The 10 Best Streaming Services Ranked

"Have you seen the new show?" goes the classic Tumblr post. "It's on Tubu. It's literally on Heebee. It's on Poodee with ads. It's literally on Dippy. You can probably find it on Weeno. Dude it's on Gumpy. It's a Pheebo original. It's on Poob. You can watch it on Poob." The meme goes on like that for a while, and it's one of the seminal texts of our age, expertly satirizing the seemingly-infinite number of streaming services that feel like they're overwhelming us with choices. At the same time, a lot of them seem oddly empty, offering buzz-less originals no one's ever heard of and paltry historical libraries filled with movies you probably have no interest in watching.

Yes, these days, keeping up with pop culture requires subscribing to an astonishing number of services with increasingly-nonsensical names. Is it worth signing up just to watch the one show everyone's talking about this week? What if you have no idea what you want to watch? It's easy to lose hours browsing through hard-to-navigate apps, just waiting for something to catch your eye. Plus, they all seem to be raising their prices all the time, leading to a whole different meme that asks some variation of, "Remind me how this was supposed to save us money compared to cable?"

Fear not; we're here to help navigate the streaming landscape. Below, we've ranked the ten best streaming services, surveying their prices and offerings in an effort to determine which ones are worthwhile.

Look, we all know Netflix has problems. The original king of the streaming landscape started off as a DVD-rental service where you could get any movie sent to you in the mail, and nowadays you can barely use it to watch anything made before 1990. Streaming was supposed to offer infinite choice, but libraries are ever-shrinking in favor of endless originals that the service fails to adequately promote. It's an onslaught of content, a firehose aimed directly at your face.

Still, Netflix occasionally breaks through with something very much worth watching. Plus, while the movies they produce in-house are often lacking — for example, "The Electric State" is Netflix's most expensive movie ever, and one of its worst — the site does a pretty good job picking up worthwhile titles each awards season. Over the last few years, Netflix has launched films like "Society of the Snow," "His Three Daughters," "All Quiet on the Western Front," "The Power of the Dog," "tick, tick... BOOM!," "Glass Onion," and more to great acclaim. Sure, we can squabble about whether these movies would've played better in theaters, but they're all great films that justify a Netflix subscription.

What really drags Netflix down is the cost. It's currently $24.99 for the plan that will let you watch in 4K without ads, which is much, much higher than its competitors. It does feel like a bubble headed for a pop, but in the meantime, cue up "Temptation Island" and turn off your brain.

Paramount+ began its life as CBS All Access, a streaming service devoted to stuff that aired on network television. Thanks to a corporate merger situation that brought Viacom and more under the Paramount umbrella, the service was rebranded in 2021 and given a facelift, leaving us with the Paramount+ we know today. This is still the place to go if you're a fan of CBS competition shows; new episodes of "Survivor" hit Paramount+ as soon as they've aired on television, and you need Paramount+ if you want to watch the 24/7 live feeds that make up the online component of "Big Brother." You'll find "The Amazing Race," "RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars," and more here, too.

In recent years, Paramount+ has expanded its original offerings. This was the home of the since-ended, always-excellent "Good Wife" spinoff "The Good Fight," and they've launched several live-action "Star Trek" shows to great success. Various new shows in Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone" universe have helped bump subscriber numbers, as have a host of buzzy true-crime documentaries. 

Where Paramount+ really shines, however, is its library of films. Thanks to an optional "Paramount+ with Showtime" add-on — which still only brings the service to $12.99 a month — the streamer offers a great selection of classic titles. Paramount is, after all, one of the last great Hollywood studios, and they've got decades of hits available to watch at your leisure. Unfortunately, the interface is fairly clunky.

While a lot of streaming services are focused on giving you anything and everything in hopes that something sticks, Disney+ is devoted to giving subscribers more of what they already know they like. In addition to its expansive library of nearly every film Disney has ever put out, the service offers numerous originals that expand on various properties that the mega-corporation now owns. You'll find tons of Marvel shows here, as well as numerous shows that expand on the "Star Wars" universe.

Unfortunately, that approach to storytelling hampers the potential for what Disney+ could be. Most of those "Star Wars" shows are prequels, little stories that fill in the gaps of things we've already seen, instead of exploring what should be a galaxy full of possible stories to tell. The Marvel shows, too, have become increasingly-niche, nothing close to the appointment viewing that the studio probably hoped they'd be when everything launched at the top of the decade.

