BritBox’s Standard plan now costs $10.99 a month, up from $8.99, and the 4K, downloads and four-screen perks sit behind a $149.99 annual-only Premier plan. If the bill is what sent you searching, the news is mixed. There are real alternatives, from a ten-dollar competitor to a free library card, but the obvious replacement is no longer the bargain it was, because its own price has climbed too.
Which one wins depends less on the catalog than on your situation: what you watch, how you pay, whether you read subtitles comfortably, and whether you will actually keep the subscription long enough for an annual plan to pay off. The sections below work through those situations one at a time, using prices taken from each service’s own pages.
Key Answers Before You Cancel Anything
Most people leave BritBox over price, then discover the replacement costs more once they add a second service. These nine answers prevent that.
Acorn TV. It is also a British-leaning, on-demand, month-to-month service, priced at $9.99 monthly or $99.99 yearly. That is $1 a month and $10 a year below BritBox Standard, and it draws on Irish and Australian series too.
MHz Choice at $7.99 a month or $79.99 a year. The catch is that much of it is foreign-language crime with English subtitles, so it complements British TV rather than replacing it.
Yes. A local PBS station gift of about $5 a month or $60 a year typically unlocks Passport, which includes full Masterpiece seasons. At least one station has announced a move to $6 a month or $72 a year, so check yours.
Partly. Kanopy and hoopla are free with a card, but each library sets monthly limits and may cap daily use, and British TV depth varies. Treat them as a supplement, not a full swap.
None of the official price pages we reviewed list a senior or income-based rate. The savings come from annual billing, rotating services, and the donation route to PBS.
Only if you need four simultaneous streams, downloads or 4K. Standard already carries the full catalog. Premier adds playback features, selected early access and BBC Select documentaries.
No change has been announced. BBC Studios bought ITV’s half of BritBox International and extended the licensing deals that keep ITV titles on it. Separately, Sky agreed in July to buy ITV’s broadcast channels and streaming arm, a deal subject to regulatory review.
Many price-comparison pages recycle old, promotional or invented numbers. The official plan listings put Standard at $10.99 monthly or $109.99 yearly, and Premier at $149.99 yearly. Confirm at checkout before you subscribe.
MHz Choice says early cancellation keeps access to the end of the trial. Acorn’s terms say a trial cancellation may be effective immediately, so cancel on day six, not day one.
The Alternatives Side by Side
We read each service’s own plan and help pages and lined up the terms that change your bill. BritBox sits in the first row as the baseline.
| Service | Monthly | Annual | Free trial | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BritBox (baseline) | $10.99 | $109.99 (Premier $149.99) | 7 days | Deepest BBC and ITV back-catalog | Price rose from $8.99; Standard limited to 2 streams |
| Acorn TV | $9.99 | $99.99 | 7 days | British, Irish and Australian mysteries and drama | Trial cancellation may end access at once; Prime version is monthly only |
| MHz Choice | $7.99 | $79.99 | 7 days | Subtitled European crime and drama | Subtitles on everything; viewing limited to the US |
| PBS Masterpiece channel | $5.99 add-on | Monthly billing | Check at signup | Period drama and mystery on a tight budget | Needs an Amazon Prime or Prime Video membership |
| PBS Passport | $5–$6 gift | $60–$72 gift | Not applicable | Full Masterpiece seasons plus the wider PBS library | Minimum varies by station; it is a gift, not a purchase |
| Kanopy / hoopla | $0 | $0 | Not applicable | Occasional films, documentaries and some TV | Monthly play limits; budget caps can block you mid-month |
These are the exact places to confirm terms before you commit, or to cancel cleanly afterward.
What Each Service Is Really Like to Live With
A price table cannot tell you which service fits a household. The notes below cover the practical details that decide whether a subscription feels like good value in week three, not just on sign-up day. Everything here comes from each service’s published terms and help pages, and where a detail could not be confirmed, we say so.
BritBox: the archive you are paying a premium for
BritBox is the benchmark because of one thing: depth. It holds a large run of BBC and ITV programming under a single login, and it is now owned outright by BBC Studios, which bought ITV’s half of BritBox International in 2024 for about $322 million. ITV agreed to extended licensing deals so its titles stay on the service, and as recently as this month BritBox announced a new North American commission, a six-part Cadbury family drama due in 2027, which suggests the service is still investing in originals.
