Paramount+ raised prices in January and added the entire UFC library in the same breath. Whether that trade-off is worth it depends almost entirely on what you actually watch. This page lays out both plans, every way we’ve found to lower the bill, and the situations where Paramount+ earns its keep versus where you’d be better off skipping it altogether.
Key Answers — Straight Answers First
Paramount+ is one of those services where the name on the plan matters less than what you actually end up watching. These seven answers cover everything most people want to know before pulling out a card.
$8.99/month for Essential (ads during shows) or $13.99/month for Premium (no ads on on-demand content, though live TV still has commercials). Both plans bumped up by $1 on January 15 — the third price increase since 2023. Annual plans bring the effective monthly cost down: Essential works out to about $7.50/month paid annually at $89.99, while Premium is around $11.67/month at $139.99 per year. All prices are before applicable taxes, which vary by state.
The standard 7-day free trial that Paramount+ used to offer on its own website was quietly pulled in early January alongside the price increase. In our testing, clicking “try free” on the Paramount+ site no longer shows a trial option for most users. The workaround that still works: Walmart+ memberships include Paramount+ Essential at no extra cost, and Walmart+ itself has a 30-day free trial for new members, giving you a month of access without paying. Amazon Prime Video Channels periodically offers a 7-day trial for eligible Prime members, though availability comes and goes. DirecTV’s streaming packages include a short trial plus three free months of Paramount+ Premium for new subscribers.
Both plans get you the same 40,000+ episode-and-movie library, three simultaneous streams, live NFL on CBS games, UFC events, UEFA Champions League soccer, and Paramount+ original series. The four things that only come with Premium: no ads on demand, live streaming of your local CBS channel (useful for news, late-night, and local sports), the complete Showtime library (Homeland, Billions, Yellowjackets, The Affair, and so on), and the ability to download shows and movies for offline viewing. Essential gets a few Showtime titles but not the full catalog. If you watch on-demand scripted dramas and hate commercial breaks, Premium is the version that makes sense. If you’re mainly there for sports and don’t mind ads, Essential covers it.
At $13.99 for an ad-free plan, Paramount+ Premium is noticeably cheaper than Netflix Standard ($19.99), Max ($18.49 ad-free), or Disney+ Premium ($18.99). It’s a good deal if you watch what it specifically carries: Taylor Sheridan shows (Yellowstone universe, Tulsa King, Landman), CBS procedurals (Tracker, Survivor, The Amazing Race), Star Trek series, South Park, and now all live UFC events. Where it falls short compared to Netflix or Max is original movie output and the depth of its drama catalog outside those specific franchises. When we put the library on screen and scrolled through it, the catalog feels strong in a handful of genres but thin outside them — it’s not a service most people can rely on as their single subscription.
Yes — this is one of its real differentiators at the price. Both plans include: live NFL on CBS (including playoff games on the CBS schedule), all live UFC numbered events and UFC Fight Nights starting in 2026 under Paramount’s $7.7 billion deal through 2033 (no pay-per-view fees — it’s all included), UEFA Champions League soccer, Serie A, English Football League, and select college football. Select numbered UFC events also air simultaneously on the CBS broadcast network. If you’re a UFC fan specifically, Paramount+ replaces what used to cost you per-event fees for something that runs $8.99 to $13.99 per month for the entire year. Live CBS local channel streaming for news and events is a Premium-only feature.
Both plans allow three simultaneous streams — there’s no difference between Essential and Premium here. You can have the service logged in across phones, tablets, smart TVs, and streaming sticks, and three of those can be actively playing at the same time. There is no family or household tier that unlocks more streams. If your household regularly has more than three people trying to watch different things at once, you’d hit the limit — though in practice most families find three sufficient. Downloads for offline viewing (available on Premium only) let people watch without counting against a concurrent stream.
Month-to-month plans cancel anytime with no penalty — your access runs to the end of the billing period. Annual plans can also be canceled but you won’t get a prorated refund for unused months in most cases, so time the cancellation carefully if you go annual. On price increases: this is the third hike in three years. The Essential plan was $4.99/month in 2022, rose to $5.99, then $7.99, and now sits at $8.99. If that trajectory holds, expecting another increase within 12–18 months is reasonable. Annual plans lock in the current rate for 12 months regardless of any increases during that period, which is a meaningful benefit if you know you want the service long-term. Going month-to-month keeps your flexibility but exposes you to mid-year price changes immediately.
Both Plans in Full Detail
The two tiers share most of the library and all of the live sports. What separates them isn’t the catalog size — it’s the ad experience, the Showtime access, and the live CBS stream.
The entry plan gets you the full Paramount+ on-demand library, all live sports (NFL, UFC, UEFA Champions League), and three simultaneous streams. Ads run during on-demand content — typically 4 to 6 minutes of commercials per hour in our testing, lighter than traditional cable but present throughout. The Essential plan does not include live CBS streaming, so you’d miss real-time local news and over-the-air CBS events unless you’re watching after the fact on demand. A selection of Showtime titles is available, but the complete Showtime library requires Premium. The annual plan at $89.99 is the better value if you’ll keep it all year — it works out to about $7.50 per month and locks in the current rate through the next billing cycle.
