Hulu + Live TV: What It Costs and Whether It Replaces Cable
Hulu + Live TV is $89.99 a month with ads, or $99.99 ad-free, and it bundles Disney+ and ESPN Select into the same subscription. The number that decides whether it works for a household is not the price — it is the two-screen limit.
★ Verified at a glance
- $89.99/month with ads · $99.99/month ad-free Hulu and Disney+
- 3-day free trial
- 100+ live channels including ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and ESPN
- Unlimited DVR included; recordings kept up to 9 months
- 2 simultaneous screens — more requires a paid add-on
What is in the bundle
The $89.99 plan includes the Hulu streaming library with ads, Hulu’s live TV service, Disney+ with ads, and ESPN Select. The $99.99 plan makes Hulu and Disney+ ad-free. No annual billing option is published for either.
Unlimited DVR is included rather than sold as an upgrade, which is a real difference from most cable packages. Hulu states recordings are retained for up to nine months.
The two-screen problem
The included plan allows two simultaneous streams. For one person or a couple that is fine. For a family it is the constraint that will actually bite — and Hulu’s answer is a paid Unlimited Screens add-on, which allows unlimited streams on your home network but still caps you at three screens away from home.
Hulu does not publish that add-on’s price on the pages we could read, so budget for an unknown on top of the headline figure.
Against actual cable
On channel count and live network access it is a fair comparison — over 100 channels including the four broadcast networks and ESPN. On flexibility it is clearly better: no contract, no equipment rental, no DVR storage tier to buy.
Where the comparison breaks down is the household limit and the location requirement. Hulu requires location data for access to certain content, which is the same regional-rights machinery cable has, transplanted into an app.
What we could not confirm
Hulu’s video-quality and download help articles are JavaScript-rendered and would not load for us. We can confirm from the Live TV page that downloads exist for “select content”, but not the per-plan eligibility, device counts or expiry windows — so we are not stating them.
Sources: Hulu + Live TV · Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN Select bundle
How this was checked: figures on this page were read from the sources linked above on 26 August 2026. We have not tested this product ourselves; where a figure is the maker’s claim rather than an independent measurement, we say so. Prices change — check the retailer before buying. See our Editorial Policy.