The Standard plan costs $10.99 a month, or $109.99 a year, and delivers ad-free on-demand viewing in up to Full HD on two simultaneous streams. BritBox’s own Premier page notes that promotions and ads can appear around live and linear streams, so “ad-free” applies to on-demand viewing. Premier costs $149.99 a year with no monthly option and adds up to 4K on select titles, four simultaneous streams, downloads of select shows, selected early access and a library of BBC Select documentaries. BritBox says upgrading mid-subscription is prorated, and that you can return to Standard at the end of the billing period.
The main reason people look elsewhere is the September 2025 increase from $8.99 to $10.99, the first major price change since BritBox launched in the US. It is a fair complaint. It is also worth remembering that BritBox now sits only a dollar above its closest competitor, so the price gap alone rarely justifies leaving if the archive is what you watch.
Acorn TV: the closest match, now $9.99
Acorn TV is owned by AMC Networks and focuses on mysteries, dramas and comedies from Britain, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere, sorted on its site into categories such as mysteries, dramas, comedies, miniseries and daringly dark dramas, plus Acorn TV Originals. Its sign-up page lists two plans: $9.99 a month and $99.99 a year, with a seven-day free trial for new customers. Annual memberships can also be bought as a gift. Amazon’s own Acorn offer page agrees on $9.99 a month after the trial.
Be careful with older figures. Many articles still say $8.99 and $89.99, which was correct until this year. Acorn’s price has doubled since the early 2020s, when a month cost $4.99. Our recommendation is to treat any Acorn price older than the current sign-up page as obsolete.
Practical details matter here. The help center says downloads work on iOS and Android only, that not every title can be downloaded, that downloads expire, and that they are deleted if your account is cancelled. Billing must match the country you are watching from. Acorn works on Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, iPhone and iPad, Android devices, smart TVs, Chromecast and the web. It is an on-demand library with no live channels.
MHz Choice: cheapest, and a different kind of show
MHz Choice costs $7.99 a month or $79.99 a year, includes a seven-day trial for new users, and promises no ads and no commitment. Its identity is international: mysteries, dramas and comedies presented in their original languages with English subtitles. When it merged with the Topic streaming service in 2024, it picked up exclusive US rights to the German thriller Babylon Berlin, and its catalog has long leaned on Scandinavian, French and Italian crime.
That is exactly why it is a poor stand-in for BritBox. If your idea of a perfect evening is a village mystery in English, MHz Choice will not satisfy it. If you have already worked through the British crime catalog and want something moodier, it is the cheapest way to find a new obsession. MHz Choice states plainly that it cannot be watched outside the US, though you can download videos to a mobile device before you leave. It is also sold through Prime Video Channels, Roku, Xfinity and YouTube, but the annual rate is not available on those storefronts, so a yearly plan means signing up direct.
PBS Masterpiece channel: cheap, with a catch
PBS lists its Masterpiece channel on Amazon Prime Video at $5.99 a month, which makes it the cheapest paid way to reach Masterpiece’s period dramas and mysteries. The catch is that Prime Video Channels require an Amazon Prime or Prime Video membership on top, which PBS’s help page puts at $119 a year or $8.99 a month. If you already pay for Prime, the channel is a bargain. If you do not, you are really paying for two things.
PBS’s help center is also clear that a Masterpiece channel subscription does not unlock the separate Passport library on PBS.org and the PBS app. They are different products with different catalogs, which is easy to miss.
PBS Passport: a gift that unlocks a library
Passport is not a subscription in the usual sense. It is a member benefit from your local PBS station, typically unlocked by giving about $5 a month or $60 a year. Stations set their own thresholds, so verify yours. At least one station has announced a move to $72 a year or $6 a month. Passport gives access to a rotating on-demand library, including full seasons of Masterpiece, plus shows like NOVA and Nature, through PBS.org and the PBS app. Some stations describe the gift as tax-deductible, since Passport is a benefit rather than a purchase, so ask your station or a tax preparer.
Activation takes a few extra steps. You get a code after donating, then link it at pbs.org, and the PBS app on your streaming device must use the same account. If your station cannot find your gift, the Passport lookup page can check your email address. It is clunkier than a normal streaming sign-up, but it is also the single cheapest route to British period drama.
