Hulu has announced that it will raise the prices of both its ad-supported and ad-free tiers of its service for new and existing customers starting on October 8.
For Hulu ad-supported customers, the new price of the service will be $6.99 per month – up from $5.99 per month – while ad-free customers should expect to pay $12.99 per month (up from $11.99 per month).
It’s not a sizable increase – both tiers are only getting a $1 per month price hike – but it does put the streaming service in a strange predicament. For one, Hulu ad-free is now almost the same cost as the Hulu, Disney Plus and ESPN+ combo deal that runs $13.99 a month, making it almost worth converting for the additional content.
The price hike also means that an ad-free subscription of Hulu is almost the same cost of Netflix’s Standard Plan that costs $13.99 per month. You’ll still save a substantial amount by watching the service with ads, but it’s now a tougher decision for folks who don’t want to watch ads.
Analysis: The price of streaming creeps ever higher
While this is an unfortunate situation for subscribers, it’s not entirely unexpected. Streaming services like Hulu are always upping their costs to keep up with inflating content budgets.
If there’s a silver lining to the price hikes, it’s that it won’t affect customers signed up for Hulu with Live TV who have been paying $65 per month since the last price hike in December, and we probably won’t see another hike like this for at least another six months.
The bad news? Well, if you subscribed to a number of services like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus and others to escape the cost of cable, you might find that your new monthly bills are starting to look a lot closer to your old one.
Streaming will always be the preferred way to watch content for cord cutters, but the rising costs of streaming are making it a less-compelling option than it was a few years ago.
