Cancel your streaming services now, you might score deals later

Black Friday less than two months away, so this is the best time of the year to start canceling some of your streaming services.

Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, and other streaming services often provide deep discounts during the holiday shopping season, with a catch: They’re only available to new and returning subscribers. Hulu even requires subscribers to be inactive for a least a month before they’re eligible for a comeback deal.

That means if you’re still subscribed to those services a month from now, you’ll have a tougher time taking advantage of seasonal sales. Auditing your streaming subscriptions is always worthwhile anyway, so you might as well do it now.

Which streaming services have Black Friday deals?

Of course, it’s too early for streaming services to announce any Black Friday specials for 2023, but looking back to last year provides a sense of what to expect. Here’s what we saw in 2022:

• Hulu offered one year (with ads) for $2 per month.
• Hulu and Disney+ were bundled together at $5 per month for one year.
• Peacock offered one year (with ads) for $1 per month.
• HBO Max offered three months (with ads) for $2 per month.
• Britbox offered two months for $2 per month.
• Amazon Prime Video offered a slew of add-on channels at $2 per month for two months, including AMC+, Epix, and Hallmark Movies Now.
• The Roku Channel offered premium add-ons for as little as $1 per month for two months, including BET+, Starz, and Lifetime Movie Club.

Nearly all of those deals were available to both new and returning subscribers, so canceling now might allow you to sign up again at a lower rate, without relying on secondary email addresses.

Keep in mind that with most streaming services, you’ll still get the full month for which you last paid, so there’s no need to wait on canceling. If you have a subscription that renews in three weeks, for instance, you can cancel now and keep using it until the billing cycle is over.

While lots of streaming services raised prices this year, they still need to bring in new subscribers to offset the cancellations that those price hikes have prompted (“churn,” in industry parlance). Seasonal sales are a great way to do that, so I fully expect we’ll see similar deals return in 2023.

How to cancel your streaming services

I’ve previously written a separate guide to auditing your subscriptions, which is now updated with the latest info. But if you just want quick cancellation links, here they are:

• Netflix account page, cancellation link
• Hulu account page, cancellation link
• Amazon Prime account page, cancellation link
• Disney+ account page, cancellation link
• Max (formerly HBO Max) account page
• Paramount+ account page
• Peacock account page, cancellation link
• Apple TV+ account page
• Starz account page, cancellation link
• Sling TV account page
• YouTube TV account page
• DirecTV Stream account page
• Fubo TV account page
• Philo account page

Unfortunately, paying for TV has become increasingly complicated, so some of your subscriptions might be tied to third-party marketplaces. If you signed up for a service such as Starz or AMC+ through Amazon Prime Video Channels, for instance, you’ll need to cancel through Amazon instead of directly through the streaming service. Same goes for subscriptions through Roku and Apple.

You might not even need to wait for a deal

Proactively canceling your streaming services also has one additional benefit: You might unlock some extra deals just by threatening to quit.

Paramount+, for instance, has long offered an extra month or two for subscribers who prepare to cancel (even after signing up for free). On a tip from a reader (thanks, Dennis H.!), I’ve also learned that attempting to cancel Starz yields an offer of three more months for $2 per month. If you continue the cancellation from there, Starz trots out an even better deal: Three months for $1 per month.

Even Netflix, which is notoriously firm on pricing, has quietly continued to offer its $10-per-month Basic plan for subscribers who threaten to cancel. It discontinued that plan for new and rejoining subscribers in July.

These pleas to stay aboard are becoming a more common tactic in the streaming world, one that’s somewhat reminiscent of the deals you could get by threatening to cancel cable. But if you go ahead with cancellation, the holidays might bring their own array of deals to get you back.

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