How to dodge the Disney Plus price hike

You can get Disney+ for a lower price but you'll need to move quickly if you're in the US

Disney+
(Image credit: Disney+)

From 8 December, Disney Plus will be significantly more expensive in the US and the UK is expected to follow suit in early 2023. 

The Disney+ price is going up from $7.99 a month to $10.99 a month, so if you're a monthly subscriber your annual total will be up from $95.88 to $131.88. That's a 36% price rise, which isn't ideal when the cost of absolutely everything is rising so quickly.

The annual fee is rising too, from $79.99 a year to $109.99. But you can beat the price rise if you move quickly. Here's how.

How to keep Disney+'s price down for a whole year

This trick only works if you're not currently a subscriber: if you buy a year of Disney+ just now, you can still get it for $79.90. That's saving you money even on the current monthly fee, because you're getting 12 months for the cost of 10. 

What about existing customers? If you've been thinking about getting the Disney Bundle, which combines Disney Plus with Hulu and ESPN, that's currently $13.99 per month. When the price hike comes in that's only going up by $1 a month to $14.99.

The third option is to do nothing and wait for the ad-supported version, which Disney promises won't be too ad-happy. 

If you're in the UK you don't need to do anything yet; Disney+ already raised its price in 2021 from £5.99 to £7.99 a month and hasn't yet announced any plans for an ad-supported tier or standard service price rise in the UK just yet. But that's likely to change, and while it's clearly going to cost a little bit more Disney+ is still one of the very best streaming services in terms of value for money, and it'll still be cheaper than the equivalent Netflix subscription.

Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).