Is your live TV streaming service still worth it? I reassessed the options for us both

Live TV streaming services were designed to disrupt the cable monopoly. And for a while, it looked like the plan was working.

Cable companies, no longer blessed with monopoly power, are losing millions of customers every year. But the cord-cutting alternatives that were supposed to save us have been raising prices steadily, and today the price of a live TV streaming service is nearly as high as one of those old cable bills.

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Take YouTube TV, for example. At its launch in 2017, Google’s live TV streaming service cost a mere $35 a month. Since then, Google has raised prices every year. By the time I signed up in early 2020, the price had crept up to $50 a month. The latest price increase, which takes effect in January 2025, will raise the cost of the base plan to $83, plus an extra $10 for the 4K add-on. For the base plan alone, that’s a 66% increase in five years.

That price increase got me asking questions:

• Am I really getting my money’s worth out of that $90-plus subscription?
• Are any competitors offering a better deal?
• What happens if I decide to just cut out my live TV streaming service altogether?

The competition

For customers in the US, there are currently six live TV streaming services to choose from. Each one works using an app on a streaming device or smart TV platform. Subscribers choose a plan that offers some combination of basic and premium cable channels, local broadcast channels, and regional sports networks, along with DVR capabilities so you can pause live TV and record shows to watch later.

ZDNET has already done the work of assembling the available choices. I reviewed each one of those services three years ago and decided to take a fresh look in 2025 to see what’s changed.

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Four of those services offer strikingly similar lineups at prices that are nearly identical: between $82 and $87 a month, before add-ons. The other two are noticeably cheaper, so that’s where I started, working from least to most expensive.

Philo

You get what you pay for

At a mere $28 a month for 70+ channels, this service seems like a genuine bargain. You also get access to the AMC+ library and another 100+ free ad-supported channels. (You can see the whole lineup in Philo’s channel guide.)

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If you just want something to watch, Philo has plenty to offer, but its offering is too lean for me. It keeps costs low by not paying to carry the most expensive cable channels, so you won’t find The Weather Channel, for example, or any of the three big US-based cable news networks: CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. (The only news is via BBC World News.) Philo also doesn’t include any local channels or regional sports networks, which means no weekend sports.

Philo offers only stereo sound (all of the other streaming services in this list deliver at least some content in 5.1 surround sound). On-demand playback is in full HD (1080p), but live TV is available only in 720p. I’ll pass.

Sling TV

A bargain, but with some rough edges

Sling TV (ZDNET’s choice as “best budget TV streaming service overall“) is available in your choice of two basic packages, Orange and Blue, for $46 per month. Both offerings have a collection of extremely basic channels that include CNN. The Orange tier (billed as “Sports and Family”) adds the Disney Channel and all the (Disney-owned) ESPN options. The Blue tier (“News and Entertainment”) has a solid basic cable lineup that includes MSNBC, Fox News, FX, Bravo, and the like. But don’t let the name fool you — it also includes a fair amount of sports-related programming, including Fox Sports 1 and the NFL Network.

For $61 a month, you can get a Blue+Orange combo that includes everything from both packages.

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The one wildcard in Sling TV’s offering is local TV channels, where availability depends on your home market. No one gets CBS or PBS, but in some cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, for example), the Sling Blue package includes ABC, Fox, and NBC channels. In Detroit, you get no local channels at all. In my hometown, Sling offers only the local ABC affiliate. If local channels are important, check your area’s coverage at the Sling TV Help Center.

My biggest hesitation with Sling TV is its user interface, which has more than its share of rough edges and annoyances. To sign in for the first time on a new TV, you have to enter your username and password — a tedious task with a remote control. Most competing services allow you to sign in by scanning a QR code or using a web browser on another device.

Sling also displays ads whenever you hit the pause button while playing back a recording or watching TV. You can turn that feature off, but it’s annoying. During playback, the skip buttons (back 10 seconds, forward 30 seconds) were glitchy enough to give me pause.

I suppose all those tiny annoyances can be fixed, but will they? Sling TV is owned by Dish Network, which tried to sell itself to rival DirecTV last September for the princely sum of $1. The deal fell apart, which makes one wonder.

Still, that $46 price tag for Sling Blue is literally half what YouTube TV charges, for a package that has a lot of what I need. That’s potentially a winning formula, even with those rough edges.

Fubo TV

The sports fanatic’s clear choice

The tagline for FuboTV is “watch live sports and TV without cable.” That’s a pretty accurate description, not surprising as this network started out as a service designed to deliver European fútbol to a sports-hungry overseas audience (fútbol, Fubo, get it?). The $80-a-month base package includes 202 channels, with a genuinely impressive collection of sports-related content. The user interface and DVR features are slick and clean.

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The biggest knock on Fubo is the long list of missing channels. With a subscription, you won’t get AMC, BBC America, TBS, PBS, CNN, the Food Network, or any of a dozen more channels owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks.

If you want to watch 4K broadcasts, you need to upgrade to the Elite or Deluxe plans, at $90 and $110, respectively. Those plans also require a $15 monthly fee for regional sports networks — that’s eerily reminiscent of what your cable network used to do.

Are any of those issues dealbreakers? If you’re a sports fanatic, probably not. But for everyone else, there are better choices.

Hulu + Live TV

A solid service at a fair price

Technically, Hulu’s Live TV package costs a tiny bit less than YouTube TV, at $82 a month. But nobody in their right mind pays that price. Instead, most people will pay $1 a month more for a bundle that includes the live TV streaming, the Hulu library of movies and TV shows, and access to two additional premium channels, Disney+ and ESPN+, all in an ad-supported format. For another $13 a month, you can ditch the ads on Hulu and Disney+. If you were already going to pay $10 or $19 a month for a Hulu or Hulu ad-free package, that makes the net price for live TV $73 or $77, which is a relative bargain — at least until the next price increase.

