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Disney+, the newest and cheapest major streaming service, gives you less bang for your buck than Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video. Reelgood, the site that sorts through all your streaming services, calculated how many shows and movies each service offers, in a report provided to Lifehacker.




The Good

Disney owns a lot of premium content—Marvel, Star Wars, the Muppets, Pirates, Pixar, The Simpsons—and it’s the only streamer offering most of that content. And Disney+ is just $7/month ($5.83/month on the annual plan). As we’ve written before, if you want to watch a lot of Disney titles right now, go ahead and subscribe.


Disney+ will also roll out multiple exclusive shows, but you can wait to learn if they’re so good that they justify the subscription. That’s the HBO model, where there are fewer titles, but those include one or two essential shows that all your friends are watching. On HBO it’s Game of Thrones and Succession; on Disney+ it’ll be The Mandalorian.

The Bad

But if you just want a bigger basket of stuff to watch, then Disney+ is your worst option. It has fewer movies or TV shows than any major streaming service except Showtime. After you filter out the many bad shows padding out each streaming service catalog, Disney+ even dips below Showtime.


Because it’s so cheap, Disney+ is a better deal than Showtime for movies and TV, and better than HBO for movies. But it’s still nothing next to Prime, Netflix, and Hulu. I definitely wouldn’t cancel a different service to switch to Disney+.


Graphic : Reelgood

Graphic : Reelgood


Should You Get It?

You should probably wait. And then you should probably get it.



Look at the best titles available from Disney+, listed on Reelgood. If you want to see some of those now, then go ahead and buy a month. It’s not a bad catalog. It’s just not as good as other catalogs.



But before you get excited about all the big-deal movies that will only come out on Disney+, think about which ones you like to watch at home, and which you already see at the theater. If you really plan to watch at least two Disney movies at home every month, then Disney+ is already worth it.


Otherwise, wait until people start watching The Mandalorian and the other exclusive shows, and see if they’re good enough to subscribe and try. Meanwhile you’ve got plenty to watch on all your other services. Have you dug through the Prime app lately? I feel like we always forget it’s sitting there between seasons of Good Omens and Mrs. Maisel.


Don’t stress about this too much. It’s $7 a month. If you subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, Prime, HBO, and Disney+, that’s still just $56/month—half the average cable bill, with no ads.



Updated: Reelgood has added Disney+ to their full quantitative comparison of major streaming services.