Kanopy and hoopla: free, with strings
Both services are free with a participating library card, and both work by limiting how much each cardholder can borrow. Libraries we checked gave anywhere from about four to thirty Kanopy plays a month, and six to ten hoopla borrows, and several said that streaming can be paused for everyone when the library’s budget cap is reached. Loans are short, about two to three days for Kanopy films and three days for hoopla video.
This is why we call them a supplement. They are excellent for documentaries and films and occasionally have British series, but you cannot count on a particular show being there, and you may hit a limit before the month ends. Check your own library’s page before relying on them.
What a Year Actually Costs
Monthly prices hide the real gap. Over twelve months, the spread between the cheapest paid option and BritBox Premier is more than $70 before taxes, and the spread between a library card and Premier is $149.99.
How we built this chart: each bar is the listed price multiplied out over twelve months, before tax. BritBox’s yearly Standard plan saves $21.89 against paying its monthly rate for a year. PBS Passport shows the typical $60 minimum, and some stations ask $72.
| Plan | Monthly | 12 months monthly | Annual plan | Yearly saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BritBox Standard | $10.99 | $131.88 | $109.99 | $21.89 |
| BritBox Premier | Annual only | Not offered | $149.99 | None |
| Acorn TV | $9.99 | $119.88 | $99.99 | $19.89 |
| MHz Choice | $7.99 | $95.88 | $79.99 | $15.89 |
| PBS Masterpiece channel | $5.99 | $71.88 | Not offered | None |
Two patterns stand out when the numbers sit side by side. First, annual discounts are modest, between about $16 and $22 across the paid services, so they reward certainty rather than thrift. Second, the gap between BritBox Standard and Acorn TV is now only $10 a year on annual plans, which is small enough that a single favorite show should decide the question, not the price.
Why this works: a few months is usually enough to work through the series you came for, and you can return whenever something new appeals. Totals exclude tax and any promotional pricing.
For Acorn TV, ten monthly payments total $99.90, three cents less than the annual price, so annual only wins from the eleventh month. BritBox Standard behaves similarly: ten months at $10.99 is $109.90, a nine-cent edge over its $109.99 annual plan. Choose annual only if you will keep the service eleven months or more.
Pick by Your Situation, Not the Brand
Stop paying for the whole library. Finish the show, cancel, and move to the next service when something new tempts you. The rotation chart above shows that living on monthly plans, one at a time, costs about as much as a single BritBox annual plan while giving you three catalogs. The discipline is writing the cancellation date on a calendar the day you subscribe.
Acorn TV is the straightforward switch: $9.99 monthly or $99.99 yearly, on-demand, no contract. Start with the seven-day trial and see whether the shows you rewatch are there before dropping BritBox. If your favorites are older BBC and ITV classics, BritBox still holds the deeper archive, so keep it for a month while you test. The saving is $1 a month, so do not switch for the price alone.
Start with your local PBS station. A gift of about $5 a month or $60 a year typically unlocks Passport, which includes full Masterpiece seasons, and some stations describe the gift as tax-deductible, so ask yours or a tax preparer. Then add your library’s Kanopy and hoopla for free. That combination can cost $72 a year or less, under half the price of BritBox Premier. Check your bank statement once a quarter for recurring charges you forgot.
MHz Choice shows its programs in the original language with English subtitles, which is part of its appeal and also the reason it is a poor primary replacement for British TV. If reading subtitles on a distant screen is a strain, choose Acorn TV or the Masterpiece route and treat MHz Choice as an occasional extra, ideally on a tablet you can hold close.
MHz Choice states plainly that it cannot be watched outside the US, though you can download titles to a mobile device before you leave. Acorn’s help center says your billing address must match the country you watch from, and its downloads work only on iOS and Android, only for marked titles, and they expire. Download over home Wi-Fi before departure and open the downloads screen once while still connected to confirm they play offline.
BritBox Standard allows two simultaneous streams, which suits most couples. Premier raises that to four and costs $40 more per year than Standard annual. Before paying it only for the screen count, consider whether a second service on its own login would serve the other viewer better. We did not find a published stream cap on Acorn’s own pages, so test two screens during its trial.
If Prime is already on your card, the PBS Masterpiece channel at $5.99 a month is the cheapest paid British-drama add-on in this guide, and Acorn and MHz Choice can also be added through Prime Video Channels. The trade-offs are that those channels play inside Prime Video, billing and cancellation move to Amazon, and annual rates generally are not offered through channels. For a short stay, that is fine. For a year-round habit, subscribe direct.
