The Peacock price hike went into effect on August 18, and every subscriber on the platform is about to feel it in their next bill. The ad-supported Select plan jumped from $7.99 to $8.99 a month, the Premium tier climbed from $10.99 to $12.99, and the ad-free Premium Plus plan went from $16.99 all the way up to $19.99. New and returning subscribers started paying the new rates immediately, while existing customers get hit on their next billing cycle on or after September 17.
This is Peacock’s fourth price increase in four years, and it landed just over a year after the last one in July 2025 bumped Premium and Premium Plus by $3 each. NBCUniversal framed the move as necessary to keep delivering quality content and staying competitive, though nobody scrolling their bank app at 2 A.M. really cares about the corporate speak. What they care about is that a service built to be the budget-friendly alternative to cable keeps creeping closer to what cable actually costs.
And Peacock isn’t out here alone. This Peacock price hike is just the latest chapter in a streaming price surge that has touched nearly every major player over the past year. According to Deadline, Netflix raised its own prices at the end of March, pushing Standard with Ads up to $8.99, Standard up $2 to $19.99, and Premium up $2 to $26.99. That’s before you even add a second screen to the plan.
HBO Max wasn’t far behind. The platform’s third hike in three years pushed Basic with Ads up to $10.99, Standard up to $18.49, and Premium up to $22.99, with the company’s CEO openly saying the platform believes it has been underpriced. Disney+ raised its ad-supported plan by $2 to $11.99, and its no-ads plan by $3 to $18.99 around the same window. Apple TV Plus wasn’t playing fair either, tacking on a $3 increase that took it from $9.99 to $12.99.
Stack all of that together, and you get what the industry is now calling streamflation, a term G2A News points to as the slow, steady climb that’s quietly making streaming look a lot like the cable bundles it was supposed to replace. That’s the part that stings. Cord-cutters left cable a decade ago to escape exactly this kind of creeping cost, and now they’re watching their streaming stack inch toward the very number they were running from.
So how does the math actually shake out against cable? According to CableTV.com’s 2026 industry report, the average cable bill sits around $147 a month, while streaming consumers typically spend closer to $30 to $60 a month per household. Even with this Peacock price hike and every other recent increase factored in, a stacked lineup of two or three streamers still tends to land well under what a traditional cable package runs once equipment rentals, regional sports fees, and broadcast surcharges get added in. Per MyCableTV’s bundle comparison, a cable plan advertised at $75 can quietly balloon to $110 or more once those extra fees kick in, something streaming services generally don’t pull.
Still, the gap is shrinking, and that’s the real headline here. A single Peacock Premium Plus subscription now costs nearly what basic cable used to run a few years back, and when you’re paying for four or five services just to keep up with everything from Bravo to the NBA, the math starts looking less like a bargain and more like a subscription trap dressed up in better UI. The Peacock price hike alone won’t break anybody’s budget, but paired with what Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, and Apple TV Plus have already done this year, it’s fair to ask exactly how much longer streaming gets to call itself the cheaper option.
