Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

As promised, Paramount+ gets more expensive June 27

The streaming landscape continues to shift, with Paramount+ getting a higher price as it absorbs Showtime content starting June 27, 2023.

The price increase wasn’t unexpected — Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra said as much on the company’s third-quarter 2022 earnings call. “We definitely see opportunities to increase price on Paramount+,” Chopra said at the time in response to Deutsche Bank’s Brian Kraft. “And you will see us do that in the future. I think it’s fair to say that pricing is moving higher across the industry — you see that with a number of competing services, and we think that that means we have room to increase price.”

Paramount Plus logo on an Apple TV.
Paramount Plus

The details: The ad-supported plan is moving from $5 a month to $6 a month. The premium plan — which also includes the ability to watch some shows in 4K resolution, and download content for offline viewing — goes from $10 to $12.

Recommended Videos

And if you want to watch that Showtime content, you’ll need to pony up for the more expensive of the two plans.

The change really marks the end of Showtime as a standalone service. (It also kills off the ad-free Paramount+ plan that didn’t include Showtime.) And the brand itself is going to become the more awkward “Paramount+ with Showtime” later this year.

It’s not quite as sweeping a change as HBO Max and Discovery combining to become the truncated (in name, at least) Max service — Showtime has been a part of the Paramount family for a long, long time. But it’s still a pretty big sea change when it comes to branding. Showtime was the CBS/Paramount answer to HBO (which has changed hands a couple of times in the past few years), but it never had the same sort of brand awareness or depth of shows, despite the occasional hit. So this is more of a traditional consolidation.

And it shouldn’t change the availability of Paramount+, which can be found on every major streaming platform. The streaming service currently stands at about 60 million subscribers, with total global viewing hours up some 50% year over year.

Phil Nickinson
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
The 10 most popular streaming services, ranked by subscriber count
The Netflix home screen.

When you're comparing the best streaming services, there are plenty of metrics to go by. Comparing them only by their number of subscribers isn't exactly a fair fight. After all not all streaming services are available worldwide. The number of subscribers doesn't exactly address the "worth" of a service, much less whether the app is easy to use. It doesn't even touch on whether the catalog of programming is good, or has what you want to watch on it, which is truly the best metric out there.

However, when we look at total subscriber counts, we can see how each service does from a global perspective. Considering we're looking at everything from streaming giants like Netflix and Hulu, to newer services like Apple TV Plus. For this post, we're not talking about free (FAST) streaming services or live TV streaming services, but the big VOD services.

Read more
Sling TV channels, plans, pricing, extras, and more
Sling TV on a TV.

When it comes to live TV streaming services, Sling TV is one of the best, offering up the channels you want while not breaking the bank. While it isn't the most simple of streaming services, it is an option that is worth it for anyone looking to balance their budget, or if you don't need every channel out there. It's built on two tracks — Sling Orange and Sling Blue. You can get one of the tracks for a paltry sum, or both for a little bit more. (Which is what Sling really encourages you to do.) While there is some overlap between the two, neither of them has the full catalog that its competitors like YouTube TV can offer.

To augment their smaller catalog, it has its own slate of optional add-ons, which Sling TV calls Extras. Each one costs a few dollars more each month, which can quickly add up to the same price range of services like YouTube TV, Hulu Plus Live TV, and Fubo, it's all about your ability to choose to have those add-ons — or not.

Read more
The Digital Trends guide to FAST streaming services
Amazon Freevee.

 

When it comes to the best streaming services, your mind probably goes right to video-on-demand (VOD) services like Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon Prime Video. They're super popular, and have tons of paying subscribers. However, they aren't the only streaming services worth checking out.

Read more