Less than one year after Hulu jacked up the price of its Hulu with Live TV subscription package, the streaming service is preparing to put another dent in customers’ wallets by raising prices once again.
Beginning on Oct. 8, anyone who subscribes to one of Hulu’s on-demand plans, Hulu and Hulu with No Ads, will be subjected to a $1 increase, TechCrunch reports, which more or less sounds like a pittance when you recall that the price of Hulu’s Live TV bundles increased by a whopping $10 apiece last year. What that means in practice is that the ad-supported version of Hulu will now cost $7 per month, up from $6, while Hulu with No Ads will cost $13 per month, up from $12.
Thankfully, Hulu’s Live TV bundles have not been subject to any price hikes this year, probably because making them any more expensive would further erode what little artifice is left to the idea that cutting the cord is in any way cheaper than buying a cable package.
Notably, the planned price hikes also won’t affect any plan where Hulu is bundled with Disney+. Disney—which assumed full ownership of Hulu in 2019 after it bought out Comcast’s stake—is likely doing this on purpose in order to incentivize customers who don’t require live TV to shell out for a package that includes its own flagship streaming product. The package that combines Hulu with Disney+ and ESPN+, for example, costs $14 per month—just $1 more than Hulu with No Ads will cost after the price hike goes into effect next month.
In its third-quarter earnings report last month, Disney announced that while Hulu still trails Disney+ in subscribers, it actually leads in average monthly revenue per user. Hulu’s subscription on-demand video service has also grown to 39.1 million subscribers, per the report, and its Live TV option, which bundles its live and linear programming, has 3.7 million subscribers, leading to a grand total of 42.8 million total subscribers—up 21% year-over-year.
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