Acorn TV now charges $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year on its own sign-up pages. That is a full dollar above the $8.99 figure still repeated on a lot of price-comparison sites, and it means a monthly subscriber pays twice what the service cost only a few years ago. The headline number is only part of the story. Where you subscribe, how you cancel, what taxes are added, and whether you will really keep the service for eleven months all change what you pay.
This guide works through those situations one at a time, including the awkward ones: the trial you meant to cancel, the subscription you cannot find because it is billed by Amazon or Roku, and the annual plan that costs more than it saves if you only watch for the winter.
Key Answers Before You Enter a Card Number
These ten answers cover the questions people usually discover only after the first bill arrives.
$9.99 on the monthly plan, plus applicable taxes. Amazon’s own Acorn offer page also lists $9.99 a month after the trial. Older figures of $8.99, $7.99 or $6.99 are out of date.
$99.99 a year, which Acorn describes as twelve months for the price of ten. That works out to about $8.33 a month, billed once.
Yes, seven days, for new customers only. After it ends you are billed for the plan you picked unless you cancel first. Some older articles claim 14 or 30 days; Acorn’s own pages say seven.
If you would keep Acorn for eleven months or more. Ten monthly payments total $99.90, a few cents under the annual price, so annual only wins from the eleventh month on.
Yes. Acorn’s sign-up pages say prices are plus applicable taxes, which vary by where you live. A 7% rate, for illustration, would make the monthly bill about $10.69.
None appears on Acorn’s official plan pages. Ways to pay less come from rotating, choosing annual if you are certain, or leaning on free alternatives.
Do not count on it. Acorn’s terms say cancelling during a trial may be effective immediately, which could end your access. Set a reminder for day six instead.
Acorn’s sign-up terms say there are no refunds or credits for partial or unused months. Cancel before the renewal date, not after.
It changes where you cancel and what plans you can pick. A subscription billed by Amazon is managed in your Amazon account, and Amazon’s Acorn channel has been monthly only.
On iPhone, iPad and Android only, and not every title. Downloads expire, some have yearly limits, and they are deleted if your account is cancelled.
The Price, Line by Line
Acorn TV is one of the simpler subscriptions to price. There is a single core service with two ways to pay for it, and that is it. No tiers with different video quality, no bundled extras, no ad-supported discount plan on Acorn’s own sign-up pages. What you are choosing is a billing rhythm, and the rest of this section explains how the two compare in actual dollars.
The monthly plan costs $9.99 and renews every month until you cancel. The annual plan costs $99.99, charged once, and renews yearly. Both are quoted before taxes, and the sign-up page says so directly. Acorn’s marketing line for the annual plan, twelve months for the price of ten, is fair as arithmetic: ten months at $9.99 is $99.90, which is nearly identical to the annual price.
| Plan | Price | Effective monthly | 12-month cost | Renewal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $9.99 | $9.99 | $119.88 | Every month until cancelled |
| Annual | $99.99 | About $8.33 | $99.99 | Once a year, at the then-current price |
| Monthly with 7% tax (illustration) | About $10.69 | About $10.69 | About $128.27 | Tax rate depends on your location |
| Annual with 7% tax (illustration) | About $106.99 | About $8.92 | About $106.99 | Tax rate depends on your location |
Why the “starting at $6.99” teaser confuses people
One of Acorn’s sign-up pages carries a headline teaser saying plans start at $6.99 a month, followed by an asterisk. Directly beneath it, the plan cards show $9.99 monthly and $99.99 annually. We could not find a standalone $6.99 plan among the cards, and the asterisk’s qualifying note did not display on the page we reviewed. The sensible reading is that the teaser is a leftover from older pricing or refers to a promotion that is not shown. Treat the plan cards and the final checkout screen as the truth, and screenshot the price you are shown before you confirm.
Acorn’s prices have moved four times in about four years, so verify at the source on the day you sign up.
How the Price Got Here
If the current price feels like a surprise, the history explains why. Acorn TV was a bargain service for years. By the early 2020s a monthly subscription cost $4.99. A 2022 increase moved it to $6.99, with the annual plan rising to $69.99 and existing subscribers hit a couple of months after new ones. The monthly rate later reached $7.99, then rose another dollar at the end of April 2025 to $8.99, with the annual plan climbing by ten dollars as well. Now the official pages list $9.99 and $99.99.