Still, especially if you have children, Disney+ is the way to go. Even if you don't have kids — even if you're the kind of adult who wants to queue up "The Little Mermaid" for those nostalgic feels — this is the way to go. Disney+ also offers several bundle options which can combine the service with Hulu; sure, we may be re-inventing cable television from the ground up, but this option does save a few bucks, which is always nice.

Once upon a time, Hulu was the service that collected the streaming offerings of various television networks. This was the place you went to watch new episodes of shows the day after they aired on various channels, and it was free, and it was wonderful. Remember that Super Bowl commercial where Alec Baldwin played himself as an alien bent on world domination through free television beamed to your "personal computing devices?" What a time that was to be alive.

Nowadays, Hulu is its own thing. Several networks like Fox and ABC still feed new television episodes into its library the day after they air linearly; on the whole, though, Hulu is like the more adult sister to Disney+, which owns a stake in the company. One major draw of Hulu is its exclusive streaming partnership with FX; the "FX on Hulu" sub-brand has helped launch shows like "Shogun" and "The Bear" to great success.

Hulu also offers several impressive bundling options, including Hulu+ with Live TV. The pricing rules are rather byzantine, however, and can stretch up to $95.99/month, depending on which combination of Hulu, Disney+, Hulu+ with Live TV, and ESPN+ you choose, with and without various combinations of ads. At that price point, this is easily the most expensive offering on this list; however, it's comparable to other live TV streamers like YouTube TV, and you don't get Hulu's solid originals with those other competitors. So: a mixed bag, but if you can swing it, it's worthwhile.

First things first: yes, Apple's streaming service is losing a ridiculous amount of money. According to one report, they're on track to lose a billion dollars a year, which is a staggering amount. On the other hand, this is Apple; a billion dollars is barely a drop in the bucket. Besides, fans shouldn't really be playing business analyst with mega-corporations. Instead, the question should be: is it worth it? In this case, the answer is "yes." 

Apple TV+ might just have the best original offerings of any streamer, even if, relatively speaking, no one's watching. In the past year, they've aired a Cate Blanchett-starring show directed by Alfonso Cuaron, an excellent Jake Gyllenhaal-led adaptation of "Presumed Innocent," and critically-acclaimed hits like "Silo" and "Shrinking." They're also the streaming service that supported Martin Scorsese's brilliant "Killers of the Flower Moon," a film so good that it alone justifies Apple TV+'s existence. That's not to even mention the few breakout hits that the service offers, like "The Morning Show," "Ted Lasso," and "Severance." When Apple TV+ shows hit, they hit hard.

Because the streamer is basically a loss leader for Apple, it never has ads, so the cheapest version of the plan is ad-free, high-definition, and only $9.99. They also offer a bundle called Apple One, which pairs it with other Apple services like Apple Music, Apple News, and Apple Arcade for not much extra. Especially if your devices are already part of the Apple ecosystem, it's a no-brainer.

If you're a horror fan, you already know about Shudder. The genre-specific streaming service starts at only $6.99 a month, making it an absolute steal; paying for a year up front will save you a tidy little sum, and it's worth it. In addition to a solid library of horror classics, Shudder pumps out a steady stream of originals and acquisitions, offering something new just about every time you log in. Some of them are duds, but horror fans are used to combing through duds, looking for a brilliantly bloody kill that'll elevate even the lowest-budget horror movie to cult greatness.

Shudder has a great eye for what will hit, taking a chance on budding filmmakers and giving them an entry point into the industry. They also elevate foreign films to international audiences in a way most other streamers don't bother doing. See, for example, Irish director Damian McCarthy's "Oddity" and "The Substance" director Coralie Fargeat's debut "Revenge," both of which are Shudder Originals.

Unlike many other streamers, Shudder also offers a curated live-streaming channel, offering a steady stream of horror programming that's always on. It's so easy to spend hours browsing a streaming service looking for something to watch, so it's sometimes a relief to just turn on Shudder TV and see whatever's playing. After all, plenty of horror fans discovered lifelong favorites late at night on television, so Shudder's fun approximation of that method of discovery sets it apart from competitors.

If you're nostalgic for the days of going to Blockbuster and browsing video tapes until something caught your eye, then Tubi may be your best bet. Whereas you can kind of gauge the classic titles that other services will have on offer at any given point, you never know what's going to show up on Tubi. One day you may find yourself watching an action classic like "The Terminator," and the next, you're checking out a recent buzzy indie like "Hundreds of Beavers." It's the perfect service for browsing until you think, "Oh yeah, I heard that was good." Why not click play? After all, Tubi is free!

