FAMILIES could save over £800 a year by switching around streaming services rather than keeping them all going at the same time.
Subscriptions are getting increasingly expensive at a time when households are feeling the pinch and trying to cut back on spending.
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Netflix axed its basic £6.99 plan for new and rejoining subscribers in June, while anyone sharing their account will have to pay more following a crackdown by the provider.
And Youtube Premium has just increased its price for UK customers by £1, from £11.99 to £12.99.
A survey by Vision Express in May this year found adults typically spend £500 a year on various subscription services.
New research for The Sun has found running six of the most popular TV streaming services – Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, Apple One and Youtube Premium – for a year would now cost a family almost £1,000.
But households could save £829 – 80% of that cost – by swapping the services throughout the year instead of running them all together, according to calculations by broker AJ Bell for The Sun.
Binging your favourite content on each of the six services for two months at a time would cost just £165.80 over the course of a year.
The cost of running Netflix, for example, is £15.99 for a family for one month. So, running this for two months would cost £31.98.
But if a family kept Netflix for the whole year, it would cost £191.88.
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The most expensive streaming service, Apple One, which includes the popular Apple TV, costs £275.40 for a family to run for the whole year.
But it costs just £22.95 a month, or £45.90 for two months.
Disney Plus, one of the cheaper streaming services on offer, is £95.88 for an annual family plan, or just £7.99 if you pay monthly.
Letting the subscription end after two months and moving on to another service would land you with a bill of just £15.98.
For individual subscriptions, running the six services for a year would cost around £779, while opting to use each for two months at a time would save £649 of that cost.
Running Youtube Premium for one person for a year costs £155.88, while running it for two months costs a more manageable £25.98.
Laura Suter, head of personal finance at AJ Bell, said: “We’ve all been guilty of signing up to a subscription and then not using it, or signing up to a free trial and forgetting to cancel it.
“And the pandemic meant lots of us added more streaming services, which we’re now realising cost a lot each month.
“You might not think that saving £8 or £9 a month will help with your budget, but these figures highlight how cancelling a few different services can really add up over time.”
How can I cancel my streaming subscription?
How quickly you can cancel a subscription depends on whether you already pay monthly or if you’ve paid an annual fee up front.
If you pay monthly, you can simply cancel each account to end of the four week period and choose which service you want to subscribe to each month going forward.
Ms Suter explains: “Lots of services allow you to cancel at a month’s notice or less, meaning you can just focus your attention on one streaming platform at a time, binge watch all the content you want and then move on to the next one.”
However, if you cancel an account with an annual subscription, you’ll usually continue to be billed until the subscription period is over and you’ll still be able to use the services until then.
For example, Netflix and Disney Plus say your subscription will expire at the end of your billing period if you choose to cancel.
If you are on an annual subscription and don’t want to continue, make sure to cancel it well ahead of time to avoid automatically being enrolled for another year.
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