Savings · 9 min

The Real Cost of Streaming in 2026: 707 EUR a Year, or 216

Netflix, Spotify, Disney+ and YouTube Premium cost 58.96 EUR a month at full price. Here is the same access for 18.06 EUR, and the exact maths behind it.

Four subscriptions. That is the average European streaming stack in 2026: one video service for the evening, one music service for the commute, one family service for the kids, one ad-free layer on YouTube. Nobody decided to spend 700 EUR a year on entertainment. It happened one 11.99 EUR line at a time.

Here is the arithmetic nobody puts on a landing page.

What the official plans cost right now

These are the published individual prices in France and most of the euro zone, checked in 2026.

Add ChatGPT Plus at 23.00 EUR and you are past 980 EUR a year, which is roughly a flight to New York, every year, for the right to skip adverts.

Why prices moved, and why sharing got harder

Two things happened at the same time, and they were not a coincidence.

Growth stopped coming from new subscribers, so it had to come from existing ones. Every major platform raised prices between 2023 and 2026, and every major platform tightened who counts as a household. Netflix started it. Disney+ followed in 2025. YouTube re-checked family plan addresses in 2026.

The official household rule is now roughly the same everywhere: everyone on the plan must live at the same address, and the platform verifies it. A member who connects too often from somewhere else loses access, usually without warning.

So the old trick, four friends on one family plan, is over. What replaced it is not a trick at all.

Co-subscription: the same plan, one seat each

A family plan was always sold as several seats. The only question is who fills them and who pays for them. In a co-subscription, each person pays for their own seat on a plan that genuinely exists, instead of one person paying for four and hoping the address check never runs.

At Subify, a seat costs this:

The same four-service stack: 18.06 EUR a month, 216.72 EUR a year. That is 490.80 EUR left in your account, for the identical apps on the identical devices.

The verdict, service by service

Netflix. The widest gap of the lot, because the 4K Premium tier is the one that got expensive. If you watch on a TV, this is the single line worth changing first. See Netflix sharing.

YouTube Premium. The most searched problem of 2026, because family plans are being broken up by address checks. Ad-free plus YouTube Music for 4.69 EUR is the closest thing to a straight swap. See YouTube Premium sharing.

Spotify. Cheapest official plan, so the saving is smaller in euros, but it is the subscription people keep the longest, which is where the yearly figure bites. See Spotify sharing.

Disney+. Worth it if you have children and a Premium 4K screen. Less obvious if you watch two series a year. See Disney+ sharing.

ChatGPT Plus. The newest line on most bills, and the one people underestimate: 23.00 EUR a month is 276 EUR a year.

What to check before you pay anyone

There are plenty of places selling cheap accounts. Most of the complaints we read about them come down to four things, so check them in this order.

1. Is it a real seat, or a resold password? A seat has your own profile. A resold password gets changed and you lose everything.
2. Does the price hold? A promotional price that jumps at renewal is not a saving, it is a deferred bill. Ours stays at the price you bought until you stop the renewal yourself.
3. Can you stop it in one click? Automatic renewal is fine, as long as cancelling is a button and not an email thread.
4. What happens when access breaks? The honest answer is replacement, or a refund if the access cannot be restored. Anyone promising that nothing will ever break has not run this for long.

The one-page summary

Full price for four services: 58.96 EUR a month, 707.52 EUR a year. One seat each on the same services: 18.06 EUR a month, 216.72 EUR a year. Difference: 490.80 EUR a year, and nothing changes on your screen.

Prices move, so we keep the reference figures on one page: the subscription price index. If you are here because your family plan stopped working, read what actually works in 2026.

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