Sling is still the cheapest way into live cable channels, but “the Sling TV price” stopped being one number a while ago. There are now six base plans from $19.99 to $60.99, a local-channel surcharge that can add $5 to $10 and can’t be switched off, add-ons that can push a bundled plan past YouTube TV’s base price, and — since early October — no Day, Weekend or Week Passes at all. This guide rebuilds the real monthly bill for each plan, shows exactly where Sling stops being the bargain, and works through the situations where picking the right plan saves hundreds of dollars a year.
Nine Answers Before You Subscribe
We lined up Sling’s own announcements against several independent price trackers and found that the base prices agree and the confusion lives in everything around them: local stations, add-ons, stream limits and what changed this year. These are the answers that matter most.
Sling Essentials and Sling Select are $19.99, the two together are $34.99, Orange and Blue are $45.99 each, and Orange & Blue combined is $60.99. Taxes are extra, and some markets pay a local-station surcharge on top.
Those figures include the local-channel surcharge. Where Sling carries local ABC, FOX or NBC stations, it adds $5 a month for one or two stations and $10 for all three, and there’s no way to opt out of the stations. Older roundups quoted the $5 version as the Blue price.
No — in no market and on no plan. ABC, FOX and NBC appear only in select markets. For CBS you need an antenna or a separate Paramount+ subscription that includes a live local feed where available.
No. Sling withdrew its 1-day ($4.99), 3-day ($9.99) and 7-day ($14.99) passes in early October after lawsuits from Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery. Short-term viewing now means a monthly plan you cancel.
Orange and Essentials allow one stream. Blue and Select allow three. Orange & Blue and Essentials & Select allow up to four. A household with two TVs running Orange will hit the wall quickly.
No contract and no cancellation fee. Access continues through the month you’ve already paid for, but Sling does not refund partial months. Cancelling on day one of a cycle still costs the full month.
Sling Essentials at $19.99, launched in April, includes ESPN and ESPN2 along with Disney Channel, Freeform and about a dozen other channels. It has no local stations and allows one stream.
When you stack extras. Orange & Blue ($60.99) plus $10 in local stations, Sports Extra ($15) and Unlimited DVR ($5) comes to $90.99 — $8 above YouTube TV’s $82.99 base plan, which includes locals and unlimited DVR.
Not in anything we reviewed. The real levers are the $19.99 plans, skipping add-ons, using an antenna for locals, and subscribing only for the months you’ll actually watch.
The Plan Ladder: Six Plans, and What a Year of Each Costs
Until this spring Sling was easy to describe: Orange, Blue, or both. Now there’s a second, cheaper ladder underneath them.
On April 9 Sling launched Essentials, a $19.99 plan built around ESPN and ESPN2 plus Disney Channel, Freeform, Game Show Network, Lifetime Movies, Hallmark Mystery, Bounce and a handful of classic-TV networks. It sits alongside Select, also $19.99, which carries FOX News, FS1, NFL Network, FX, National Geographic and, in some markets, local ABC, FOX and NBC. Put the two together and you pay $34.99 for a lineup that overlaps with Orange and Blue on the channels many people actually name when they describe cable. In our review of the published lineups, the Essentials-plus-Select pairing was the plan that changed the arithmetic most: it undercuts Orange & Blue by $26 a month while keeping ESPN, FS1, NFL Network and FOX News.
What you give up is breadth. Orange (30-plus channels) and Blue (40-plus) are the full cable-style bundles, with channels such as TNT, TBS, CNN, MS NOW, USA Network, Bravo and Discovery that the smaller plans don’t carry. Multiply the monthly prices by twelve and the staircase looks like this.
