Apple TV Hikes Subscriptions to $14.99 and $119

Apple TV now costs $14.99 a month in the United States, up from $12.99, and the yearly plan rose from $99 to $119. It is the fourth U.S. price rise since 2022 for a service that launched at $4.99 in 2019. Apple One’s cheapest bundle moved to $21.95 a month from $19.95.

TechCrunch first flagged the new rates on Friday morning. Variety said the U.S. change was effective immediately, and TVLine said the new rates apply Friday for new subscribers. Apple’s own TV storefront already listed $14.99 the same day.

The Annual Plan Took the Hardest Hit

The $2 monthly bump is the headline. The yearly jump is the one that changes the math. Last August, Apple lifted the monthly rate from $9.99 to $12.99 and left the yearly plan at $99, a discount that PCMag and TidBITS both treated as the way to dodge the hike. That freeze lasted one year.

THE NEW U.S. RATES

• Monthly plan: $12.99 to $14.99, a $2 rise of about 15%.
• Yearly plan: $99 to $119, a $20 rise of about 20%.
• Apple One Individual: $19.95 to $21.95, a $2 rise of about 10%.

Twelve months at $14.99 would cost $179.88. At $119 a year, the prepaid plan still comes out to about $9.92 a month, a saving of $60.88 if you stay the whole year. Last year’s $99 yearly rate saved $56.88 against $12.99 monthly billing, so the dollar saving is slightly larger and the percentage saving is slightly thinner. People who locked in $99 last fall to beat the $12.99 monthly rate now face a 20% jump at renewal.

Soccer, Formula 1, and the End of Season Pass

Apple is no longer selling a boutique originals app that happens to carry some games. The company now advertises live sports at no extra cost, naming Formula 1 races, MLS matches, and Friday Night Baseball on the same page as the $14.99 rate. That packaging is the bill behind the new price, not a memory-chip shortage.

MLS and Apple spent three seasons selling a separate Season Pass on top of Apple TV. Sports Business Journal reported that the 10-year rights pact that started in 2023 is worth $2.5 billion, about $250 million a year, and that from the 2026 season every regular-season match, Leagues Cup, All-Star Game, Campeones Cup, and playoff game sits inside a standard Apple TV plan. Season-ticket holders who used to get Season Pass now get a yearly Apple TV plan instead. Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson told SBJ he expects the league to “double our viewership” in 2026 because of that move.

Season Pass used to cost $14.99 a month or $99 a season on its own, or $12.99 a month and $79 a season for people who already paid for Apple TV. Folding that inventory into the base plan means the old upcharge is gone and the base plan is the one that rose.

WHAT NOW COMES WITH THE $14.99 PLAN

• Formula 1: Apple and Formula 1 announced a five-year U.S. pact in October 2025. Subscribers get practice, qualifying, Sprint sessions, and Grands Prix, and F1 TV Premium is included. Select races and all practice sessions stream free in the app. BBC Sport reported the deal is worth about $750 million, about $150 million a year, up from ESPN’s prior U.S. fee of about $80 million a year. Apple has not published its own dollar figure.
• Major League Soccer: Every club, no blackouts, plus studio shows, after Season Pass shut down as a standalone product.
• Friday Night Baseball: Regular-season doubleheaders on Fridays, still sold as part of the same plan rather than a separate pass.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services, tied the F1 deal to the subscription itself, not to a pay-per-view add-on.

We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with Formula 1 and offer Apple TV subscribers in the U.S. front-row access to one of the most exciting and fastest-growing sports on the planet.

Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Services, Apple Newsroom

The louder objection on Friday was not the $2. It was the catalog around those games. Apple’s originals still carry the reputation. The licensed movie shelf does not, and $14.99 makes that gap harder to ignore for anyone who is not watching soccer or Grand Prix weekends.

$4.99 Became $14.99 in Four Steps

Apple TV, then branded Apple TV+, launched on November 1, 2019, at $4.99 a month, or $49.99 a year per PCMag’s timeline. The first U.S. hike arrived three years later. Each later step has been shorter.

From $4.99 to $14.99 is a $10 rise, a 200% climb in under seven years. CableTV.com’s 2026 pricing guide put the inflation-adjusted launch price near $6.35 and noted the service had already outrun that line at $12.99. The new $14.99 rate widens that gap again. PCMag says Apple dropped the “+” from the name in October 2025, around the F1 announcement, which is when the product stopped presenting itself as a plus-one and started presenting itself as a full TV service.

Apple One Still Looks Like the Better Deal

Apple did not touch every bundle tier today. On July 17 it raised Apple Music’s Individual plan from $10.99 to $11.99 and Family from $16.99 to $19.99, and it lifted Apple One Family from $25.95 to $27.95 and Premier from $37.95 to $39.95. Individual Apple One stayed at $19.95 through that Music hike. Six weeks later, that protected tier is the one that moved with TV.

