Disney+ Price Hike Pushes Ad-Free Tier to $21.49, With Hulu Repriced Too
Disney has pushed the cost of ad-free streaming past the $20 mark on both of its flagship services, lifting Disney+ Premium and Hulu's no-ads tier to $21.49 a month each. The Disney+ price hike adds $2.50 per month, or 13%, to the previous $18.99 rate. New subscribers pay the higher figure from Wednesday, September 23, 2026, while existing customers are being notified from that date and will see the increase on their next billing cycle.
The two services now cost exactly the same, and both climbed by the identical $2.50. The ad-supported standalone plans moved far less: Disney+ (With Ads) and Hulu (With Ads) each rose 50 cents, from $11.99 to $12.49 a month, a 4% increase. Annual subscriptions were not listed among the changes, which leaves monthly payers carrying the full adjustment.
What the Disney+ Price Hike Costs Subscribers
| Plan | Previous | New | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disney+ Premium (no ads) | $18.99 | $21.49 | +$2.50 (13%) |
| Hulu (no ads) | $18.99 | $21.49 | +$2.50 (13%) |
| Disney+ (with ads) | $11.99 | $12.49 | +$0.50 (4%) |
| Hulu (with ads) | $11.99 | $12.49 | +$0.50 (4%) |
| Disney+ and Hulu bundle (no ads) | $19.99 | $21.99 | +$2.00 (10%) |
| Disney+ and Hulu bundle (with ads) | $12.99 | $12.99 | Unchanged |
Bundle pricing carries the clearest signal of where Disney wants subscribers to land. Adding Hulu to Disney+ without ads costs $21.99, which is 50 cents more than either service bought on its own, so the second library costs almost nothing at the margin. The ad-supported bundle repeats the pattern: $12.99 for both platforms against $12.49 for a single ad-supported plan. The bundle also took the softer increase this round, $2 or roughly 10%, against the 13% applied to the standalone plans.
Bundling both platforms cuts the bill roughly in half on either tier. Two ad-free plans list at $42.98 a month against $21.99 for the bundle, and two ad-supported plans total $24.98 against $12.99. The ad-supported bundle is the only item in the lineup that did not move, and the only one where the effective cost per service fell, because the standalone ad plans around it rose.
Across the lineup, the larger the tier, the bigger the percentage increase. Premium plans rose 13%, the ad-free bundle about 10%, and the ad-supported plans 4%, while the ad-supported bundle took nothing. Subscribers on the most expensive plans absorbed the bulk of this round, and the cheaper tiers were left closer to where they were.
The flat ad-supported bundle follows the same logic as the premium one: 50 cents for the second service. Disney holds that option at $12.99 while both standalone ad plans climb to $12.49, keeping the two-service package barely above a single ad-supported subscription and well below either premium tier. Subscribers who move down a level instead of cancelling keep generating the advertising inventory Disney sells against, and the $9 monthly gap between the two bundles is the amount a household saves by accepting ads on both platforms.
A subscriber already paying $21.49 for Disney+ Premium can add Hulu for 50 cents, pricing the second library at a 98% discount to its standalone rate. That gap makes cancelling one service costlier in practice, since leaving the bundle means giving up both platforms rather than trimming a single line item.
Notifications went out to existing customers from Wednesday, with the new price applied at the next billing date rather than mid-cycle, so a subscriber billed late in the month sees the old rate once more before the change lands on the following bill. The new rates also appear on Disney's support page. The timing has become predictable: the previous two increases landed in October 2023 and October 2024, and this one arrived in September, giving subscribers a reliable window each autumn to reconsider a plan.
Six Years, Six Increases
Disney+ arrived in 2019 at $6.99 a month. At $21.49, the ad-free tier now costs more than three times its launch figure, a 207% climb, and it has added $14.50 across six increases for an average of about $2.40 each. September's Disney+ price hike is the fourth increase in four years for the premium product and the sixth in six years across the Disney+ and Hulu lineup, which makes an annual repricing the default rather than the exception.
In annual terms the changes are small at the plan level and larger across a household. The $2.50 monthly rise on one ad-free plan adds $30 a year, and two separate ad-free plans add $60. The ad-free bundle rises $24 a year, while the 50-cent increase on an ad-supported plan works out to $6.
The move also narrows the gap with the biggest rival in the category. Netflix's ad-free plan, which includes 4K resolution and access on multiple devices, sells for $26.99 a month, leaving Disney+ Premium about $5.50 below it. The same comparison favours Disney's bundle: $21.99 for two ad-free libraries is roughly $5 less than a single Netflix subscription at that tier.
The premium tier also widened its distance from Disney's own cheaper option. At $21.49, Disney+ Premium costs 72% more than the ad-supported plan at $12.49, a gap of $9 a month, or $108 a year, for a household that stays on the lower tier. Each recent round has raised the premium price by more than the ad-supported one, and this round followed that pattern with $2.50 against 50 cents.
For anyone weighing the increase, the documented options are narrow. Moving to annual billing sidesteps the monthly rise while that pricing holds, shifting to the $12.99 ad-supported bundle lowers the bill by $9 a month against the ad-free bundle, and dropping one standalone ad-free plan saves $21.49 outright.
Why this matters
Disney has made the bundle the cheapest route to ad-free viewing by a wide margin, which reframes the yearly decision for subscribers: the question is less whether to pay more than which combination to hold. Households that keep both ad-free plans separately will pay $42.98 a month for the same two services that cost $21.99 bundled, while anyone staying on a single premium plan absorbs $30 more a year. The unchanged $12.99 ad-supported bundle keeps a low entry price in place even as the tiers around it climb.
Photo by serjan midili on Unsplash
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Researched and cross-referenced against primary sources by the Bytevyte editorial team. This article was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the Bytevyte editorial team.