Disney’s (DIS) new streaming service, Disney+, is set to launch later this November, but it’s already making waves throughout the entertainment industry. With a stellar lineup of proprietary movies and TV shows, not to mention Marvel and Star Wars content on tap, Disney+ has the makings of a surefire success for the entertainment juggernaut
Of course, Disney+ will have some stiff competition in the current streaming king, Netflix (NFLX), as well as Amazon Prime Video (AMZN) and Hulu. Here’s how the four services stack up.
Pricing:
Disney+
Disney came flying out of the gate with guns blazing by announcing that Disney+ will be available for just $6.99 per month or $69.99 a year. That’s a seriously impressive price point when you consider how much content the streaming service will offer. Importantly, Disney is keeping the price for its service low while still keeping it ad-free.
Netflix
The cream of the crop of streaming services, Netflix’s streaming service is a surprisingly low-priced offering. The company’s Basic plan, which gets you watching on one screen at a time, costs $8.99 per month. Meanwhile, the Standard plan, which lets you stream to 2 screens at once and watch HD content, costs $12.99 per month.
Netflix’s Premium plan costs $15.99 per month and lets you stream on 4 screens at up to 4K resolutions.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon’s Prime Video comes with a subscription to the e-commerce giant’s Prime delivery service. You can choose to pay monthly for Prime, which works out to $12.99 per month, or pay $112 for the entire year. If you want to opt for Prime Video on its own, you’ll pay just $8.99 per month.
Hulu
Hulu is the least expensive of the major streaming services, with its ad-supported plan priced at just $5.99 per month. The ad-free version of the service costs $11.99 per month and gets you TV show episodes shortly after they hit the airwaves versus other services, which may make episodes available for streaming months later.
Major shows and movies
Disney+
Outside of Netflix, Disney looks like it’s set to have the most impressive streaming library. Heck, Netflix is even losing shows and movies to Disney, so the House of Mouse might end up being the best streaming service around. First there’s Disney’s own classic animated movies like “The Lion King” and “The Little Mermaid,” then there’s all of the “Star Wars” movies and upcoming “Star Wars” show, not to mention all of the Marvel movies, and Fox’s own originals like “The Simpsons.”
That’s an incredible lineup of movies and shows that makes the price tag seem almost too good to be true. But, Disney will also have to prove that its original shows are worth the price of admission, as well.
Netflix
Netflix has a collection of impressive TV shows and movies to its name including the Oscar-winning “Roma,” “Stranger Things,” “BoJack Horseman,” “Big Mouth,” “Dear White People,” and a slew of others. Add to that a seemingly endless number of third-party shows and movies, and you could probably turn to dust before you finished watching it all in one session.
Amazon Prime Video
Prime Video also has a number of quality shows including “Goliath,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Man in the High Castle,” “Bosch,” “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” and more. The network also has third-party movies and shows for viewing, as well as others that you’ll have to pony up some extra cash to watch.
Hulu
Hulu’s originals include “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Shrill,” “The Path,” “Marvel’s Runaways,” “Pen15,” and others. Its originals haven’t been as strong as Netflix’s or Amazon’s, but it makes up for it by offering new episodes of TV shows before other services. So if you’re trying to keep up with “The Bachelor,” Hulu is the place to be.
Audience size
Disney+
Disney+ hasn’t launched yet, so its audience size is still, well, zero. But the company expects to have somewhere between 60 million and 90 million subscribers by 2024. That’s also around the time Disney says that the service will reach profitability. Many of those subscribers will come from the international market, with just one-third coming from the U.S.
Netflix
The biggest of the bunch, Netflix boasts an international subscriber base of 139 million users. That’s a heck of a lot of people binging shows and ignoring real-world responsibilities. And I for one would like to salute those brave souls.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon is notoriously tightlipped about its Prime subscriber numbers, and even more so about its Prime Video users. The latest numbers available about Prime indicate there are more than 100 million subscribers to the service. Chances are the number for Prime Video subscribers is a fraction of that.
Hulu
Hulu’s subscriber base is far smaller than Netflix’s with just 25 million people signed up for the service. With the announcement that the company was lowering its base ad-supported offering to $5.99 per month, though, those numbers could increase.
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