Streaming Subscribers by Service: What the Companies Actually Report

One ranking, ten services, many different dates

Most league tables of streaming services mix three kinds of number: counts the companies filed, estimates from research firms and figures repeated from older articles. That makes them look complete but hides how uncertain parts of the picture are. This page takes the opposite approach. A service appears in the ranking only if its owner has published a subscriber count in an earnings release, shareholder letter, regulatory filing or results statement, and every figure is shown with the period it refers to.

The trade-off is that the ranking is not a snapshot of a single month. The newest numbers, for Paramount+ and Peacock, describe June 2026. The oldest, for iQIYI, describes the last quarter of 2023. Between them sit Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, which each published a final count and then stopped. Reading the ranking correctly means reading the date column as carefully as the number column.

Subscription video services ranked by latest official count

On the latest figures each company published, Netflix leads by a wide margin. JioHotstar is second on the count Reliance gave during the 2025 Indian Premier League, although that number was a seasonal peak and was not described as paid. Disney+ and HBO Max share third place at 131.6 million, followed by the two large Chinese platforms, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock and ESPN+.

Netflix is still more than twice the size of any Western rival: its 325 million milestone compares with 131.6 million for both Disney+ and HBO Max at their final counts.

Some familiar figures do not appear in the table because they never came from the companies. The 200 million to 240 million often quoted for Prime Video and the roughly 45 million quoted for Apple TV are third-party estimates. They may be reasonable, but they cannot be checked against a filing, so they are left out here and discussed separately below.

Who still reports subscribers, and who stopped

The biggest change in streaming data since 2024 is not a new leader but a disappearing metric. Netflix announced in January 2025 that it would no longer report paid memberships every quarter, from its first-quarter 2025 results onward, and would instead announce milestones. Disney followed in August 2025, when Bob Iger and Hugh Johnston wrote that quarterly updates on paid subscribers and average revenue per user had become less meaningful. Warner Bros. Discovery said in February 2026 that the fourth quarter of 2025 would be the last quarter in which it reported subscribers and ARPU.

The reasons given are similar across companies. Once a service is mature, revenue, engagement and profit say more about its health than the number of accounts, and bundles, wholesale deals and free periods make the count harder to interpret. There is also a practical motive: subscriber totals invite quarter-by-quarter comparisons that can move share prices on small changes. Companies that stopped still publish revenue and operating profit for their streaming businesses, which our report on what streaming companies spend on content sets against their programming budgets.

For readers, the consequence is that every ranking published after 2025 is partly historical. Netflix has almost certainly grown since January 2026 and HBO Max since December 2025, but neither company has said by how much. The safest reading is to treat the last official count as a floor for services that were growing when they stopped.

Netflix: 301.6 million counted, more than 325 million stated

The last precise Netflix figure is 301.63 million paid memberships at the end of 2024. The company added 18.91 million in the fourth quarter of that year and 41 million across 2024, both records, helped by its crackdown on password sharing and the launch of a cheaper plan with advertising. In its shareholder letter of January 20, 2026, Netflix said it had crossed 325 million paid memberships during the fourth quarter of 2025, which implies at least 23 million net additions in 2025.

Almost tripled in eight years: paid memberships rose from 110.6 million at the end of 2017 to more than 325 million at the end of 2025.

The chart shows two distinct phases. Between 2017 and 2020 Netflix added between 28 million and 37 million memberships a year, with 2020 boosted by lockdowns. Growth then slowed sharply to 18 million in 2021 and under 9 million in 2022, the year Netflix lost subscribers in two consecutive quarters. Paid sharing and the ad plan restarted growth in 2023 and 2024. The full quarterly history is in our series of Netflix subscribers by quarter and our chart of Netflix net additions each quarter.

Since it stopped counting, Netflix has pointed to other measures of scale. In its July 2026 letter it described its audience as approaching one billion people, a figure that counts people in member households rather than accounts. Its advertising plan reaches more than 250 million monthly active viewers, according to figures presented to advertisers on May 13, 2026, up from more than 190 million in November 2025. Netflix defines that metric as members who watched at least one minute of ads in a month multiplied by the estimated number of people per household, so it is a viewer estimate, not a subscriber count. Earlier ad-tier user figures are tracked in our data on Netflix ad-supported users.

Revenue now carries the growth story. Netflix reported revenue of 45.2 billion dollars for 2025, up 16 percent, and in July 2026 narrowed its 2026 forecast to 51.0 billion to 51.4 billion dollars. Second-quarter 2026 revenue was 12.56 billion dollars, with double-digit growth in every region. How that revenue divides by region is shown in our report on Netflix subscribers by region.

Disney+ and Hulu: 196 million at the final count

Disney published its last subscriber table with its fiscal fourth-quarter 2025 results on November 13, 2025, covering the quarter to September 27, 2025. Disney+ had 131.6 million paid subscribers, 59.3 million in the US and Canada and 72.4 million elsewhere, an increase of 3.8 million in the quarter. Hulu had 64.1 million, of which 59.7 million took the streaming-only service and 4.4 million Hulu + Live TV. Disney summarised the total as 196 million Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions.

