Research
Streaming prices rose 3x faster than inflation from 2021-2026. We compared 27 U.S. subscriptions — and the biggest waste is not always the biggest hike.
The most expensive subscription in your life isn't always the one with the highest monthly price. Sometimes it's the one that rose faster than inflation. Sometimes it's the one you barely use. And sometimes it's a practical membership that looks cheap until you realize it overlaps with three others doing nearly the same thing.
We compared 27 popular U.S. subscriptions across streaming, music, shopping, delivery, fitness, software, news, gaming, and professional tools to answer one question: if you were paying for the closest comparable plan in 2021, how much more would you pay now — and is the subscription still worth it?
Here's the headline.
Inflation rose roughly 23% over five years. The video streaming basket rose 74%. Shopping memberships barely moved. Toggle to see how different categories compare.
Inflation benchmark: 22.9% over five years per CPI-U-style 2021-2026 purchasing power.
Video streaming prices rose roughly 3× faster than inflation — the video-streaming basket rose 74% over five years vs. inflation's 23%. Shopping memberships, by contrast, mostly held flat. The full 27-subscription basket rose about 30%. And some of the cheapest-looking subscriptions had the biggest percentage increases.
But the biggest waste in your household isn't usually the fastest-rising subscription. It's the one quietly renewing while you forget you have it.
This analysis uses U.S. consumer list prices checked in May 2026, annualized memberships converted to monthly equivalents. Taxes, app store markups, student tiers, mobile-only plans, promotions, and grandfathered discounts are excluded.
Inflation benchmark: 22.9% over five years, per the BLS CPI Inflation Calculator using CPI-U all items not seasonally adjusted.
Plan continuity: Where pricing tiers changed substantially (Netflix Basic discontinued, Disney+ added an ad tier in 2022), we used the closest continuous plan rather than the cheapest current option. Where checkout prices vary by region or promotion (LinkedIn, NYT), we used commonly published reference rates and treated them as directional.
Value metric: Two different ones, by category.
For media, music, software, fitness, news, and professional tools, we used cost per active hour — useful when value depends on actual usage.
For Amazon Prime, Costco, Walmart+, Instacart+, and DashPass, we used break-even savings — how much the membership needs to save each month to justify the fee. Nobody should judge Costco by hours spent in a warehouse.
The dashed gray line marks inflation (4%/year). Bars extending past it grew faster than inflation. Tap any row for details.
A few patterns worth pulling out.
The biggest percentage increases are concentrated in streaming and gaming. Six of the top seven price hikers are video or sports streaming services. The seventh is Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (+53%), with PlayStation Plus close behind. This isn't random — both streaming and gaming subscription services spent the first phase of their growth pricing for subscriber acquisition. The last few years shifted to profitability, content rights, ad tiers, and bundle pressure.
The cheapest-looking streamers had the biggest jumps. Apple TV+, Peacock, Paramount+, and Disney+ all launched at low prices that made them feel like no-brainer add-ons. Low starting prices also create more room for steep percentage increases. A subscription can still feel affordable and quietly double.
Netflix isn't the worst offender, despite the reputation. Netflix Standard ad-free rose roughly 43% — above inflation, but not nearly as dramatic as Apple TV+ (+160%) or Disney+ (+138%). Netflix feels expensive because its absolute price is high, not because its percentage change is.
Max is almost exactly an inflation story. HBO Max Standard ad-free launched at $14.99; current Max Standard is $18.49. That's a 23% increase over five years — almost exactly the inflation benchmark. Expensive in absolute dollars; honest in real terms.
Shopping memberships barely moved. Amazon Prime, Costco, Walmart+, Instacart+, and DashPass had small or zero increases. In real terms, several of them got cheaper. The shopping membership problem isn't inflation — it's overlap.
You can't judge every subscription the same way. The analysis splits into two camps:
Cost-per-active-hour subscriptions (streaming, music, software, news, fitness, professional tools): how much do you pay for each hour you actually use the thing?
By this metric, the highest-priced subscriptions aren't always the most expensive per hour. LinkedIn Premium at $29.99/month for a typical 4 hours of monthly use comes out to $7.50 per hour — more expensive than Peloton or Adobe per active hour. Meanwhile, Spotify Premium at $12.99/month with 70 hours of typical listening lands at $0.19 per hour. Cheaper by hour than nearly anything else in the tracker.
The lesson: daily habits get cheaper than they feel. Occasional-use subscriptions get more expensive than they look.
Break-even savings subscriptions (shopping, delivery, grocery): how much do you need to save through the membership to justify the fee?
The question for these isn't "how much do you use it?" It's whether the shipping, fuel, free delivery, or grocery savings exceeded what you paid.
