Peacock hikes prices by $3 per month while adding lower-cost ‘select’ tier

Peacock has announced a price hike that is its biggest since launching in 2020 — while also introducing a sports-free option that’s in line with one of its current tiers.

The premium tier, which still includes advertising, is going from $7.99 to $10.99 a month, an increase of $3 per month, an increase of over 37%. Premium Plus, which removes most ads, is also jumping $3 from $13.99 to to $16.99, which is a hike of just over 21%.

Both plans still offer a pre-paid annual option that essentially gives subscribers two months free. 

The streamer also announced it’s adding a new “Select” tier for $7.99 a month that will include current seasons of current NBC and Bravo shows and access to select library offerings. It won’t include access to the live sports events included in the higher-priced tiers and appears to be largely created as a limited option targeted toward cord-cutters mainly interested in keeping tabs on their favorite in-season NBC and Bravo shows (Bravo is the one cable property NBCU-Comcast is holding onto when its spins off the rest of its cable networks into Versant later in 2025).

Because sports are often some of the more expensive components of a paid TV offering, removing them from the select tier could be seen as a way for NBC to offer a lower price without harming the perceived value of its other offerings.

The new pricing takes effect on new signups starting July 23, 2025. Existing subscribers will see their first charge under the new price on or after Aug. 22, 2025, depending on their renewal date. That does leave a narrow gap of just days for users wishing to save $3 on their first month to sign up and enjoy the lower price for their first charge.

The August 2025 Peacock price increase marks the third since the streamer launched.

It first increased prices in the summer of 2023, but only by a buck per month. 

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Then, in April 2024, the NBCUniversal-owned streamer raised prices by $2 a month increase ahead of its parent company’s coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Peacock originally featured a limited, free, ad-supported tier, but that was closed to new signups starting in early 2023.

The latest price boost means the service pricing has gone up $6 per month across the board in just about five years. For the premium offering, that’s an increase of just over 120%. The impact on the premium plus tier is a bit less, but still represents a 70% boost. On the whole, the U.S. economy saw an inflation rate over around 24% from 2020 to 2025, though streaming pricing doesn’t necessarily follow such broader economic trends.

A $3 price hike is on the higher end of typical streaming price increases. Streaming services often opt to use even-dollar boosts when price changes are rolled out, which allows them to keep prices ending in 99 cents, though price increases of non-whole dollar amounts do occur, such as Netflix’s early 2025 hike.

Speaking of Netflix, the new pricing will mean Peacock now costs more than similar tiers on the streaming giant’s service. It’s also pricer than similar offerings on Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Apple TV+.

Of course, content varies between each streamer, but Peacock has arguably had a lower roster of buzzworthy originals than some of its rivals. 

While it may seem counterintuitive the raise prices so much — and some subscribers have already taken to social media to tout they canceled their accounts — NBCU is likely banking on a broader strategy.

Like with any streamer, churn is inevitable and is likely accounted for at least partially in any internal financial projections. 

It’s also possible that some subscribers will opt for the lower-priced ad-supported or select plans, both of which still keep recurring revenue flowing, albeit at slightly lower amounts. It’s likely, however, that NBCU has calculated that price-conscious consumers may jump to a lower tier, which could still be more economically viable than customer acquisition costs. 

Finally, like most major streamers, NBCU also has extensive agreements with other streamers and companies such as Instacart to bundle Peacock.

For bundles, this typically results in a lower per-streamer price while Peacock can be see as a value-added incentive for other subscription plans.

Although terms of these bundling options are rarely discussed publicly, it’s likely that the streamers involved agree to effectively take reduced per-subscriber rates in exchange for the opportunity to get their offerings in front of larger audiences. 

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Even though this results in lower revenue, it’s likely that such arrangements also have lower acquisition costs and also prevent churn given that there is evidence that bundling can lower cancellation rates since consumers may be less likely to cancel a single monthly charge if it contains multiple services.