Hulu Price Dropping to $5.99

While Netflix is raising the prices of all of its subscription tiers, for both new and current customers, one of its biggest rivals is doing exactly the opposite.

On Wednesday morning, Hulu announced that it would be lowering the price of its basic, ad-supported subscription. The plan previously cost $7.99 per month, allowing users to watch its full lineup of popular TV series, movies, and originals, along with the addition of a few ads along the way. As of February 26th, that price will drop by a full $2, down to $5.99 per month.

For those who don't want to watch ads on Hulu, the subscription price of the commercial free plan on Hulu will remain the same. It will still cost $11.99 per month if you want an ad-free viewing experience, but with the vast TV library that the streaming service offers, $6 every month is almost too good to pass up, even with ads.

To counter the drop in price for the streaming service, Hulu is slightly raising its price for the full live TV service. The Hulu With Live TV subscription currently costs $39.99 per month, but that will be raised to $44.99 per month after February 26th.

While this price change has been in the works for months, the timing couldn't be better for Hulu. Just last week, Netflix announced its biggest price hike in the history of the company. The most common streaming plan will jump from $10.99 to $12.99 per month, which will soon be more than double the price of Hulu's popular plan. So Netflix is counting on its original content and the ad-free experience to offset the higher prices of its service.

Hulu is hoping this move will continue its strong subscriber growth from last year into 2019 and even beyond. The company claims that it topped 25 million subscribers in 2018, though it didn't say which plans these customers were subscribed to. Last September, Hulu boasted that more than a million users had signed up for the live TV plan. It's that last stat that likely led to the price changes. Enough people have signed up for the live TV service that a small price hike on that front can offset a drop in charges with the basic subscription.

Will you be giving Hulu a shot with the latest price drop? Are the ads still too much to deal with? Let us know in the comments!