A household running all six of Amazon Prime, Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart+, Instacart+, and DashPass simultaneously needs to save roughly $558/year — about $47/month — just to break even before any of those memberships starts contributing to household savings.
That's a different kind of subscription creep. Not price inflation. Membership duplication.
The most common way to fight subscription inflation isn't to cancel things. It's to consolidate the overlapping ones.
The clearest example is the Disney bundle. Disney's published price for the Disney+, Hulu, and Max bundle with ads is $19.99/month. The three services standalone:
That's not theoretical. That's a button-press difference if a household already pays for those three services separately. To see what consolidation could save across your specific stack, use the Bundled savings calculator — it accounts for your actual services and member pricing, not just the Disney bundle.
Other bundle math worth knowing:
Walmart+ includes Paramount+ Essential. If a household already pays for both, the Paramount+ charge is duplicative. Roughly $108/year in avoidable spending if the benefit is active.
Some delivery memberships include streaming perks. Specific perks change over time, but the test is the same: does the included service replace a bill you'd pay anyway, or does it become a reason to keep a membership you don't need?
A few patterns from the data worth highlighting:
The most dangerous subscriptions are the practical ones. Entertainment subscriptions feel indulgent, so people notice them. Practical subscriptions feel responsible, so people ignore them. That's how a household ends up paying $558/year across six overlapping shopping memberships without realizing it.
High-use subscriptions can be expensive and still efficient. YouTube Premium at $15.99/month isn't small. But at 80 hours of typical monthly use across YouTube video and YouTube Music, it's about $0.20 per active hour — cheaper per hour than nearly any other subscription in the tracker.
Low-use subscriptions can be cheap and still wasteful. LinkedIn Premium at $29.99/month with 4 hours of typical use comes out to $7.50 per active hour. That's not a bad product. It's a subscription that needs to be tied to an active goal — job search, recruiting, prospecting — and reviewed when the goal ends.
News and professional subscriptions are often the easiest to forget. A discounted introductory rate that renews at full price, or a professional tool used heavily during a specific project and then ignored, can quietly become more expensive per active hour than most entertainment subscriptions.
Three questions before your next renewal:
1. Did I use it at least once a week?
If yes, it probably stays. This works for streaming, music, news, fitness, software, and professional tools — anywhere active use is the right value proxy.
2. Did it save me more than it cost?
This is the right question for Costco, Walmart+, Instacart+, DashPass, Amazon Prime, and similar memberships. Not hours used — actual savings vs membership fee.
3. Is it already included somewhere else?
The easiest money to recover. Check whether a streaming service is bundled into a shopping membership, phone plan, credit card benefit, delivery membership, or employer perk before paying for it standalone.
The most expensive subscription isn't always the one with the highest price. It's the one you pay for twice.
Subscription inflation isn't going to slow down. Streaming services that need to grow revenue without growing subscribers will keep raising prices. Shopping memberships will keep adding overlapping perks. Households will keep accumulating five subscriptions doing what two used to do.
The structural fix isn't "cancel everything." It's consolidation: keep the services you actually use, eliminate the duplicates, and stop paying retail across multiple bills.
That's what Bundled does — one membership, one login, one bill, with member pricing across the services you'd otherwise pay for separately. Use the cancel-to-save tactic and bundle math above on the services outside your bundle, and the savings stack.
Research from Bundled Labs. We publish original research on subscription pricing, consumer subscription behavior, and the structural economics of the subscription economy. Have questions about our methodology? Email research@gobundled.com.
This article pairs with our broader research on subscription fatigue and household spending patterns: Subscription Fatigue Is Real. Here's What the Data Shows. For practical tactics on reducing subscription spend: 7 Ways to Lower Your Monthly Subscription Bills.
Inflation benchmark: BLS CPI Inflation Calculator · BLS Consumer Price Index release archive
Subscription pricing (current and historical): Netflix plans and pricing · Hulu pricing guide · TechCrunch: Hulu 2021 price increase · Disney+ plan and bundle pricing · The Verge: Disney+ 2025 price increase · HBO Max plan pricing · Peacock plan pricing · Paramount+ pricing guide · Apple TV+ · MacRumors: Apple TV+ price history · ESPN Select plans · TechCrunch: YouTube Premium 2026 price increase · Spotify Premium plans · About Amazon: Prime cost and benefits · Costco membership fee increase · Walmart+ membership · Instacart+ membership · DoorDash DashPass · Peloton 2025 pricing update · Adobe Photography plan price update · Microsoft 365 pricing
Usage and market context: Deloitte 2025 Digital Media Trends · Nielsen The Gauge
About the author
Bundled Labs
Bundled Research Team
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