Put the endpoints side by side and the pattern is clear: a monthly subscriber who paid $59.88 a year in the early 2020s now pays $119.88. The price has exactly doubled. That does not make Acorn a bad deal, since many subscription services have raised prices in the same period, but it does mean the old advice to “just pay monthly and forget about it” now costs real money.
How to read this: each bar is Acorn TV’s monthly price for new US subscribers at that stage. The cumulative step from $4.99 to $9.99 is exactly 100 percent, or $60 more per year for a monthly subscriber.
Acorn’s sign-up terms say your membership auto-renews at the then-current price for the plan and term you chose. In practice that means the day a new price takes effect for you, your next bill changes without you doing anything. When Acorn raised prices in the past, new customers saw the change first and existing subscribers followed weeks later. If a charge looks higher than you remember, the new price is the likely reason, not a billing error.
There is also a spillover effect for people who reach Acorn through other companies. DirecTV customers who add Acorn to their television plan were notified of a one-dollar monthly increase beginning in May. Anyone buying Acorn through a TV provider, a phone carrier or a retailer bundle should check their own statement, because those arrangements follow the partner’s billing calendar, not Acorn’s.
Where You Subscribe Changes More Than the Bill
Acorn TV can be bought several ways, and they are not interchangeable. The price is often the same, or close to it, but the account you create decides where you cancel, which plans you can choose, and which app plays your shows. Many of the complaints people post about Acorn billing trace back to buying in one place and looking for the subscription in another.
| How you subscribe | Monthly price | Annual option | Where you cancel | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct with Acorn | $9.99 | Yes, $99.99 | Your Acorn account settings | Works in the Acorn app; the one route with an annual plan |
| Amazon Prime Video Channels | Listed at $9.99 after trial | Not offered | Amazon: Memberships and Subscriptions | Plays inside Prime Video, not the Acorn app |
| Apple TV Channels | Set at Apple checkout | Check at signup | Your Apple subscriptions | Apple bills, so Acorn cannot cancel it |
| Roku Premium Subscriptions | Set at Roku checkout | Check at signup | Your Roku account | Roku bills, so Acorn cannot cancel it |
| DirecTV add-on | Set by DirecTV | Not offered | Your DirecTV account | Raised by $1 for DirecTV customers in May |
The rule that prevents most billing mix-ups
You cancel with whoever bills you. Check your credit card or bank statement for the biller’s name, then go to that company’s account page. Deleting the Acorn app from a TV or phone does not cancel anything. Neither does cancelling on Acorn’s own site if the charge is coming from Amazon, Apple or Roku. If you ever wonder which route you used, search your email for the receipt from the day you started the trial.
Subscribers who pay through Amazon have reported one particular snag: an annual Acorn subscription bought directly cannot be linked to the Acorn channel inside Prime Video, and the Prime Video channel has been monthly only. Amazon staff confirmed in a public forum thread that the two are separate subscriptions that do not link. If you want an annual plan, buy it directly and watch in the Acorn app or on the website.
Acorn’s own page lists Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, iPhone and iPad, Android phones and tablets, smart TVs, Chromecast and the web. Check that your specific television appears on the Ways to Watch list before you start the trial, because a subscription you cannot play on the main living room screen is easy to forget and hard to justify.
The Free Trial, Without the Surprise Charge
Acorn’s free trial lasts seven days and is limited to new customers. You are asked for a payment method up front, and the trial converts automatically into the plan you selected at sign-up. If you chose monthly, that is $9.99 plus tax. If you chose annual, the first charge is $99.99 plus tax. That second case is the one that catches people, because a single forgotten reminder turns a free week into a hundred-dollar charge.
Why day six: Acorn’s terms say a trial cancellation may take effect immediately, so cancelling on day one could end your access early. Cancelling on day six leaves nearly the whole trial intact and a day of margin before the charge.
Cancelling early can cost you the trial
Some streaming services let you cancel immediately and keep access to the end of the trial. Acorn’s published terms are less generous. They say that if you cancel during a free trial, the cancellation may be effective immediately, and that if you cancel before the end of the trial or a gift period there will be no charges to your billing account. Read together, the safe plan is not to cancel right away but to cancel late enough to use the week, early enough not to be charged. Set a phone alarm for the evening of day six.
