The Streaming Price Hike Is Real, What Can We Do?

Ketchikan, Alaska Dec 23, 2025 (Issuewire.com) - If you checked your bank statement this morning, you probably noticed something ugly. As of yesterday, November 20, the "Big Three"Disney+, Hulu, and Maxflipped the switch on their new pricing. Combined with Netflix's push to nearly $25, the monthly cost of staying entertained just surpassed the average household utility bill.

At KeepStreams, we've been tracking these hikes, and honestly, the math is getting harder to justify.

Let's look at the damage. Netflix Premium is now demanding $24.99. Disney+ thinks its ad-free experience is worth $18.99. Even Apple TV+, once the budget-friendly outlier, jumped 30% to $12.99. And if you're a sports fan? The new ESPN Select pricing of $12.99 feels like another paper cut.

The industry calls this "ARPU growth" (Average Revenue Per User). We call it Streamflation.

Steve Collins, Marketing Director at KeepStreams, puts it bluntly: "The original promise of streamingcheap, flexible, consumer-firstis officially dead. We are seeing users who are tired of being treated like ATM machines. They aren't looking to pirate; they just want to draw a line in the sand. If they pay for the content, they expect to keep it, regardless of next month's price hike."

But here is the thing most people miss: You don't actually have to pay the premium price to get the premium experience.

The "Downgrade & Download" Loophole

The biggest difference between the expensive tiers and the cheap ones isn't the contentit's the ads. Disney+ charges a $7 premium just to remove commercials. Thats $84 a year youre handing over for silence.

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This is where KeepStreams changes the dynamic (with the ad-removal function). Instead of angrily canceling, our users are downgrading to the ad-supported tierslike the $11.99 Disney+ plan or the $10.99 Max Basicand using our software to pull the content offline.

Why? Because KeepStreams doesn't just record the screen. It downloads the raw file and, crucially, filters out the ads during the process. You pay for the cheap plan, but you watch an ad-free, 1080p file. It's a legal, technical loophole that puts that $7/month back in your pocket.

Streaming is renting. Downloading is owning.

Whether it's saving a season of The Bear from Hulu before the merger scrambles the library, or archiving 4K movies from Max ($22.99/mo) before canceling your subscription, having the file locally means you aren't at the mercy of a corporate merger. We support EAC3 5.1 audio not because it sounds good on a spec sheet, but because when you're watching a movie on a flight, you want the sound to actually punch through your noise-canceling headphones.

The Bottom Line

The era of cheap, unlimited streaming died this week. But that doesn't mean you have to overpay.

The streaming landscape has shifted from convenience to complexity. Users are frustrated by rising costs, vanishing content, and intrusive ads, said Steve Collins. KeepStreams is more than just a downloader; it is a tool for digital autonomy. We enable users to curate their own permanent offline libraries, ensuring that their favorite content is always accessible, even if they decide to pause a subscription or travel to areas with poor connectivity. $25 for Netflix? The November Streaming Price Hike Is Real, and Here's How We're Fixing It.

We've updated KeepStreams to handle the specific DRM changes rolled out in yesterday's updates. You can keep paying $25 for Netflix, or you can get smart about how you archive. Apart from these streaming services mentioned above, KeepStreams also supports downloading videos from Crunchyroll and saving DRM-protected content on Paramount Plus, including other 3,000+ services and video sites.

Yesterday's price jump across Disney+, Hulu, and Max wasn't just an adjustmentit was a tipping point. KeepStreams explains why the "Downgrade & Download" strategy is the only way to win in 2025.