Tubi is a hidden gem for horror fans, even better than Shudder. Somehow, Tubi manages to get great-quality restorations from beloved boutique labels like Vinegar Syndrome, presenting obscure (and great!) horror movies in stunning quality. Have we mentioned that it's free? Have we mentioned that, depending on your browser's pop-up blocker, you may not even get ads?

In recent years, Tubi has been pushing into the original space, too. A lot of their offerings produced in-house are low-budget and fairly poorly-acted, but they've also been acquiring some great international titles that get branded as Tubi Originals. Did you know about "Aisha," a Tubi Original starring "Challengers" hunk Josh O'Connor opposite Marvel star Letitia Wright? It's good! Again, you never know what you're going to get with Tubi, which makes it one of the most exciting streamers around.

Peacock launched in 2020 as an extension of the NBC/Universal brand, offering titles from Universal Studios as well as next-day offerings from the television network. It was pretty slight at first, but in the years since its debut, Peacock has become a solid little streamer with a whole host of offerings that justify its low cost. (They run sign-up deals all the time; catch them at the right time, especially around the holidays, and you may end up only paying $19.99 for an entire year of the service).

As one of the cheaper streamers, just a few shows can justify the cost of a subscription. If you're the kind of person who loves to rewatch NBC classics like "The Office" or "Parks & Recreation," then Peacock is the streamer for you. If you're the kind of person who loves the classic, long-running daytime soap "Days of Our Lives," then you'll need Peacock to stay up to date on the scandalous goings-on in Salem. And if you're the kind of person who loves staying up-to-date on "The Traitors" — the most compelling new reality competition show in years — then Peacock is for you. In fact, here are the 15 best TV shows on Peacock, ranked.

In recent years they've become quite the destination for solid original comedies. Rian Johnson's Natasha Lyonne-led mystery series "Poker Face" is great, as is "Based on a True Story." Finally, live sports, if you care about such things, make Peacock one of the best.

If you're subscribing to too many streaming services purely so that you can keep up with the conversation, chances are you'll never let go of your subscription to Max. The streamer started its life as HBO Go, which then became HBO Max, and then it dropped the HBO entirely. We can argue about the effects of that decision; "HBO" signaled quality to consumers, whereas "Max" is less specific. The streamer also has a tendency to cram every one of the Warner Bros. / Discovery sub-brands together on the service's landing page, making it difficult to determine what shows are HBO Originals — and therefore probably good — and what's on Max because it aired on something like ID — and is therefore probably less good.

Still, if we're judging streamers by the quality of their original offerings, Max is one of the best in the business. This is where you'll find cultural mega-hits like "The White Lotus," "The Last Of Us," and "Game of Thrones" spinoff "House of the Dragon," and it's where you'll go to find Warner Bros. movies that felt like they were just in theaters a few weeks ago. In addition, whereas many streamers make you wait until the next day for new episodes, this company has worked hard to collapse the distinction between stuff that actually airs on HBO and stuff that premieres on their streamer. New episodes hit Max at the same time they air on TV, making this a distinction without a difference.

The Criterion Channel is the streaming service for cinephiles, full-stop. Most of the other streamers on this list have offerings of varying quality, which is a nice way of saying that a lot of them offer movies that are, on the whole, pretty bad. That's not the case with The Criterion Channel, which offers a carefully-curated selection of films that are almost guaranteed to be worth your time.

Smartly, The Criterion Channel offers its films in groups, essentially programming you a mini-film festival to watch at your leisure. Sometimes, the collections are grouped by director or star, letting you do a deep dive into the filmography of a classic Hollywood legend or an acclaimed international filmmaker. Occasionally, films are offered by genre, letting you survey, say, "Argentine Noir" or films that deal with "Déjà Vu." Sometimes, the best streaming service highlights the "worst" movies they can find. Whatever they're showing, it's always instructive, like a film history course in streaming service form.

It's not just about classic films, either. The Criterion Channel also manages to be the exclusive streaming home of some high-profile new releases, including the 2024 hit "All We Imagine As Light." At only $10.99 per month, The Criterion Channel is cheaper and better than just about anything else you're likely to find, making it the most essential service of them all.