The stacked-trial trap
Acorn is available through several storefronts, and each can run its own trial. A viewer who signs up once on Acorn’s site and again through Prime Video or Roku may find two billing relationships open at once. Even if a second trial is allowed, you then have two subscriptions to cancel in two places. Choose one route, and use the others only if you already know you will be cancelling both.
Acorn’s help center states that for billing to work, your billing address needs to be in the same country you are watching from. If you split the year between the US and another country, or a card is registered abroad, a trial can fail or a payment can be declined for reasons that look like a technical glitch. Update your billing address before you travel, and do not expect a US subscription to follow you across a border without trouble.
Is Acorn TV Worth $9.99? A Way to Decide in Five Minutes
Price alone does not tell you whether a streaming service is worth keeping. The more useful measure is what each hour of viewing costs you. A subscription that you use for twenty hours a month costs fifty cents an hour at the monthly rate. One you use for three hours a month costs more than three dollars an hour, which is more than renting a film outright.
| Hours watched per month | Cost per hour (monthly plan) | Cost per hour (annual plan) | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 hours | $3.33 | $2.78 | Cancel; rejoin when a series appeals |
| 8 hours | $1.25 | $1.04 | Rotate rather than keep it running |
| 15 hours | $0.67 | $0.56 | Reasonable; consider annual |
| 30 hours | $0.33 | $0.28 | Strong value; annual saves more |
To use this table, look at your last month of viewing. Most people overestimate. If you finished one six-episode drama and dipped into two others, that is probably closer to eight hours than thirty. Many mystery episodes run about an hour, so a handful of series adds up quickly, but it is easy to drift into weeks of not logging in.
What you are actually paying for
Acorn’s identity is mystery and drama from Britain, Ireland, Australia and other countries, organized on its site into categories such as mysteries, dramas, comedies, miniseries, daringly dark dramas and award winners, alongside Acorn TV Originals. On its sign-up page when we checked, the featured shelves included long-running favorites like Midsomer Murders, Doc Martin, Agatha Raisin, The Brokenwood Mysteries, A Place to Call Home, Whitstable Pearl, Harry Wild and The Chelsea Detective, along with newer arrivals. Catalogs rotate, and a show on a marketing page today may leave later, so check the title you care about on the service itself before subscribing for one show.
What Acorn is not is a live service. It works like a library you open when you want something specific. That suits people who like to binge a series or watch a nightly episode, and it suits people who dislike channel surfing. It suits less well those who want live news, sports or whatever happens to be on.
Open the Acorn site during the trial and search for three titles you already know you want. If at least two are there, with enough episodes to fill a month, the service has earned a place. If you can name only one, treat Acorn as a rotation service and plan to cancel when you finish it.
Monthly or Annual: Where the Lines Cross
The annual plan is the single biggest lever on your Acorn bill, and it is worth being exact about it. Paying monthly costs $9.99 times however many months you stay. Paying annually costs $99.99, once. The two lines cross just past the tenth month, which is why annual only makes sense for someone who will keep Acorn running through most of the year.
What the crossing means: at ten months the monthly total is $99.90, three cents under the annual price. From month eleven on, annual is cheaper, by $9.90 at eleven months and $19.89 at twelve. Before the tenth month, monthly wins.
There is a second reason annual is less attractive than the headline discount suggests. You pay the whole amount on day one, and because Acorn does not refund unused months, there is no recovering the money if your interest fades in month four. The $19.89 saving is the reward for being certain, not for being hopeful. A person who suspects they will watch for four months and then drift away is better off paying $39.96 on monthly and walking away.
Choose annual only if you can name at least three series you will watch across the year, or if the service has become a daily habit. Otherwise stay monthly and set a cancellation date the moment you finish what you came for. Rejoining later takes about two minutes.
Pick the Right Plan for Your Situation
Start the trial and watch as much as you can in seven days. If you finish, cancel on day six and pay nothing. If the series is long, take one month at $9.99 and cancel the same afternoon you subscribe, noting that the subscription runs to the end of the paid month. A single month of a ten-episode drama works out to a dollar or so an episode, and unlike a DVD set you are not buying clutter. Resist the annual plan here; it would turn a $10 pleasure into a $100 commitment.
