Just a day before Disney Plus’s new Australian pricing tiers have locked in, yet another Aussie streaming service has seen fit to hike prices. Stan, the very first Australian-owned streaming platform, has recently pushed the price of its Basic subscription up by an extra AU$2, so you’ll now have to fork out AU$12 per month for its cheapest plan. For now, that price increase thankfully only applies to new sign ups.
This is the fourth major streaming service since the start of the year to hike up its prices here in Australia following BritBox, Kayo Sports and Disney Plus, but surprisingly, there’s very little information about Stan’s price hike in comparison to the others.
Kayo Sports and Disney Plus have both completely reworked their subscription tiers, with Kayo even finally adding 4K streaming for sports fans, with that new capability due to hit the platform sometime later this month. What's perhaps most notable about Stan's decision is that, unlike some of the other best streaming services, this is the streamer's very first price jump for the Basic subscription tier since its debut way back in 2015 – so it’s arguably held out the longest when it comes to raising prices.
Thankfully though, it appears that current Stan subscribers on the Basic plan aren't being charged the extra AU$2 at this time, but this might change at a later date.
Is Stan still good value for money?
At this stage, it appears that only the cheapest tier has seen a price hike, though this does follow a price rise for the Stan Sports add-on that saw a AU$5 jump in 2023, and now costs AU$15 per month. Up until this price rise, Stan had been one of the more affordable options for ad-free streaming, though you only get one SD stream in this cheapest Basic tier.
For HD streams, you still need to opt for either the Standard or Premium plans, both of which offer up multiple streams and access to 4K video quality on the most expensive plan. These plans haven’t gone up in price, still costing AU$16 and AU$21 per month respectively, but they’re more in line with what other big-name streaming services are charging.
Netflix's pricing, for example, starts at AU$16.99 per month for ad-free viewing with only two concurrent streams. Stan gives you three for its similarly priced option, but Netflix does boast a larger library, with the global streaming giant offering over 1,800 shows at any time, compared to Stan’s 860 plus.
Stan still has a fantastic catalogue despite it's smaller size – in the library, you can find massive hits like Bump, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Yellowstone, Fargo and even select seasons of Doctor Who. Stan also boasts a pretty stellar movie catalogue, with the original 1984 version of Dune, American Hustle, Dog and The Whale all available for subscribers regardless of tier. There’s a large variety of genres to choose from, including family-friendly titles like Paw Patrol, Octonauts and Sabrina The Teenage Witch as well.
While it competes with Binge to be the top Aussie streaming platform, it still holds its own against global offerings like Apple TV Plus or Amazon Prime Video, though Prime’s value for money is potentially streets ahead of any other subscription service when you consider all the shopping perks included in the AU$9.99 per month / AU$79 per year cost.
Whether Stan is good value for money really comes down to necessity – it's still one of the more affordable streamers on a month-to-month cost with its AU$12 Basic plan, but you are limited to that one SD stream. If nothing else, Stan does still boast one of the longest free trial periods, so you can test it out for a full 30-days, whereas most other streamers only offer up to 7-days or no free trial at all, as is the case with Disney Plus and Netflix.
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