Find out which service carries it before you subscribe to anything. Each of the paid services has a search box that works without paying, and the sign-up pages usually preview what is on the shelf. Once you know, pick that service, take the trial, and plan to cancel on day six. A week of a free trial can cover a six-episode drama comfortably.
Acorn says annual memberships can be bought as gifts. BritBox and MHz Choice sell annual plans too, but check how gifts redeem and whether the recipient already subscribes through Amazon, Apple or Roku, since those do not link to a direct account. A PBS station gift in their name is another option, though Passport activation is easier if the recipient is comfortable with a code.
BritBox’s pull is the depth of BBC and ITV titles under one roof, backed by licensing deals that BBC Studios extended when it bought ITV’s half of the international service. No alternative here replicates that archive. If those specific classics matter to you, stay and cut costs another way: pay annually if you are sure, and set a renewal reminder.
A Three-Question Shortcut
If the sections above feel like a lot, this chart compresses them. Answer the questions in order, and you land on the option that matches your situation. It is deliberately blunt, and the earlier sections explain the exceptions.
How to use it: start at the top. If classic BBC and ITV titles matter to you, nothing here replaces BritBox. If they do not, subtitle comfort splits the paid options, and price tolerance decides between Acorn and the public-television route.
Trials and Billing Traps That Quietly Cost You
Every service here offers a seven-day trial for new customers, and every one converts to a paid subscription automatically if you do nothing. The rules for cancelling during the trial are not identical, and they matter more than the small differences in monthly price.
| Service | Trial length | Early cancel | After the trial | Where you cancel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BritBox | 7 days | Check at signup | Standard monthly or annual, or Premier annual | britbox.com account, or the platform that bills you |
| Acorn TV | 7 days | May end access immediately | Plan you picked, at then-current price | Acorn account, or Amazon, Apple, Roku |
| MHz Choice | 7 days | Cancels at once, access kept to trial end | $7.99 monthly or $79.99 annual | MHz account, or the storefront that bills you |
BritBox costs the same $10.99 whether you buy direct, through Amazon Prime Video Channels, Apple TV Channels or Roku, but cancellation happens only in the account that bills you. Cancelling on the BritBox website does nothing for a subscription billed through Amazon. The same applies to Acorn TV: the Prime channel version cannot be linked to the Acorn app, and Amazon has offered it monthly only, so a yearly Acorn purchase must be made directly. Deleting an app never cancels a subscription.
BritBox has run first-year annual offers well below the standard annual rate. In one such offer the terms stated that the plan renews each year at the standard annual price, currently $109.99 for Standard and $149.99 for Premier, until cancelled. Put the renewal date on your calendar the day you subscribe, and treat any “first-year” price as a one-time discount.
MHz Choice’s own FAQ says that if you cancel during the free trial, the cancellation takes effect immediately but you keep access until the trial ends. That means you can start the trial, cancel right away, and still watch for seven days with no risk of a surprise charge. Acorn’s terms are less generous: they say a trial cancellation may take effect immediately. Confirm each service’s rule on the sign-up screen, because terms can change.
Kanopy and hoopla bill your library per play, so libraries cap them. Some give a handful of plays a month, others a few dozen, and some show a notice when the library’s budget limit is reached for the day or month. If a title refuses to play, it is usually a limit, not a fault with your card.
Questions People Ask After They Switch
The first week with a new streaming service usually goes fine. The problems show up in month two or three, when a show leaves, a charge looks odd, or a relative asks for help setting something up. These are the situations we hear about most, with the practical answer to each.
Streaming catalogs rotate as licensing deals begin and end, and a title shown on a sign-up page today may not be there next season. That is the strongest argument for monthly billing and against paying a year up front for a single show. Before you subscribe for one title, search for it inside the service, note whether it lists every season, and plan your viewing so you finish before the end of the month you pay for.
Double charges usually mean two separate subscriptions rather than one billing error. The classic case is a trial started directly with the service and another started through Amazon, Apple or Roku, each billing you on its own schedule. Check every biller named on your statement, then cancel the duplicate in the platform that charges it. Acorn’s terms say there are no refunds or credits for partial or unused months, so ask for a correction anyway but do not count on one. Catching it in the first week is the best protection.