Treat Acorn as a rotating service rather than a permanent one. Keeping it for four months a year at $9.99 costs $39.96, against $119.88 for year-round monthly billing and $99.99 for annual. That alone frees up about $60. No senior discount appears on Acorn’s official plan pages, so rotation is the dependable saving. Write the cancellation date on a paper calendar the day you subscribe, and look at your statement once a quarter for charges you did not expect. If part of your budget goes to British TV, consider whether public television’s Passport benefit or your library’s streaming apps could cover some of what you watch for less.
Subscribing through Amazon puts Acorn on the same bill as Prime, and some people value that. The costs are real, though. The channel has been monthly only, which means no annual saving, and it plays inside Prime Video rather than Acorn’s own app, so your viewing history lives in a different place. Amazon also handles the cancellation, which is convenient if you remember to go there and confusing if you instead try Acorn’s site. If you plan to keep Acorn for most of a year, direct annual billing is cheaper.
Two Acorn rules matter here. First, the help center says your billing address must be in the country you are watching from, so a US card and billing address are not guaranteed to work abroad. Second, downloads are available only on iOS and Android, only for titles marked as downloadable, and they expire after a period; some titles also limit how many times you can download them in a year. Download over home Wi-Fi before you leave, open the downloads screen once while still connected to confirm they play offline, and have a backup plan for the titles that are not downloadable.
Acorn says annual memberships can be purchased as a gift, which sidesteps the question of whether the recipient will remember to cancel a trial. Acorn’s terms also state that if a gift membership converts to a paid subscription and the recipient cancels before the gift period ends, there will be no charges to the billing account. Before you buy, confirm how the gift redeems and whether it can be added to an existing account, since a gift for someone already subscribed through Amazon or Apple may not work the way you expect. Ask the recipient how they currently subscribe before you spend $99.99.
We did not find a published simultaneous-stream limit on Acorn’s own pages, and an independent review from some years ago reported unlimited simultaneous streams with no separate user profiles. Policies change, so do not treat that as a promise. The practical test is cheap: during the trial, start a show on one device and another on a second device in a different room, and see whether both play. Without profiles, watch history and recommendations are shared, so a household that wants separate lists may find that a minor annoyance.
Acorn works as an on-demand library of series and films, not a channel lineup. If you want live news, sports or a guide to scroll, it is the wrong tool, and you would be paying $9.99 for something you are not using. Better matches are a live-TV service or an antenna for local broadcasts. Keep Acorn for the evenings when you want a specific mystery or a drama to settle into.
That is how subscription pricing works. Acorn’s terms say your membership auto-renews at the then-current price, so when the monthly figure moves from $8.99 to $9.99 your next bill moves with it. Open the billing history in whichever account is charging you, find the date of the first higher charge, and compare it with the dates in the price-history chart above. If the amount is higher than $9.99 plus your local tax, or you are being charged twice, check whether you started a second subscription through another storefront.
How $9.99 Compares With Similar Services
Acorn is not the only place for British and international drama. When we compared published prices for the closest alternatives, Acorn sat in the middle of the pack: cheaper than BritBox Standard, more expensive than MHz Choice, and well above the near-free routes through public television and libraries. The table uses each service’s own listed prices.
| Service | Monthly | Annual | Trial | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acorn TV | $9.99 | $99.99 | 7 days | Mystery and drama from Britain, Ireland and Australia |
| BritBox Standard | $10.99 | $109.99 | 7 days | Deep BBC and ITV back-catalog |
| MHz Choice | $7.99 | $79.99 | 7 days | Subtitled European crime and drama |
| PBS Masterpiece channel | $5.99 | Monthly billing | Check at signup | Period drama; needs a Prime membership |
| PBS Passport | About $5–$6 gift | About $60–$72 gift | Not applicable | Full Masterpiece seasons via a station donation |
The gap between Acorn and BritBox Standard is $1 a month, or $10 a year on annual plans. That is too small to settle the choice by itself. What should settle it is the shows you watch: if your favorites live on one service and not the other, the price difference is irrelevant. PBS Passport minimums are set by individual stations, and at least one has announced a move to $6 a month or $72 a year, so check your own station. Library streaming apps such as Kanopy and hoopla are free with a card but have monthly limits, and the amount varies by library.
Cancelling Without Losing Money
Cancelling Acorn is straightforward when you do it in the right place and at the right time. Most of the money lost on streaming subscriptions is lost in the gap between deciding to cancel and actually doing it.
