Disney's struggles to turn its signature streaming service, Disney+, profitable have been well documented. The company has slowly been raising the prices of its various streaming services and today announced the next round of price hikes.
Following the latest earnings report, it was confirmed that Disney will increase the price of its ad-free subscription plans for both Disney+ and Hulu. Beginning October 12, Disney+ with no ads will cost $13.99 per month ($139.99/year) — a massive 27% increase from its current price of $10.99.
Hulu is also getting a steep 20% price hike for its ad-free plan. The price will increase to a whopping $17.99 per month.
Perhaps a bit of good news though, is that the price for both services with ads will stay the same. Both Disney+ and Hulu with ads will cost $7.99/month each.
Disney is also introducing a new premium bundle that combines Disney+ and Hulu with no ads for $19.99 per month. This new plan will launch on September 6 and offer a small savings by subscribing to both of these rather than only one. The timing of this bundle is no accident as Disney plans to roll both Hulu content and Disney+ content into one app later this year.
For those into sports, Disney also offers ESPN+, which is also getting a price increase.
As of right now, here's what the updated pricing will look like for each subscription plan to each of Disney's different streaming services:
Disney+
- With Ads (No Price Change): $7.99/month
- No Ads: $13.99/month (139.99/year)
Hulu
- With Ads (No Price Change): $7.99/month ($79.99/year)
- No Ads: $17.99/month
- Disney+ (With Ads) Add-On (No Change): $2.00/month
- ESPN+ on Hulu Ad-On: $10.99
ESPN+
- With Ads: $10.99/month ($109.99/year)
- UFC PPV (standalone) (No Change): $79.99/per event
- UFC PPV + Annual: $134.98
Bundles
- *NEW* Duo Premium: Disney+ (No Ads), Hulu (No Ads): $19.99/month
- Duo Basic: Disney+ (With Ads), Hulu (With Ads) (No Change): $9.99/month
- Trio Premium: Disney+ (No Ads), Hulu (No Ads), ESPN+ (With Ads): $24.99/month
- Trio Basic: Disney+ (With Ads), Hulu (With Ads), ESPN+ (With Ads): $14.99/month
Hulu + Live TV
- With Ads: $76.99
- No Ads: $89.99
This is the second price hike in as many years for Disney+, which launched in 2019 at a much lower price of just $6.99 per month — nearly half the price of Netflix. After these two latest price hikes, Disney+ is now almost as expensive as Netflix's Standard Plan ($15.49/month).
Iger noted on his call with investors that the company didn't notice a major loss in subscribers as a result of last year's price hike of $3 per month.
“We took a pretty significant price increase at Disney+ sometime late in 2022, and we really didn’t see significant churn or loss of subs because of that, which was actually heartening,” Iger said during Disney’s earnings call on Wednesday. It will be interesting to see how people react to this latest round of hikes though. Iger added that Disney is deliberately trying to steer users toward its ad-supported plans — evidenced by keeping those prices the same — as the advertising landscape for streaming is healthier than traditional linear TV.
Disney reported 146.1 million total Disney+ subscribers, a 7.4% decline from the previous quarter, although the majority of the losses came from its Indian brand Disney+ Hotstar. The actual subscriber loss in the U.S. and Canada was only 1%. Through some effective cost-cutting tactics, Disney managed to lower its streaming losses to $512 million compared to the $1.1 billion loss in the prior-year period.
At this point, with each individual streaming service getting into the double digits for its pricing, households on a budget are going to have to start being much more selective with which platforms they subscribe to. The days of subscribing to everything all at once may be over for many. Or perhaps more people start to gravitate towards the ad-supported plans. Disney added 3.3 million subscribers to its advertising-supported service since it launched in the U.S. in December. And now, about 40% of new Disney+ subscribers sign up for the ad tier.
Do you still plan to continue subscribing to Disney+ and/or Hulu with the new increased pricing?