Subscription prices change at renewal. Acorn’s sign-up terms say your plan auto-renews at the then-current price, and BritBox’s promotional annual deals revert to the standard annual rate at renewal, currently $109.99 for Standard and $149.99 for Premier. If a bill is higher than you remember, find the date of the first higher charge and compare it with the service’s last price announcement. A promotion ending is the most common explanation, followed by a general price increase.
Check the device list before you start a trial, because a service you cannot play on the living-room screen gets forgotten quickly. Acorn lists Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, iPhone and iPad, Android phones and tablets, smart TVs, Chromecast and the web. Independent listings show BritBox on Fire TV, Android, Apple TV, iOS, LG, Roku and Samsung, and MHz Choice on a similar spread. If your TV is older, a low-cost streaming stick usually solves the problem, and one stick serves every service in this guide.
Helping an older relative is where most billing confusion starts. Create the account with their email address rather than yours, so receipts and renewal notices reach them. Subscribe directly with the service rather than through a third-party channel, so there is one place to cancel. Write the cancel-by date on a calendar they will actually see, and note the biller name that will appear on their statement, so no one is surprised by an unfamiliar charge.
Pick a monthly ceiling first and let it choose your services. At $20 a month, you can afford any single paid service here with room to spare, or Acorn plus MHz Choice together for $17.98. BritBox plus MHz Choice is $18.98, and BritBox plus Acorn is $20.98, just over the line. Staying under the ceiling usually means rotating rather than holding both. Your total matters more than any one price, because small subscriptions add up faster than a single large one.
Add-ons billed by a TV provider follow the provider’s calendar and rules. DirecTV customers who bundle Acorn were notified of a $1 monthly increase beginning in May, and the provider, not Acorn, handles the change and any cancellation. If you pay for Acorn through a television plan, check whether going direct would be cheaper, especially on the annual plan, which provider add-ons generally do not offer.
Switching Without Losing Money or Momentum
Leaving BritBox is easy. Leaving it well takes a little planning, because the usual mistakes happen at the edges: cancelling too early, cancelling in the wrong place, or paying for two services at once for longer than you meant to.
Look at your card or bank statement for the entry. If BritBox bills you directly, the cancel path is britbox.com, then My Account, then Manage Subscription. If the charge comes from Amazon, Apple or Roku, cancel in that company’s subscription settings instead. Do this before you start any trial elsewhere so you do not forget which account is which.
Overlap costs you a few dollars at most, and it lets you compare the two services against what you actually watch. Search the new service for the three titles you care about most. If at least two are there, you are likely to be happy. If only one is, plan to rotate rather than replace.
A cancelled paid subscription generally keeps working until the end of the period you paid for, which for a monthly plan means you do not lose the rest of the month. Premier’s downloads and early access are tied to the plan, so finish anything you downloaded before the plan ends. Do not assume offline downloads survive cancellation.
Whichever service you land on, write down the date you will decide whether to keep it, and set a phone reminder a day earlier. The single most effective habit in this guide is also the least glamorous: a scheduled decision costs less than a decision your bank statement makes for you three months later.
BritBox’s own leadership has said that BritBox and BBC Select bundles are on its list to explore, so watch for those rather than assuming today’s separate prices will last. Promotional prices pop up around holidays and seem tempting, but they usually revert to the full price automatically, so read the renewal terms before you accept one.
Our Pick, Depending on What You Need
It matches BritBox’s mix of mystery and drama, stays month-to-month, and costs $1 less each month. For most people leaving BritBox over price, this is the first service to trial, though the saving is modest and the archive differs.
For about $60 to $72 a year in station support, you get Masterpiece seasons and the wider PBS library, then fill gaps with free library streaming.
At $7.99 a month it is the cheapest paid choice here. Use it for subtitled crime dramas when you want something different from British TV, not as a replacement for it.
Keeping one service at a time, for the few months you need it, is the most reliable way to lower the bill. It turns three subscriptions into roughly one, and it lets you sample new catalogs without a long commitment.
Prices reflect each service’s published US rates when we last checked and exclude taxes and promotions. Streaming prices change often, so confirm current terms at checkout. PBS Passport minimums are set by individual stations. Library limits vary by library. This page is independent and is not affiliated with BritBox, Acorn TV, MHz Choice, PBS, Amazon, Kanopy or hoopla.
Key sources: BritBox official plans page and help center · Acorn TV sign-up and help pages · MHz Choice support FAQ · PBS Help Center · local PBS station Passport pages · public library Kanopy and hoopla guides · The Desk · Hollywood Reporter · CNBC.