Twelve months at list price. Bars are drawn to scale from Sling’s published monthly prices and a $82.99 YouTube TV base plan as a benchmark. Taxes and the local-station surcharge are not included.
| Plan | Monthly price | Streams | Channels | Built around | 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $19.99 | 1 | 10+ | ESPN, ESPN2, kids, classic TV | $239.88 |
| Select | From $19.99 | 3 | 10+ | FOX News, FS1, NFL Network, FX | $239.88 |
| Essentials & Select | From $34.99 | Up to 4 | 15+ | Both lineups for less | $419.88 |
| Orange | $45.99 | 1 | 30+ | ESPN, TNT, TBS, CNN, kids | $551.88 |
| Blue | From $45.99 | 3 | 40+ | News and entertainment; FOX and NBC in select markets | $551.88 |
| Orange & Blue | From $60.99 | Up to 4 | 50+ | Sling’s fullest lineup | $731.88 |
A note on “from” prices. Sling’s own tables list Select, Blue and the two combo plans as “starting at,” because the local-station surcharge discussed below can lift them in some markets. Channel counts also differ slightly between sources — Orange is variously described as 30-plus or 34, Blue as 40-plus or 43 — because Sling adjusts lineups. We used the rounded figures Sling itself uses and would treat any single exact count with caution.
Essentials & Select is the plan that gets overlooked because it doesn’t have the familiar Orange or Blue name. Yet it carries ESPN and ESPN2, FS1, NFL Network, FOX News, FX, National Geographic and a long list of family and classic-TV channels, with up to four streams. The things it lacks — TNT and TBS, CNN and MS NOW, USA Network, Bravo — are the first items to check against your own habits. If none of them is a must-have, the saving over Orange & Blue is $26 a month, or $312 a year.
Local Channels: The Surcharge, the Gaps, and the Workaround
Local stations are the single biggest reason a Sling bill ends up different from the ad, and the biggest reason some households shouldn’t use Sling as their only TV service.
Here is how it works. Sling Orange and Essentials carry no local broadcast stations. Sling Blue, Sling Select and the two combo plans carry local ABC, FOX and NBC affiliates only in select markets. Where they do, Sling adds a surcharge — reported at $5 a month where one or two of the stations are available, and $10 where all three are. You can’t decline the stations to avoid the charge, which is why a Select plan that starts at $19.99 can land at $24.99 or $29.99, and why older articles that quoted Blue at $50.99 were describing a one-local-station market rather than a different base price.
CBS is the hole. Every independent guide we compared says the same thing: Sling does not carry CBS in any market, at any price. The CW and PBS stations aren’t part of the lineup either. Among the big live-TV services, that makes Sling the only one that can’t deliver all four major broadcast networks, and it’s the first thing to check if your household watches network sitcoms, NFL games on CBS, or the local CBS news.
Local-channel path. Availability follows your TV market, not your city limits, so use Sling’s ZIP lookup rather than a list from an article. Surcharge amounts are as reported by independent price guides.
| Network | On Sling? | Which plans | Extra cost | Workaround |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABC | Select markets only | Blue, Select, combos | Part of the $5–$10 surcharge | Antenna |
| FOX | Select markets only | Blue, Select, combos | Part of the $5–$10 surcharge | Antenna |
| NBC | Select markets only | Blue, Select, combos | Part of the $5–$10 surcharge | Antenna |
| CBS | Never | None | Not available | Antenna or a separate app |
| The CW, PBS | Not carried | None | Not available | Antenna |
The antenna fix deserves more respect than it usually gets. A basic indoor antenna is a one-time purchase with no monthly fee, and it delivers the local networks over the air in high definition where signal allows. Several guides we read describe the pairing of a cheap Sling plan and an antenna as the most popular budget setup, and an antenna has a second benefit: it keeps your local stations working when your internet goes down. The costs are real too — reception varies with your location, local channels arrive on a separate TV input rather than inside Sling’s guide, and older guides that describe integrating an antenna into the Sling guide through an adapter are worth double-checking, since hardware availability changes.
In 2024 the FCC adopted an “all-in” pricing rule that requires cable and satellite TV providers to state a single clear price for video programming, with compliance required by December 19, 2024. Law-firm analyses of the rule note that it applies to cable operators and satellite (DBS) providers, not to streaming services. Sling is a streaming service, so it advertises a starting price and discloses market-based add-ons separately. That’s why the number on the ad and the number on your statement can differ, and why the only reliable way to know your price is to enter your ZIP code and read the checkout screen before you pay.
