4 "free" streaming services that quietly added fees (and what to use instead)

Published May 14, 2026, 1:45 PM EDT Adam has a degree in Engineering and has a life-long interest in technology. He has been writing for over a decade for various print and online publications, with a focus on consumer tech. He joined How-To Geek in 2024 while working at Pocket-lint. As well as being a long-term fan of Apple products, he also has a strong interest in smart home tech, running a Home Assistant server at home to automate all his smart home devices. He believes that the ideal smart home should work with minimal interaction from the user, with automations running as if by magic rather than requiring you to push buttons on a control panel. You can find more of his work on Muck Rack. The cost of streaming service subscriptions continues to rise. Even services that used to offer free content are moving it behind paywalls. Here are some once-free streaming services that have added fees, removed free tiers, or just made free viewing harder, and some alternative options you can use instead. Crunchyroll Once free, now paywalled Credit: Mashashi Kishimoto / Crunchyroll If you're a fan of anime, this one will have really hurt. Crunchyroll used to be the go-to anime streaming site, with a massive audience. It used a free, ad-supported model that meant you could legally watch popular anime without having to pay a thing. You had to put up with ads, but it meant you could watch hours of hugely popular anime such as One Piece, Attack on Titan, and Naruto. Sadly, the service slowly began moving content behind a paywall, including big titles such as One Piece, before ending the free tier entirely at the end of 2025. You now need to pay a minimum of $9.99 per month to access Crunchyroll, with some tiers costing as much as $17.99 per month. This is a far cry from the free access that used to be available. If you're looking for genuinely free alternatives, RetroCrush still offers a free, ad-supported option for people in the US and Canada (or anyone with working knowledge of how to use a VPN). Tubi also has a decent selection of anime, including Naruto, Death Note, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Crunchyroll Subscription with ads No, all ad-free Simultaneous streams 1, 4, or 6 With the world's largest library of anime, Crunchyroll is the obvious choice for fans of Japanese animation, as well as other areas of Japanese and Asian pop culture that go along with it. Live TV No Price Starting at $8/month Peacock The free tier is long gone Credit: NBC Peacock is perhaps the most notable example of a major streaming service that started out offering free content but has moved everything behind a paywall. When it first launched in 2020, there was a free tier that set it apart from the competition, such as Netflix and Disney+. You could access a smaller, ad-supported library without a subscription or you can pay to access the full catalog.​​​​​​​ Related 5 Drawbacks of Free Streaming Services That Make Paid Subs Worth It There's a lot to like about free streaming, but it can't all be good. The free tier still offered some great shows, including The Office and Parks and Recreation, and being able to watch these shows without a subscription was a refreshing change. All good things must come to an end; at the start of 2023, new users were no longer able to sign up for free accounts. By 2025, users who were still on the free tier were reporting that they were being forcibly logged out of their accounts and couldn't sign back in without choosing a paid plan. In the space of a couple of years, Peacock went from a service you could watch for free to one that costs $10.99 per month for the standard tier. Alternatives such as Tubi, Pluto TV, and The Roku Channel can fill the void for free, ad-supported content. Subscription with ads Yes, $8/month Simultaneous streams 3 Peacock combines movies and shows from NBC, Bravo, and other networks—along with exclusive originals—to offer a great selection of content to stream. Live TV Select live sports Price Starting at $8/month ($3/month for students) Amazon Freevee Some free content still remains This one is a little different. Amazon Freevee went through a few iterations after starting life as IMDb Freedive, an ad-supported free streaming service. By 2022, it reached its third rebrand as Amazon Freevee and had its own dedicated app. Amazon didn't suddenly start charging for Freevee content. Instead, toward the end of 2025, it shut down the Freevee app and moved all the content into the main Prime Video app. You don't need a Prime subscription to watch the content, but you do need an Amazon account. The Freevee content still exists in the Free with Ads section of Prime Video, but it's now mixed in with all the shows and movies that do require a subscription. The free experience has gotten tangled up with the paid service, and it constantly feels like you're being nudged toward subscribing. If you want the "free content on a dedicated app" experience, options such as Tubi and Pluto TV can still do the job. Or you can just stick it to the man and continue to obstinately watch only the free content on Prime Video. Subscription with ads Yes, via Prime membership or $9/month Simultaneous streams 3 Prime Video has a large volume of content to watch. The other Amazon perks are a bonus as well. Live TV No Price Included with Amazon Prime subscription ($15/month or $139/year) or $9/month standalone Plex Remote streaming is no longer free This one is a little different, since Plex isn't a streaming service; it's self-hosted software that allows you to stream your own media files. However, it includes a core feature that used to be free, which has now ended up behind a paywall. When you set up a Plex server, it used to be the case that you could stream the content from anywhere with an internet connection. If you were on the other side of the planet, you could still watch the shows and movies on your home server. It also meant that you could share your library with other people, who could access your media from their own homes. In 2025, Plex began the end of free remote streaming, requiring users to purchase a $6.99-per-month Plex Pass or a $1.99-per-month Remote Watch Pass to access the feature, although other people can watch for free if the server owner has a Plex Pass. Free remote streaming stopped working on Roku devices in November 2025, and other smart TV apps followed suit in 2026. What many users had enjoyed for free for years is now officially a paid service. If you don't want to pay, alternative options such as Jellyfin are completely free to use. It's a little more complicated to set up secure remote streaming, but once you've done so, you can stream your shows and movies from wherever you want. Plex Pass Compatibility Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS, and various other devices Free Trial Period Free account available A Plex Pass subscription takes your media server to the next level, with remote streaming, hardware transcoding, offline downloads, and more. Nothing lasts forever It's always a little depressing when you have to start paying for something that you used to get for free. The good news is that there are still free alternatives, so if you don't want to pay, you can always vote with your feet.