If you subscribed directly
Sign in to your Acorn account and use the account or settings area to cancel the membership. Acorn’s sign-up page points to the Account Status page for cancelling a trial, and to the cancel option under settings for an active membership. Once you cancel a paid period, access continues through the end of the term you already paid for, and the subscription ends on the last day of that term. Take a screenshot of the confirmation screen, and check that a confirmation email arrives.
If Amazon, Apple, Roku or a TV provider bills you
Cancel in that company’s subscription settings. For Amazon, that means Memberships and Subscriptions, then Prime Video Channels. For Apple, it is the subscriptions list in your Apple account settings. For Roku, it is the subscriptions page in your Roku account. Acorn cannot cancel these for you, and its help center explicitly warns that deleting the app or channel from a device does not cancel the subscription.
First, cancelling on the wrong platform, which leaves the real subscription running. Second, cancelling the day after renewal, because Acorn’s terms say there are no refunds or credits for partial or unused months. Third, assuming a cancelled account keeps your downloads: Acorn’s help center says that if your account is cancelled, downloaded titles are deleted from your device, so finish them first.
If a charge looks wrong, gather the account email, the billing platform, the statement date and the amount before you contact anyone. Acorn’s help center has a contact page, and the sign-up pages link to billing and device guides.
Seven Honest Ways to Pay Less
There is no secret code that drops Acorn below its listed price on a permanent basis. Past deals have existed, such as promotional first-month prices through Amazon in some seasons, but they come and go and usually revert to full price automatically. These are the methods that hold up regardless of promotions.
Four months a year at $9.99 is $39.96. Twelve months is $119.88. Keep Acorn for the stretch when a series you want is available, cancel, and return for the next one. Because a cancelled account loses downloads but not your ability to rejoin, the cost of pausing is mostly the discipline of cancelling.
Seven free days is real value if you plan it. Choose a week with free evenings, queue the first episodes of the series you care about, and cancel on day six. Sign up directly with one storefront, not several.
The $19.89 saving is real but belongs to people who will watch for eleven months or more. If that describes you, pay annually and put the renewal date in your calendar so the next $99.99 never arrives unannounced.
If you also pay for BritBox, a TV provider’s add-ons and a premium channel, you may be paying for the same British catalog three times. Pick the service that holds the most of what you watch and drop the rest.
A PBS station gift of roughly $5 to $6 a month commonly unlocks Passport, which includes full Masterpiece seasons. Library cards can unlock Kanopy and hoopla for free, within monthly limits. Neither replaces Acorn’s catalog, but they can cover a share of what you watch.
If you receive Acorn through a TV provider or retailer bundle, read the notice when it changes. DirecTV customers who bundle Acorn were told of a $1 monthly increase starting in May, and similar adjustments can arrive by email without much fanfare.
The most effective money-saving habit is also the simplest. When you start the trial, write down the day you will decide whether to keep the service. A decision you scheduled costs less than a decision your bank statement makes for you three months later.
Our Plan Recommendation
At $9.99 a month, plus tax, Acorn is easiest to justify when you know what you plan to watch. Start the free trial, queue your first series and put the cancel date in your calendar. If the service earns its keep, extend by a month, and repeat.
If Acorn is part of your regular evening, the $99.99 annual plan saves $19.89 and works out to about $8.33 a month. Buy it directly so that the savings are real, and mark next year’s renewal date.
Keep Acorn for a few months at a time, supplement with a PBS station membership or library apps, and look at your statement every quarter. That combination can cut the cost of British drama to a fraction of a year-round subscription.
Prices reflect Acorn TV’s published US rates when we last checked and exclude taxes and promotions. Streaming prices change often, so confirm current terms at checkout. Third-party storefronts such as Amazon, Apple, Roku and TV providers set their own billing and cancellation rules. Tax figures are illustrations only. This page is independent and is not affiliated with Acorn TV, AMC Networks, Amazon, Apple, Roku, DirecTV, BritBox, MHz Choice, PBS, Kanopy or hoopla.
Key sources: Acorn TV plan and sign-up pages · Acorn TV help center · Acorn TV and AMC terms · Amazon Prime Video Acorn offer page · Streaming Better · Cord Cutters News · public library streaming guides · local PBS station Passport pages.