The Real Cost: Add-Ons, DVR and the Point Where Sling Loses Its Edge
Sling’s base prices are honest. What changes the bill is the optional layer that most households end up adding.
| Add-on or charge | Price | Applies to | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sports Extra | +$11/mo. | Orange, Blue or Select | More sports networks such as NBA TV, SEC Network, ESPNU, NHL Network |
| Sports Extra (combo) | +$15/mo. | Orange & Blue, or Essentials & Select | Sports channels from both sides |
| News Extra | +$6/mo. | Blue, Select or combos | Additional news networks |
| Unlimited DVR + Replays | +$5/mo. | Any plan | Replaces the free 50 hours of DVR |
| Local-station surcharge | $5–$10/mo. | Blue, Select, combos in carried markets | Local ABC, FOX or NBC; cannot be declined |
| Other themed Extras | Roughly $6 each | Varies | Kids, comedy, lifestyle and more |
| Taxes | Varies | All plans | State and local |
The fully loaded version of Sling’s flagship shows where things tip. Start with Orange & Blue at $60.99. Add $10 for a market that carries all three local stations. Add $15 for Sports Extra and $5 for Unlimited DVR, and you reach $90.99 a month — $8 more than YouTube TV’s $82.99 base plan, which already includes locals (CBS among them) and unlimited DVR. We ran that sum several ways because it’s counter to Sling’s reputation. It holds up: the cheapest live-TV service is cheapest because it’s lean, and each extra you add narrows the gap.
Where the edge disappears. Each segment is a published Sling price: the $60.99 combo, the $10 surcharge for a market with all three local stations, $15 for Sports Extra on a combo plan and $5 for Unlimited DVR. Your own bill may sit lower if your market has fewer local stations.
Unlimited DVR at $5 is the add-on we’d think hardest about, because the free allowance is 50 hours. Fifty hours of one-hour shows is fifty shows; a football-heavy household recording three-hour games burns through it in a few weekends. Sports Extra, by contrast, makes sense only if you can name the specific channel you’re paying for. It’s easy to subscribe at $11 for NBA TV or the SEC Network, watch it twice in a month, and keep paying for the rest of the year. If you can’t name the channel and the game, skip the extra and revisit it when you can.
The Day Pass Is Gone: What Replaced It
If you landed here searching for a $4.99 Sling Day Pass, the answer is that it no longer exists.
How the passes came and went. Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery each sued over the passes; a federal judge declined to block them in rulings reported about a month apart, and Sling pulled them anyway. Sling’s statement did not name a reason.
Sling launched its passes in August 2025: a one-day pass for $4.99, a three-day pass for $9.99 and a seven-day pass for $14.99, each unlocking the Orange channels for the period. They were enormously useful for a particular kind of viewer — someone who wanted ESPN for one game, not twelve months of it. Disney sued Sling’s parent, accusing it of breaching its licensing agreement by launching short-term offerings without discussing them first; Warner Bros. Discovery followed with its own suit. A federal judge declined to block the passes. Even so, in early October they disappeared, and Sling’s homepage now says passes are no longer available. The company said only that it would keep innovating. Existing pass holders reportedly kept access through the period they’d paid for.
So what does a one-game viewer do now? In our comparison of the remaining options, the answer is to pick the cheapest plan that carries the channel, then cancel. Essentials at $19.99 carries ESPN and ESPN2 and is the new floor; Select at the same price carries FS1 and NFL Network. That’s four times what a Day Pass cost, but it covers a month of access rather than a day.
Sling’s published cancellation policy is that access continues until the end of the billing period you’ve already paid for, and that there are no refunds for partial months. Put those two facts together and you get a habit that’s worth adopting for short-term viewing: subscribe, then cancel the same day or the next. You keep access for the full month, and you can’t be billed for a second month by forgetting. The tradeoff is that reactivating later doesn’t carry over promotional credits, according to guides that describe Sling’s reinstatement rules, so don’t cancel in the middle of a first-month discount you intend to keep using.
Sling offers a free, ad-supported tier called Freestream that doesn’t require a paid plan. It isn’t a substitute for ESPN or TNT, but it’s a no-cost way to check that the app works well on your TV and your internet before you commit to a paid month. We’d use it exactly that way: confirm the app is smooth on your devices first, then pay for the plan you’ve chosen.
