Streaming has grown so crowded that the services now come close to outnumbering TV channels. Esther Zuckerman, writing in the Journal's Off Duty section, offers a way through it. She pairs each big streamer with a smaller one you may not know. Many have big libraries, and a few are a little cheaper. Here are her six, with the prices.
The family picks come first. If your house runs on Disney+, Crunchyroll is the stand-in, from $9.99 a month. It's the home of anime, with more than 2,000 series, and plenty are fine for kids, like Sailor Moon and One Piece. If you pay for Paramount+ for its American shows, BritBox does the same from across the pond, from $10.99 a month. Think Agatha Christie's Poirot, Father Brown, Downton Abbey and the Jane Austen riff The Other Bennet Sister. If you like the PBS app, Kino Film Collection is the cheapest of the six, from $5.99 a month. It streams documentaries from the distributor Kino Lorber, including last year's Oscar winner Mr. Nobody Against Putin.
The other three
Mubi is the Netflix (NFLX) swap, from $14.99 a month, and the priciest on the list. It's the streaming arm of the film company behind The Substance and Die My Love, and it carries David Lynch's Twin Peaks. The Criterion Channel, from $10.99, is the HBO Max swap for people who like their movies curated. It puts together new themed lineups on a regular basis. Shudder, from $7.99, is the horror shelf, for anyone who keeps Peacock mostly for scary movies. All six entry prices together come to $60.94 a month, by our arithmetic. Over twelve months, that adds up to about $731.
Our read
This is a Cash Flow · M5 story. Zuckerman's list is a buying guide, and we'd read it as a swap guide. The streaming bill is the classic slow leak. Each service is a small number. Few people cancel, because each one has one show somebody in the house likes. Six small numbers became about $731 a year on this list alone, before Netflix, Disney (DIS) and the rest you already pay for. The rule we like is one in, one out.
The thing in your own plan this story touches is the subscriptions line on your card statement, which most people have never added up. This week, pull one month's statement, highlight every streaming charge, and total it. Then pick the one service nobody watched last month. Cancel it before you add BritBox or Crunchyroll. If Crunchyroll can replace Disney+ for your kids, that's a swap, and the bill doesn't grow. If you'd like a hand finding the other small leaks, bring that statement to your next review.