Apple now says the Individual plan is $21.95 per month, with Family still $27.95 and Premier still $39.95. Individual includes Music, TV, Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud+. Apple’s page claims a $13 monthly saving, or 31%, versus buying those parts apart. Family and Premier still advertise $17 and $35 in monthly savings.

The upsell gap is the quiet design choice. Apple One Individual now costs $6.96 more than standalone TV at $14.99. In July it cost $6.96 more than TV at $12.99. Apple raised both by $2 and left that gap exactly where it was, so the extra dollars for Music, Arcade, and 50GB of storage did not get more expensive relative to TV. The yearly TV plan, which is not inside Apple One, is the product that took the 20% hit.

People who already pay for Apple One felt less of Friday’s news, and that is the point of keeping the bundle gap flat. The stack still hides a TV hike better than a standalone bill does.

What $14.99 Buys Against Netflix and Peacock

At $14.99, Apple TV is still cheaper than Netflix’s $19.99 Standard plan and Peacock’s $19.99 ad-free Premium Plus, and it still runs without ads on Apple Originals. The gap is the library. Apple is selling originals plus live sports, not a deep back catalog, and Netflix remains the plan you buy when you want the shelf to be endless.

Netflix raised U.S. prices in March, taking Standard with ads to $8.99, Standard to $19.99, and Premium to $26.99. Peacock moved on August 18, its fourth hike in four years: Select to $8.99, Premium (with ads) to $12.99, and Premium Plus to $19.99. Disney+ Premium, last raised in October 2025, sits at $18.99. Apple now prices above Peacock’s ad tier and well below Netflix’s ad-free Standard tier.

Cord Cutter Weekly’s August 28 deals list still showed an Apple TV and Peacock Premium combo from $14.99, or $19.99 with ad-free Peacock. If that combo rate holds at $14.99, it now matches standalone Apple TV, which would make the Peacock add-on look almost free until NBCUniversal resets it. Treat that list price as a snapshot from Friday, not a promise it survives the Apple change.

Ampere Analysis, in a survey published by TV Tech this week, found that average price rises at Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon had slowed from 24% of the prior rate in 2023 and 2024 to 14% in 2025 and 2026. Apple’s monthly move sits near that newer average. Its yearly move does not.

Services Already Mint $30.7 Billion a Quarter

Apple can lift a streamer that still has a thin movie shelf because the streamer is not the business. For the fiscal third quarter ended June 27, Apple reported revenue of $109.4 billion, up 16%, and Services revenue of $30.7 billion, up 12% from $27.423 billion a year earlier. Services cost of sales was $7.494 billion, which is why that line still funds originals, soccer, and F1 without needing Netflix-like scale. “Today, Apple is proud to report our strongest June quarter ever, with double-digit revenue growth across iPhone, Mac and Services, and in every geographic segment,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in the July 30 results release.

Hardware is getting less gentle in the same season. In June, Apple raised the Apple TV 4K streaming box from $129 to $199 for Wi-Fi and from $149 to $249 for Wi-Fi plus Ethernet, and it lifted HomePod and HomePod mini. “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” Apple said then, pointing at memory and storage demand from AI data centers. This week the company is also selling the $899 Mac mini built for always-on AI into that same memory market. TechCrunch tied those parts shortages to Friday’s TV hike. The cleaner through-line is the one on Apple’s TV page: races, matches, and Friday doubleheaders now sit in the plan you already pay for, and $14.99 is what that plan costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Apple TV still offer a free trial?

New customers still get a 7-day free trial, then $14.99 a month. If you buy an eligible iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV 4K and redeem the offer within 90 days, Apple includes three months of the service at no extra charge, which is the longer free window for anyone already buying hardware.

Can a family share one Apple TV plan?

Yes. Family Sharing covers up to six people on a single Apple TV plan, including the organizer, and they do not need to share a password. Apple TV and Arcade also keep Family Sharing even inside the Apple One Individual bundle, which otherwise does not share Music or iCloud+ the same way.

Do students get Apple TV for less?

The Apple Music Student Plan includes Apple TV at no extra cost after a one-month Music trial, so a qualifying student who already wants Music does not pay the $14.99 TV rate on top. That path is separate from Apple One and from the hardware promo.

Do you need an Apple TV 4K box to watch?

No. The Apple TV app runs on iPhone, iPad, many smart TVs, streaming sticks, game consoles, and at tv.apple.com, and Apple Originals can be downloaded for offline playback on Apple devices. The 4K box is optional hardware, and its own price rose in June, independent of the streaming plan.