Pick Your Situation: What to Choose and What It’s Worth
Sling rewards the household that knows precisely what it watches. These are the situations where we found the plan choice changes the bill the most.
There’s no single Sling plan for “football,” because the games are spread across networks. ESPN carries Monday Night Football and college games; FOX and NBC carry Sunday games and primetime, but only where Sling carries those local stations; NFL Network is in Blue and Select; CBS games aren’t available on Sling at all. Sling Select at $19.99 plus the local surcharge gives you FOX and NBC in a carried market plus NFL Network and FS1. Add Essentials for $34.99 and you gain ESPN and ESPN2.
That’s a lot of coverage for the money, but it has holes: CBS Sunday games need an antenna or another service, and the out-of-market Sunday package isn’t part of Sling. If you want every game, Sling isn’t the tool. If you want the games that air nationally and on your local FOX or NBC station, the $34.99 pairing is the cheapest credible way we found.
Stream limits are the quiet constraint that most price lists bury. Orange and Essentials allow only one stream at a time. If one person is watching a game in the living room, no one can watch anything on Orange in the kitchen. Blue and Select allow three streams, and the combos allow up to four. A household with two or three regular viewers should read that column before the price column: choosing Orange over Blue at the same $45.99 and then discovering the one-stream limit is a classic regret.
If you have a busy house, the combos or a plan with Blue or Select in it are the safer choices. The cost of the extra streams is baked into the combo price rather than charged separately, so the question is whether $15 more than Blue (or $26 less than Orange & Blue, in the Essentials & Select case) fits your viewing pattern.
We found no senior, AARP or income-based pricing in the Sling plans we reviewed, and any page suggesting otherwise should be treated with suspicion. What Sling does offer is a structure that’s naturally friendly to a tight budget. The $19.99 tiers are among the lowest-priced live-TV options we found, there’s no contract and no cancellation fee, and you can stop at any time. The money-saving moves are structural: choose the smallest plan that covers your channels, use an antenna for locals instead of paying a surcharge, skip add-ons you can’t name a use for, and put a reminder in your calendar before the billing date.
One more point on cost control: because Sling doesn’t refund unused days, the best time to cancel is the day before a renewal, and the best time to start is the day you’ll actually watch. Billing is prepaid, so a month you don’t use is a month you’ve paid for.
Sling is among the least demanding live-TV services on bandwidth. Its published guidance has been about 3 Mbps for a phone or tablet, 5 Mbps for a single HD stream on a TV or computer, and around 25 Mbps for a household with several devices or users. One independent guide notes that Sling streams many channels at up to 720p, which keeps its requirements below those of some competitors. That makes Sling workable on modest connections, but with a caveat: a four-stream household on 10 Mbps is going to buffer.
If you’re on a slow rural line, test the connection at the time of day you’d actually watch — an evening — rather than at midday, and keep the antenna idea in reserve for local channels. Satellite internet with high latency can stream at standard definition but may buffer more than a low-latency connection, according to one guide we reviewed.
Local channels follow your location, not your billing address. One long-running review notes that if you travel with your subscription, local availability varies based on where you are, which means the local FOX or NBC you get at home may not appear in a hotel or an RV park. The cable channels in Orange and Blue travel fine. If a seasonal home is a regular part of your year, plan on an antenna at each address for locals, and treat Sling’s local stations as a bonus rather than the foundation.
If you’re away for a long stretch, Sling’s pause option may help: a cancellation guide we reviewed says a subscription can be paused for up to three months, with no billing during the pause. That’s a reported feature rather than a published guarantee, so check the options on your own account page before you rely on it.
Since Sling’s parent company, EchoStar, has been working through a financial restructuring of its DISH satellite business, readers ask whether Sling is at risk. We found no announcement that Sling is shutting down. A recent comparison we reviewed reports that EchoStar has said DISH TV and Sling continue operating through the restructuring. Because Sling is prepaid month to month, your exposure at any moment is one month of service. That is a reason to avoid prepaying for long periods if Sling offers them, and a reason to keep an eye on news, not a reason to avoid the service.
