Apple TV

About Apple TV

Apple TV is Apple's subscription streaming service. It launched in November 2019 as Apple TV Plus and dropped the plus from its name in October 2025, which means the words Apple TV now cover three separate products: the subscription, the app it plays in, and the set-top box sold as Apple TV 4K. This page is about the subscription. Its defining trait is that Apple commissioned almost everything on it rather than licensing a back catalogue, so the library is small by the standards of Netflix or Prime Video and unusually consistent in budget and finish. Since 2025, live sport has become the second half of the pitch, and in the United States that is now the main reason many people sign up.

What the subscription actually includes

One price buys the whole catalogue. Apple's own page lists a single monthly rate with a seven-day trial for new subscribers rather than the ladder of ad-supported and premium tiers most rivals sell, and it states that the service carries no ads. A subscription covers up to six people through Family Sharing, and titles can be downloaded for offline viewing.

What you will not find is volume. There is no thirty-year licensed archive underneath the originals, so the service does not behave like a general-purpose library. You do not browse it for something to have on in the background. You go to it for a specific show. Apple says the Apple TV app itself reaches more than a billion screens across over a hundred countries, but the app and the subscription are different things, and much of that reach is people renting films or watching other services through it.

How the catalogue compares with Netflix and Prime Video

Apple has bought critical standing rather than scale. In January 2026 the company said the service had accumulated 672 award wins and 3,085 nominations, describing Severance as its most awarded drama and The Studio as the most Emmy-winning first-year comedy. Pluribus, Slow Horses and the film F1 anchor the rest of the shelf. Apple also said December 2025 set a monthly engagement record, with total hours viewed up 36 percent on the year before.

The counterweight comes from the trade press rather than from Apple. TechCrunch reported in August 2025 that the service loses more than a billion dollars a year and trails Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video on subscriber numbers. For a buyer the practical consequence is simple. You will exhaust this catalogue in a way you will not exhaust the others, and the recommendations will run dry sooner.

Why the sports rights changed the calculation

Major League Soccer streams to subscribers at no extra cost, Friday Night Baseball games run through the MLB season, and from the 2026 season Apple is the exclusive United States broadcaster for Formula 1 under a five-year agreement. That deal covers every practice session, qualifying session, sprint and Grand Prix for subscribers. Apple has also said that select races and all practice sessions are free inside the Apple TV app during the season, and that F1 TV Premium, which American fans previously paid for separately, is included for subscribers.

This is the largest change to who the service is for. Before it, the subscription was an occasional purchase taken out around a new season of a show you liked. For a Formula 1 viewer in the United States it is now a season-long commitment with no legal alternative, which is a different kind of product at the same price.

What it costs and the cheaper routes in

The monthly price rose to $12.99 in August 2025, a thirty percent increase on the $9.99 it had charged since 2023. TechCrunch records the earlier steps as $4.99 at the 2019 launch and $6.99 after that. The annual subscription was left at $99.99 in that same change, so paying for a year at once now costs meaningfully less than paying by the month, and it is the obvious choice for anyone staying through a full sports season.

There are three cheaper doors. A new Apple device includes three months. The Apple Music student plan includes the service. Apple One bundles it with iCloud storage, Apple Music and the rest from $19.95 a month, which is worth checking if you already pay for two of those separately. Apple also sells a joint plan with Peacock at $14.99 a month.

Who should subscribe to something else

Anyone who wants television on in the background should not start here. A few hundred originals cannot do the job a licensed archive does, and Netflix or Prime Video will serve that better for similar money. Households buying mainly for children are also better served elsewhere, because there is no equivalent of the animation back catalogue that Disney+ is built on.

If you watch two or three Apple shows a year and no sport, do not hold a standing subscription. Take a month once a season you want has finished airing, watch it, and cancel. Nothing here rewards continuous membership except the sport.

Outside the United States the Formula 1 arrangement does not apply, so the sports argument largely disappears and the decision comes back to whether a small catalogue of originals justifies the monthly price on its own. Anyone hoping for a cheaper ad-supported tier should also look elsewhere, because Apple's page does not offer one.