its title page, and your watchlist tells you how much of it each service is carrying, so the month you pay for is the month with the most to watch. The streaming guide goes deeper on what each service is good at, and the service audit walks through a cancel-and-rotate plan.
Questions
About streaming costs
They are approximate US list prices checked in August 2026 and rounded to the dollar. Services change plans often, bundles and annual billing lower the effective price, and taxes vary by state, so treat the total as a close estimate rather than your exact bill.
Keeping one or two services you use every week and subscribing to the others one month at a time, only when they have something you want to watch. Because most households watch most of their hours on two services, rotation usually cuts the bill by a third to a half without giving anything up.
Look it up before subscribing. Limelight shows where any movie or show is streaming in your country on its title page, and your watchlist shows how much of it each service carries, so you can pay for the month that has the most to watch.
Keep reading
Spend less, watch more
Know what's available before you pay
Limelight shows where every title on your watchlist is streaming in your country, so each month goes to the service with the most to watch. Free on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