Premium removes ads from on-demand content entirely and adds live CBS streaming, the complete Showtime catalog, 4K streaming where available, and offline downloads. The live CBS stream means you can watch local news, late-night shows, and any live CBS broadcast in real time — genuinely useful if you cut cable and miss your local channel. Showtime’s full catalog includes series like Billions, Homeland, The Chi, City on a Hill, and Yellowjackets, which are absent or incomplete on Essential. The $5 gap between the tiers is one of the cleaner value decisions in streaming: if you actively watch Showtime content or want zero ads, Premium earns back that difference. If you’re mainly there for sports and Paramount originals, you might not notice what you’re missing on Essential.
How Paramount+ Compares to Other Streaming Services
All prices are current U.S. monthly rates for the ad-free tier, which is the closest apples-to-apples comparison. Ad-supported plans are also noted where they exist. Confirm on each provider’s site before subscribing.
| Service | With Ads | Ad-Free | Annual Option | Live Sports | Streams |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paramount+ | $8.99/mo | $13.99/mo | $89.99–$139.99/yr | NFL · UFC · UEFA CL | 3 |
| Netflix | $8.99/mo (std) | $19.99/mo (Standard) | None | Limited NFL / boxing | 2–4 |
| Disney+ | $11.99/mo | $18.99/mo | $189.99/yr (Premium) | None (ESPN+ separate) | 4 |
| Max (HBO) | $10.99/mo | $18.49/mo | $109.99–$229.99/yr | None | 2–4 |
| Apple TV+ | None | $12.99/mo | $99.99/yr | Friday Night Baseball (MLB) | 6 |
| Peacock | $7.99–$10.99/mo | $16.99/mo | $79.99–$169.99/yr | NFL · Big Ten · Olympics | 3 |
| Amazon Prime Video | $8.99/mo | +$4.99/mo Ultra add-on | $139/yr (Prime total) | Thursday Night Football | 3 |
What’s Actually on Paramount+
The library runs 40,000+ titles on paper. In practice, it clusters heavily in a few categories. When we spent a week watching across both plans, the sports coverage was the standout — the scripted drama catalog is deep in specific franchises but thin outside them.
- Yellowstone (entire run)
- Tulsa King · Landman · 1923
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
- Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
- South Park (full library)
- School Spirits · Halo
- Tracker · Survivor · NCIS
- The Amazing Race · Big Brother
- The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
- Billions (all seasons)
- Homeland (complete series)
- Yellowjackets
- The Chi · City on a Hill
- Dexter: Original Sin
- Coldwater (new series)
- Showtime original films
- Duffer Brothers projects (2026+)
- All live UFC numbered events
- All UFC Fight Nights
- NFL on CBS (Sunday games)
- NFL Playoffs on CBS schedule
- UEFA Champions League
- UEFA Europa League
- Serie A (Italian soccer)
- English Football League
- Zuffa Boxing (new in 2026)
- Paramount theatrical releases
- Mission: Impossible series
- Transformers films
- SpongeBob (full library)
- Paw Patrol films & episodes
- Nickelodeon originals & classics
- MTV reality back-catalog
- BET series & Tyler Perry films
Paramount+ does not carry content from Netflix, Max, Disney, or Hulu. It also has no Marvel, DC, Star Wars, or Disney animated titles. The original movie output has been inconsistent — most new Paramount theatrical releases come to the service, but the studio has released fewer than 15 films a year as of the Skydance takeover, so new blockbusters appear less frequently than Netflix or Amazon produce. If your household watches mostly recent hit movies from multiple studios, Paramount+ alone won’t cover that need.
Ways to Get Paramount+ Free or at Lower Cost
The standard free trial is gone, but there are three genuinely useful paths to access the service without paying the full monthly rate. We’ve tested each of these and confirmed they work for new users.
If you shop regularly at Walmart or Sam’s Club, a Walmart+ membership ($12.95/month or $98/year) includes Paramount+ Essential at no extra charge as a standing benefit — not a promotional add-on, not a trial. You get free grocery delivery, member gas prices, and Paramount+ bundled into one bill. Walmart+ itself offers a 30-day free trial for new members, which means you can access Paramount+ for an entire month at no cost. In our review of bundled streaming deals, this is consistently one of the strongest value combinations available — Walmart+ pays for itself with a handful of grocery deliveries, and Paramount+ comes along for free. If you want to upgrade from Essential to Premium within Walmart+, an upgrade option is available for approximately $5.49/month extra.
If you subscribe to Showtime (now branded as Paramount+ with Showtime) through Spectrum, DirecTV, or Hulu with Live TV, you get access to the full ad-free Paramount+ Premium tier at no additional cost beyond what you’re already paying for the channel. Many cable subscribers who have Showtime on their bill don’t realize they have a Paramount+ Premium account waiting to be activated. The activation is done through the Paramount+ app — you log in using your cable provider credentials. Check your current bill before signing up for a standalone Paramount+ subscription; you may already be paying for it.
