Report: Disney+ could get a cheaper, ad-supported tier in the future

Disney+ on iPhone 11 Pro (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

What you need to know

Disney+ could be considering a cheaper subscription but with ads thrown in.
Disney+ currently costs $7.99 per month.
A cheaper Disney+ tier could cost $4.99 per month.

Disney could be getting ready to offer people a cheaper way to get into its Disney+ streaming service, but there's a catch. According to a new report, Disney+ could get a tier that will cost less but will also force people to watch ads.

Disney currently charges people $7.99 per month to watch the rather excellent content on offer via Disney+. And while that's still considerably cheaper than the likes of Netflix, it's still more costly than some other options. Now, a new report by The Information suggests that there could be scope for a tier sitting at the $4.99 per month price point. Although people will have to watch ads to get that lower price.

Disney's service now costs $8 a month. Rivals such as Discovery+ and Paramount+ offer tiers with ads that each cost $4.99. Disney's Hulu service has an ad-supported tier, which costs only $6.99 per month. By launching an ad-supported tier for Disney+, the company could attract a wider group of subscribers. That would help it increase revenue to offset fast-rising programming costs for its service.

Those who pay for Apple TV+ already pay $4.99 per month, although there are no ads in sight. The catalogs of content offered by Disney+ and Apple TV+ do differ greatly however, something that many have been able to use as justification for the higher price of the former.

Disney+ has already seen a price bump and it's possible it could see another alongside the arrival of a new, lower-priced tier as a way to differentiate offerings. Services like Hulu and Peacock already offer a similar free + paid-for hybrid system and the recently announced ITVX is set to go the same route, too.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.