I had to put together a spreadsheet to figure out the differences in channel lineups between YouTube TV and Hulu with Live TV. The basic lineup is nearly identical, with only a few differences. YouTube TV does not offer A&E, Bloomberg TV, FYI, History, Lifetime, Lifetime Movie Network, MLB Network, Accuweather, and Boomerang; if you have Hulu with Live TV, you won’t be able to watch Accuweather, AMC, BBC America, BBC World News, IFC, NBA TV, Sundance TV, Tastemade, or WE tv.

The Hulu interface mixes live TV in with all the other Hulu content. Three years ago, that design was more cluttered than the alternatives and a bit confusing. Today, with the increased blurring of the lines between streaming services and live TV, it’s cutting edge. And there’s only one package to choose from, with minimal add-ons, upsells, and extras.

YouTube TV

The slickest interface, but increasingly pricey

YouTube TV (ZDNET’s choice as “best live TV streaming service overall“) offers a simple but sophisticated user experience and has probably the easiest, cleanest, fastest commercial-skipping option of any service I tried: Tap the Fast Forward button to skip ahead 15 seconds, with a freeze-frame thumbnail showing you exactly where you’ve landed. Need to skip ahead two minutes? Tap that button eight times and you’re there, with no pauses or glitches — at least on my set. It also has the best picture quality of any of its rival services, although that’s a purely subjective judgment on my part.

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At $83 a month for the Base Plan, YouTube TV is competitive with its rivals in the premium tier. There’s an option to pay $10 extra every month for a limited amount of 4K programming, which also includes the ability to download DVR’ed shows for offline viewing on mobile devices. That add-on might be worth it if you watch live sports in 4K, but otherwise don’t expect to see a lot of 4K content.

YouTube TV is fairly priced, and it has a channel lineup that is just as good as whatever your local cable company offers. Just be aware that the price is going to go up next year, and the year after, and the year after…

DirecTV Stream

The closest thing to cable

DirecTV Stream (formerly known as AT&T TV Now) is the closest thing you can get to a cable network without actually having to plug something into a decoder box next to your TV. And despite its heritage, there’s no satellite dish needed, either; this is a pure over-the-top service.

Like cable companies, DirecTV Stream offers multiple packages; the base package is a pricey $90 a month, but it includes the CSPAN and CSPAN2 networks, which aren’t on any other streaming service. Want more channels? You can go all the way to a cable-worthy $198 a month, which includes a bunch of premium channels like Max and Paramount+ with Showtime. Like the cable company, there are all sorts of required fees, including a mandatory $18 a month regional sports fee if you choose anything above the basic Entertainment package.

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Three years ago, I turned down the chance to even try DirecTV Stream’s free five-day trial because, back then, the service wouldn’t allow customers to cancel online. Instead, you were required to call and talk to a DirecTV representative. Thankfully, you can now cancel your plan with a single click. But unless you’re a fan of live debates in the US Congress, there’s not much to justify the higher prices.

So, what did I choose?

Years of disruption in the TV streaming business have completely changed the way I watch TV, and I suspect I’m not alone.

I rarely watch prime-time network shows (what NBC used to call “Must See TV”) anymore. If something earth-shattering is happening in the world, I’m just as likely to look for information online as I am to tune in to CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. Every so often, there’s a new series on FX or AMC, but those moments are becoming increasingly rare as other streaming services expand their offerings.

Mostly, I tune in to live TV because there’s a sports event I’m interested in watching as it happens, especially during playoff season for any major sport or for big events like the World Cup or the Olympics. But those occasions are also few and far between.

I was tempted by Sling TV Blue. I could have added a bit of extra hardware from Tablo or AirTV to grant me access to local network channels, but those options meant extra complexity and hassle. Ultimately, I settled for Hulu with Live TV. I’m already paying for Hulu, and the Live TV add-on comes at a meaningful discount over the alternatives.

What do you get with each live TV streaming service?

The most popular streaming services, like Netflix and Hulu, offer extensive libraries of movies and TV shows for on-demand playback. Live TV services, by contrast, deliver linear content on predefined channels, using schedules that you access via a live program guide.

In general, every live TV streaming service offers some combination of the following features:

• Basic cable channels. These are the bread and butter of every live TV streaming service. The list includes networks like CNN, The Weather Channel, AMC, and HGTV. There’s lots of overlap, but each service has a unique lineup, based on deals with the content providers.
• Local channels. Some services include access to channels in your area that broadcast over the air and are affiliated with the major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) and PBS.
• Live sports channels. Sports fans need to look carefully at the lineup for each service, which typically includes Fox’s FS1 and FS2, ESPN and ESPN2, and perhaps some regional sports networks. Some premium sports channels (MLB Network and NFL Red Zone, for example) might require paying for an add-on.
• DVR capabilities. Every service lets you record individual shows or series for watching later. Some include unlimited storage space, while others require a paid upgrade to increase storage beyond a basic amount.
• Options to add premium channels. Some services offer the option to add premium services (Max, Starz, Hallmark+, and so on) for an extra fee.

Just to make things confusing, the lines between streaming services are becoming increasingly blurry. Some basic cable channels are now available in standalone apps. Local channels also have new options. With the Paramount+ app, for example, I can stream my local CBS channel live and watch the latest CBS shows on demand. Peacock TV offers similar access to local NBC affiliates and network content.

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I can watch anything from my local PBS affiliate using the PBS app on my smart TV — no subscription required.

If you want to compare the channel lineups for these services, go to our sister site CNET, where you’ll find a regularly updated big chart comparing the top 100 channels available on each service.