Orange is Sling’s kids-and-sports plan: it carries Disney Channel, Nick Jr. and Cartoon Network alongside ESPN, according to the plan descriptions we compared. Essentials includes Disney Channel and Freeform at $19.99. Blue carries more news and general entertainment but fewer of the kid channels. The stream limit matters here too: children and adults watching at the same time quickly outgrow a one-stream plan.
This is where Sling’s structure shines, and where the loss of passes hurts. A household that wants ESPN for football season and nothing else can subscribe to Orange or Essentials for five months — September through January — and cancel. Five months of Orange is $229.95 rather than $551.88 for a year; five months of Essentials is $99.95. The rule is to cancel in the last cycle you plan to use, since access runs to the end of the paid month. Don’t sign up the day before the first game if your first game is nine days away: you’re paying for the days in between.
Three Households, Worked to the Dollar
We took three common viewers and ran each through the numbers in this guide using list prices, so the savings are visible and nothing hides in an assumption.
A caution before the examples: these compare plan prices, not guaranteed quotes. In each comparison we used Sling’s published monthly prices, YouTube TV’s $82.99 base plan as the benchmark, and the surcharge ranges reported for local stations. Your ZIP code can change the local surcharge, and promotions can lower the first month. The shape of the result held every time we reran it.
This viewer watches college football and basketball and an occasional ESPN documentary. Sling Essentials at $19.99 costs $239.88 for a full year. YouTube TV at $82.99 costs $995.88. The gap is $756 a year. Even compared with Orange at $45.99 ($551.88), Essentials saves $312 a year, and it carries the same two ESPN channels.
What the viewer gives up: there are no local stations, no TNT or TBS, and only one stream at a time. For a single person in a single room, none of those matters much. If the household ever needs two TVs at once, the answer is Essentials & Select at $34.99 and four streams, not a jump to a bigger bundle.
For them Blue at $45.99 looks like the obvious choice, but Select at $19.99 carries FOX News, FS1 and NFL Network, and in a carried market it brings local FOX and NBC. With a $5 local surcharge the total is $24.99; with $10, $29.99. Blue with the same local stations would be $50.99 or $55.99. The local surcharge applies to both plans, so the monthly difference between Select and Blue is $26 either way, or $312 a year.
What they lose: Blue’s broader entertainment lineup, with TNT, TBS, USA Network, Bravo and CNN. If those aren’t on the couple’s weekly list, the loss is theoretical. We’d run the free Freestream tier and a first month of Select, and look at the channel guide with real viewing habits before committing to either.
This is the household most likely to be disappointed by Sling’s headline price. Orange & Blue at $60.99 gives up to four streams. Add $10 for a three-local market and $5 for Unlimited DVR and the total is $75.99. YouTube TV at $82.99 includes locals, unlimited DVR and three streams. The gap is $7 a month, or $84 a year — not nothing, but small enough that CBS access, a single unified guide and fewer add-on decisions could easily tip the choice the other way.
Add Sports Extra at $15 and Sling moves to $90.99, above YouTube TV. In this scenario Sling’s value is the ability to keep each piece optional, not a lower price across the board. We’d choose Sling here only if the household can name which of Sling’s trimmed-down channels it watches and is happy to add an antenna for CBS.
Across the three, the pattern was consistent. Sling saves the most money for people with narrow, specific viewing — one ESPN fan, one news couple — and the least for large households that want everything. The cheapest plan that meets your real needs beats the most comprehensive plan every time, and the largest single saving in this guide comes from dropping from a full bundle to a $19.99 tier.
Sling Against the Other Live TV Services
Sling rarely loses on sticker price. It loses on what’s missing — locals, CBS, streams — and on what it costs once you add what’s missing back in.
