What streaming costs a year in 2026
Every major service, its ad tier, its ad-free tier, the annual option where one exists, and what it renews at. Prices read from the vendors' own pages on 22 August 2026.
HBO Max Basic with Ads
The plans page on hbomax.com — read on 25 August 2026.
$109.99 a year · list price
Also sold at $10.99/mo — $131.88 a year if you keep it for twelve months.
Not published renewal price
- Billed
- $109.99/yr
- Renews at
- Not published
- Free tier
- None.
- Price read from
- The plans page on hbomax.com
- Checked
- Vendor
- hbomax.com
“Not published” means we did not find a renewal price stated by the vendor on the date we checked. It is not a claim that the price changes on renewal, and it is not a claim that it doesn’t.
HBO Max is the most legible pricing page in the category: three tiers, each with a monthly figure and a yearly figure printed next to it, on the vendor’s own site, without a sign-up flow in the way. The entry tier is $109.99 a year or $10.99 a month.
Twelve monthly payments come to $131.88, so prepaying saves $21.89, or about 17%. That is the standard shape of the annual discount across this ledger.
One caveat we read on the page itself: on 25 August 2026 hbomax.com was still advertising a prepay-a-year offer marked valid through 7/15/26. That date had passed. The banner is stale; the prices above are the ones you can actually buy. If you saw the promotional figures earlier in the summer and expected them in August, this is why they were gone.
Where we have written about this
This is a price record, not a review. We do not rate the product, we track what it charges. The method is on how we check prices; mistakes end up in the corrections log.