Cutting the cord was supposed to save money. These days, it’s starting to feel like cable with extra steps.
“As some consumers plan to spend less on streaming services, passionate fans have the potential to become even more valuable, investing time, money and energy across platforms,” said Doug Van Dyke, Deloitte’s vice chair and US telecom, media and entertainment sector leader, in the firm’s newly released 2026 Digital Media Trends report.
The average American household now has 4.5 recurring subscriptions and spends roughly $924 a year keeping them active, according to research from Bango, with streaming topping the list of what people pay for. That number climbs fast once a family adds music, cloud storage, meal kits and fitness apps to the mix.
Government data backs up the sticker shock. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that “subscription and rental of video and video games” — a category covering Netflix, HBO Max and Disney+ — saw inflation of 19.5% in December, a spike far outpacing overall consumer prices.
The hikes have piled up one after another. Disney+, Hulu and HBO Max all raised prices late last year, Netflix pushed through another increase this spring, and YouTube Premium hiked its rates for the first time in three years, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Related: Spotify Joins in Streamflation with New Price Hikes
Even so, Deloitte’s survey found that the average household’s monthly streaming bill has held roughly flat at $69 — not because prices stopped rising, but because consumers are adapting, churning between services or trading down to cheaper, ad-supported tiers. Sixty-eight percent of subscribers now watch ads to keep their bill down, up from just 46% two years ago.
That workaround only goes so far. Seventy-three percent of streaming customers told Deloitte they’re frustrated that prices keep climbing, and 61% said they’d cancel their favorite service outright if the monthly cost rose by even $5.
Movieguide® has tracked this climb for years now, from reporting that streaming prices jumped 23% in a single year to watching subscribers grow increasingly fed up with each new round of hikes. What began as a cheap alternative to cable has, for many households, become its own version of the same bloated bill.
For Christian families, the math is worth sitting with for a minute. Most parents already weigh what shows up on the screen — language, violence, worldview — before they let a service into the home. Streamflation adds a second, more practical question: whether that subscription is actually earning its place in the family budget, or just running quietly in the background out of habit.
None of this means streaming is a trap to be avoided. Plenty of these platforms carry movies and shows that inform, entertain and even point toward truth in ways cable never managed. But a household that regularly checks what it’s paying for — and why — tends to make wiser choices than one that lets the bill renew on autopilot.
With four in 10 subscribers already churning annually, per Deloitte, plenty of families are doing exactly that kind of gut check. The question this year isn’t whether streaming costs more than it used to. It’s whether each subscription still earns the money it quietly takes out of the account every month.
Read Next: YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Prices Are Going Up…Surprise, Surprise.
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