| Service | Typical monthly price | Locals | Streams | What stands out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sling Essentials | $19.99 | None | 1 | Cheapest ESPN |
| Sling Orange & Blue | From $60.99 | ABC/FOX/NBC in select markets; no CBS | Up to 4 | Fullest Sling lineup |
| YouTube TV | $82.99 | Includes locals | 3 | Unlimited DVR; home of NFL Sunday Ticket |
| DirecTV Entertainment | $94.99 (to $104.99 with leased device) | Includes locals | Varies | ESPN Unlimited, Disney+ and Hulu access |
| Hulu + Live TV | Roughly $90–$100, by plan | Includes locals | Varies | Disney+ and ESPN+ bundle |
| Fubo | From about $85 | Varies | Varies | Sports-first lineup |
| Philo | About $33 | None | Varies | No sports, no locals |
Competitor prices move and trackers disagree by a few dollars, so read the rival figures as a range, not a quote. The structural point is stable. YouTube TV costs $82.99 and includes the four major networks, unlimited DVR and the NFL Sunday Ticket product; Sling’s combo plan starts $22 lower but needs an antenna for CBS and often a local surcharge. For some households that arithmetic favors Sling; for others the extra convenience justifies paying more. If you want a more locals-and-regional-sports service with one bill, DirecTV is built for that, at a higher price.
Sling works best for a household that can describe its viewing in a sentence: “ESPN and the Disney Channel,” “FOX News and NFL Network,” “Cable news and HGTV.” It works well alongside an antenna, and it works well for seasonal subscribers who start and stop. It works poorly for a large household that wants every local network, one guide and unlimited streams — and it works worst for anyone who needs CBS inside the same app.
Cancelling, Pausing and the Five-Minute Bill Check
Because Sling is month-to-month and prepaid, the habits that protect your wallet are about timing.
To cancel, sign in on Sling’s website or app, open your account and choose the cancellation option. Sling’s published terms say you keep access through the end of the billing period you’ve paid for, and that it does not provide refunds or credits for partial months, for upgrades or downgrades, or for months unused on an open account. An email asking to cancel is not a cancellation, and deleting the app does not cancel either; you need to complete the cancellation in your account. When you finish, look for the confirmation email. If it doesn’t arrive, contact Sling support directly instead of assuming the request went through.
- Match the plan line to the table above. Orange, Blue, Select and Essentials & Select should each show their listed price. If you’re paying more, one of the next four items explains it.
- Check for a local-station surcharge. A $5 or $10 difference on Blue, Select or a combo plan is the local surcharge. Confirm that your market really carries the stations you’re paying for.
- List your extras. Sports Extra ($11 or $15), News Extra ($6), Unlimited DVR + Replays ($5) and any other themed Extras. For each, name the channel or feature you used last month. If you can’t, remove it.
- Check the stream count against the household. If people are fighting over a one-stream plan, compare the cost of moving to Blue, Select or a combo with the cost of the arguments.
- Find your billing date. Because there are no partial-month refunds, the day before renewal is the best day to cancel. Put it on your calendar.
- Confirm it ended. After you cancel, make sure you receive the confirmation email and that no charge appears at the next cycle.
Sling handles account changes through its website and app, and it publishes a help center for billing and cancellations. For channel availability, enter your ZIP code on Sling’s local-channels page rather than relying on an article, including this one. For price or plan questions, the checkout screen shows the number you’ll actually pay.
The bottom line from our review is simple. Sling’s advertised price is real, but it’s the start of the calculation, not the end. Add the local-station surcharge if your market has one, add the extras you honestly use, and compare the total with a service that includes locals and DVR. If your viewing is narrow, a $19.99 or $34.99 plan can cost a fraction of the alternatives. If your viewing is broad, the gap narrows quickly, and the best answer might be a different service.
Sling changes plans and prices often, and several independent trackers disagree by a few dollars on some figures. We used Sling’s own announcements and published plan pricing where available and flagged ranges where we couldn’t confirm one number — notably the local-station surcharge, Extras prices and competitor prices. Treat the order page for your ZIP code as the final word.
Prices and plan details reflect Sling TV’s published pricing and announcements as of October 15, 2026, for new residential customers in the United States. Annual totals multiply the monthly list price by twelve and exclude taxes, the local-station surcharge and optional add-ons unless stated. Competitor prices are approximate and change frequently. Local channel availability depends on your TV market. This page is independent and is not affiliated with Sling TV or EchoStar. Always confirm pricing and terms with Sling before subscribing.
Key sources: Sling.com and Sling announcements · EchoStar investor relations (Sling Essentials launch) · FCC.gov and Federal Register (all-in pricing) · AmericanTV.com · CableTV.com · Cord Cutters News · The Desk