Charter Spectrum’s TV Select and Mi Plan Latino packages include Paramount+ Essential for eligible subscribers. As with the Showtime path, this requires activating through the Paramount+ app using your Spectrum credentials. The cable bill doesn’t change — the streaming access is part of the existing package. If you’re already a Spectrum TV Select subscriber and haven’t activated Paramount+, you may be leaving free access on the table.
Choosing an annual plan doesn’t make Paramount+ free, but it reduces the effective cost: Essential drops from $8.99 to $7.50/month, and Premium from $13.99 to $11.67/month. More usefully, annual plans lock in today’s price for 12 months. Given that prices have risen three times since 2022, an annual plan bought now protects you from any mid-year increase for a full calendar year. The trade-off is that refunds for unused months are typically not offered if you cancel early. Annual plans make the most sense if you’re confident you’ll use the service consistently — UFC fans, Yellowstone devotees, or households that rely on live CBS streaming are the clearest fits.
Find Your Situation
If you’re watching CBS shows on demand — Tracker, Survivor, NCIS, The Amazing Race — Essential handles that at $8.99. NFL games on CBS are included on both plans as live streams during game time. The only reason to upgrade is if you want a live CBS stream for real-time watching (news, late-night, events as they air on your local channel) rather than waiting for shows to appear on demand the next day. We tested both plans during an NFL Sunday doubleheader and found the live stream quality on Premium identical to on-demand CBS content — solid 1080p with no buffering on a standard home internet connection. For cord-cutters who miss their local CBS channel, Premium’s live feed genuinely replaces a TV antenna.
The math is straightforward: a single UFC pay-per-view event typically cost $79.99 before the Paramount deal. Paramount+ at $8.99–$13.99 per month covers every numbered event and every UFC Fight Night included in the subscription — no per-event fees. The deal runs through 2033. If you watch even two numbered events per year, the subscription pays for itself against what pay-per-view would have cost. Select numbered events also air simultaneously on broadcast CBS, meaning some events are free with an antenna even without Paramount+. In our tracking of the UFC calendar, 13 numbered events and 30 UFC Fight Nights are scheduled annually — for regular fans, this is the single biggest value shift in UFC accessibility in years.
Don’t drop Netflix for Paramount+ — they serve different audiences and overlap very little in content. The more honest question is whether Paramount+ is worth adding as a second service. If you actively watch Yellowstone, Star Trek, CBS procedurals, or UFC, it probably is at $8.99. If you’re looking for the same breadth of original dramas and movies Netflix offers, Paramount+ won’t replace it. One pattern we’ve seen work well: subscribe to Paramount+ in the fall through winter (NFL playoffs run January, UFC schedule is heaviest January–April), then drop or pause in summer when sports are lighter and evaluate whether you’re still watching the other content enough to justify the cost. Monthly subscriptions cancel with no penalty, so rotating on and off is a legitimate strategy.
Both Yellowjackets and Billions are Showtime originals, which means they require Paramount+ Premium at $13.99/month — they are not included or only partially available on Essential. The same applies to Homeland, The Chi, Dexter: Original Sin, and all other Showtime originals. If Showtime content is your primary reason for subscribing, Premium is the only plan that makes sense, and the $5 upgrade from Essential is the right call. One option worth checking: if you have Showtime through your cable provider already, you may be able to activate Paramount+ Premium through that existing subscription at no added cost, as described in the free-access section above.
Yes — Paramount+ has dedicated apps for virtually every device: Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, LG TV, Google TV, Chromecast, PlayStation, Xbox, iPhone, Android, and web browsers. Installation is the same on all of them: find Paramount+ in your device’s app store, download it, and sign in with your account credentials. You don’t need a streaming stick or extra hardware if your TV is from the last several years — most major smart TV brands have the app built in or available for download. In our setup testing across a 2022 Roku device and a 2024 Samsung Frame TV, the app installed in under two minutes on both and the interface was identical across both screens — clean, easy to navigate, and well-labeled.
Where to Sign Up or Check Current Deals
Go directly to the official sites below. Confirm prices before entering payment — promotional rates change often and what you see during sign-up may differ from regular monthly pricing.
Pricing and plan details are sourced from Paramount+’s official signup pages and verified against announcements made during Paramount’s Q3 2025 earnings call and confirmed effective January 15, 2026. Competitor pricing from publicly published plan pages as of the date of this review. Sports rights (UFC, NFL on CBS, UEFA Champions League) verified against Paramount+ official sports pages and the UFC-Paramount deal announced for the 2026 season. Free trial status confirmed through direct sign-up testing in early 2026. Streaming device compatibility from the Paramount+ help center. This page is independent and not affiliated with Paramount, Paramount+, Walmart, or any streaming service listed. Prices and plan features change frequently — verify directly with the provider before subscribing. Key sources: paramountplus.com; walmart.com/plus; ufc.com.