Way back when, cable and satellite TV were initially sold to consumers as an add-on: Get all of your local channels, along with uncut movies, more televisions programs and additional sports. But pulling the plug on cable doesn’t necessarily mean you can just go back to broadcast networks only. Modern homes and apartments are no longer wired-up with antennas the way they were 30 years ago. Indoor HDTV antennas are available at prices ranging from under $20 to move than $150, but the quality of the signal and the number of channels that come in clearly vary depending on external factors, like whether you live near mountains or skyscrapers.

First, a few caveats about these services:

One of the great dreams of cord-cutting is that it will allow consumers to pick only the channels they actually want, rather than paying for programming they never watch. But the services above essentially operate more like traditional cable, providing packages of channels, not all of which are widely desirable. It’s unlikely that any one of these subscriptions will offer everything that a given consumer is looking for, and it will require viewers to scroll past a lot that they don’t.

While some of these services offer DVR-like functionality, recordings of live TV must sometimes be watched in real time (because of licensing agreements), with no fast-forwarding allowed.

Not every service is available on every device. When YouTube TV first launched, the app wasn’t yet being offered for the Apple TV or Roku. (It is gradually being added to various app stores.) And YouTube still warns that its TV service may not work well with older Chromecasts.

If you sign up with a service that carries local channels, those channels may not be available to you when you take your phone, tablet, laptop or set-top box outside the area where you signed up. Similarly, sports blackouts still apply for streaming services, depending on where you’re watching and what the various leagues demand.

So what if you eliminate cable and still want to watch your local news, or get a weather update, or watch a football game on one of the major networks? The new growth area in streaming services is subscriptions that offer an array of cable and broadcast channels, available to watch in real-time. Here are the six biggest:

Hulu With Live TV ( $39.99/mo. ): The package varies from region to region, but for the most part this is one of the most conveniently cable-like services out there. It has most of the major basic cable channels — including ESPN and the big cable news outlets (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News) — and some local broadcast channels. The base price also includes everything that standard Hulu has to offer and up to 50 hours of DVR recording of live telecasts. For additional fees, users can eliminate commercials on Hulu shows, expand the DVR storage and add subscriptions to HBO, Cinemax and Showtime.

Sling TV ( $20/mo., $25/mo., $40/mo. ): Sling’s emphasis is on “a la carte” TV, so it gives consumers several ways to assemble the channels they actually want.

The bargain-priced “Sling Orange” package offers ESPN and other basic cable channels.

The slightly pricier “Sling Blue” drops ESPN and replaces it with NBC- and Fox-owned channels.

Orange and Blue are also available together, creating a package that’s comparable to Hulu’s, with some key omissions. (Sling TV currently has no CBS, and the access to local feeds of ABC, NBC and Fox varies by region.)

Sling’s big selling-point is its wide variety of add-on packages, which allow you to tack on more sports, more movies, more news and more kids’ shows, as well as programming from other countries — all for an additional fee, of course.

PlayStation Vue ( $39.99/mo. - $74.99/mo. ): Don’t let the name throw you. You don’t need to own a PlayStation to subscribe to Vue, which is accessible through most of the major set-top boxes. You do, however, need to pay a premium. As with Hulu and Sling, Vue’s ability to deliver live local broadcast is dependent on where you live, but Sony does offer a lot of local TV in a lot of different markets, and even where it doesn’t, it allows subscribers to see many of the major networks’ shows on-demand. Vue also provides some simple add-on options, a huge amount of DVR cloud storage, and a lot of portability between devices.

DirecTV Now ( $35/mo. - $70/mo. ): The breadth of channels and the reasonable pricing tiers will make DirecTV an attractive option to a lot of cord-cutters — especially those who already have AT&T mobile phone plans, which offer heavy discounts on this service. As always, the availability of local channels varies. And unlike the live TV services above, DirecTV Now is not the best place for watching a show after it airs. The service has DVR cloud storage, but it is still being developed, and at the moment it is relatively limited in storage and functionality when compared with many of its competitors.

YouTube TV ( $40/mo. ): YouTube’s newest venture entered the market as one of the cheapest and simplest. Its channel package is small, there aren’t that many add-ons at the moment, and the service isn’t even available in every city or town in the United States yet (although the range is expanding every day; check here for updates ). But if watching local stations live matters a lot to you, then you should know that YouTube TV is making that the cornerstone of its business — along with unlimited DVR cloud storage and enough portability that you should be able to shift easily from one device to another while watching a show you’ve recorded.

Philo ( $16/mo. - $20/mo. ): This new cut-rate service is cheap for a reason: It eliminates all sports, major networks and premium movie channels, delivering instead what amounts to a stripped-down basic cable package with the likes of History Channel, A&E and TV Land. Philo also has limited DVR storage and can be watched on multiple devices simultaneously. It’s a good starter option for people who want a solid array of traditional cable channels to supplement with subscriptions to Netflix, HBO Now and others.