The pain of higher prices today isn’t limited to things like food and health care costs. Americans now pay 19% more for TV, music, news and other digital apps than they did in 2020.
So concludes a recent analysis from DepositAccounts, an online platform owned by LendingTree that allows users to compare bank accounts. Researchers looked at 15 widely used subscription services, ranging from streaming platforms like Hulu and Spotify to online video tool Zoom Pro, to assess how their prices have changed over the last six years.
“We’ve kind of gotten used to seeing notes from these subscription services saying we’re raising our costs by $1, $2, $3, which doesn’t seem like very much,” Matt Schulz, a chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree, told CBS News. “But when you factor in that some people subscribe to 10 or 15 different things, a couple of dollars a month extra on all of those adds up to real money over the course of the year.”
Some Americans are pulling the plug. A January survey of 2,000 people by DepositAccounts found that one-third said they had cancelled at least one paid digital subscription in the last six months due to cost.
On average, subscribers pay for 4.5 services, which amounts to $84 a month, or $1,008 annually, according to a separate analysis by DepositAccounts.
Big hikes for Disney+ and Apple TV subscribers
Subscribers to Disney+ are now being charged $18.99 a month for an ad-free plan, more than double what they were paying six years ago when adjusted for inflation, the analysis found. Disney upped the price for the streaming platform’s ad-free tier, while bundling plans with Hulu and ESPN, in September 2025.
Apple TV subscription costs have also surged, with the cost of a standard plan for the online video service jumping 108% from 2020 when adjusted for inflation, according to DespoitAccounts.
Streaming now accounts for the largest share of TV viewership, at around 48%, outpacing broadcast and cable, according to Nielsen.
Not all digital platforms have gotten pricier. For example, subscription costs for Apple’s iCloud storage platform are down nearly 20% since 2020, while Apple Music prices have sunk more than 12%, according to DepositAccounts.