International is the largest block: Disney+ outside the US and Canada made up 37 percent of the 195.8 million subscriptions in the final table.

The Disney+ figure needs one historical caution. Until 2024 Disney reported Disney+ including Disney+ Hotstar in India, which took the total to 164.2 million in September 2022 and 150.2 million in September 2023. Hotstar is now part of JioStar, so the comparable Disney+ series excludes it: 112.6 million in September 2023, 122.7 million in September 2024 and 131.6 million in September 2025. On that basis Disney+ grew by 8.9 million in its final reported fiscal year. Our page on Disney+ covers the service in more depth, and the US and Canada subscriber history shows the domestic trend.

Hulu jumped by 8.6 million in the final quarter, from 55.5 million in June 2025, an unusually large move for a mature US service. ESPN+ had already dropped out of the table: its last reported figure was 24.1 million in June 2025. Disney has since been folding Hulu into the Disney+ app and launched a separate ESPN direct-to-consumer service in August 2025, so even if Disney resumed reporting, the old categories would no longer match. Profitability is what Disney now discloses, as tracked in our data on Disney direct-to-consumer operating income.

HBO Max: 131.6 million and then silence

Warner Bros. Discovery ended 2025 with 131.6 million streaming subscribers, 59.2 million in the US and Canada and 72.4 million internationally. That was 14.7 million more than the 116.9 million of December 2024, and the company described it as nearly 15 million added during the year. The total covers HBO Max and discovery+, but HBO Max accounts for most of it.

The growth came almost entirely from outside the US. International subscribers rose from 59.8 million to 72.4 million in a year as HBO Max expanded into new international markets, while the domestic base grew by about 2 million. Average revenue per user shows the price of that expansion: in the fourth quarter of 2025 it was 10.45 dollars a month in the US and Canada, against 4.00 dollars internationally and 6.80 dollars globally.

From the first quarter of 2026 the company stopped publishing subscriber numbers and ARPU. Its August 6, 2026 letter gave only one related figure: about 40 percent of global HBO Max subscribers were on the ad-supported tier. Streaming revenue passed 3 billion dollars in a quarter for the first time, with 512 million dollars of adjusted EBITDA. The longer subscriber series is in our data on Warner Bros. Discovery streaming subscribers.

Paramount+: 81.6 million and a pending merger

Paramount+ is now the largest US subscription video service that still publishes a quarterly count. Paramount Skydance reported 81.6 million subscribers at June 30, 2026, up about 2 million in the quarter and 6 percent from 76.8 million a year earlier. Paramount+ revenue was 2.06 billion dollars in the quarter, up 16 percent, driven by subscriber growth of about 6 percent and ARPU growth of about 12 percent. The company called it the lowest-churn quarter in the history of the service.

Comparisons across time need care, because the series has been restated. Paramount originally reported 79.1 million subscribers for September 2025, but the August 2026 letter shows 77.9 million for that date, 78.9 million for December 2025 and 79.6 million for March 2026. The company is also deliberately shedding some international hard-bundle subscribers, where a partner includes Paramount+ in another package: nearly 2 million left in the second quarter and about 4 million are expected to exit in 2026. Older figures, from 55.9 million at the end of 2022 to 77.5 million at the end of 2024, are in our report on Paramount+ subscribers worldwide.

The bigger change is corporate. Warner Bros. Discovery signed a merger agreement with Paramount Skydance on February 27, 2026, at 31 dollars per share in cash, after Paramount paid Netflix a 2.8 billion dollar termination fee on behalf of Warner Bros. Discovery to end an earlier Netflix deal. On its March 2, 2026 analyst call, Paramount said it planned to combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into one platform with more than 200 million subscribers. That is a plan, not a count, and in August 2026 both companies said closing was on hold until five days after pending litigation ends or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first.

Peacock: 48 million and its first profit

Comcast reported 48 million paid Peacock subscribers at the end of June 2026, after 2 million net additions in the quarter. The service had 20 million paid subscribers at the end of 2022, 31 million at the end of 2023, 36 million at the end of 2024 and 44 million at the end of 2025, then 46 million in March 2026, when Comcast said the base was up 12 percent from a year earlier.

The second quarter of 2026 was also the first in which Peacock made money. Comcast reported 1.9 billion dollars of Peacock revenue and adjusted EBITDA of 189 million dollars, against a loss of 101 million dollars a year earlier, in a quarter that included World Cup coverage. That turnaround came only one quarter after a 432 million dollar loss in the first quarter, which shows how much sports rights still drive the economics of a US streamer. Peacock is the smallest of the Western services in this ranking but one of only two that still let outsiders track subscriber growth every quarter.

Year-end counts compared, 2023 to 2025

Putting the five largest Western services side by side over three year-ends shows who gained ground while all of them were still reporting. Netflix added almost 65 million memberships between the end of 2023 and the end of 2025, more than the entire Peacock base. HBO Max added almost 34 million, the fastest growth among the challengers in absolute terms, while Paramount+ was nearly flat in 2025.

Netflix pulled further ahead: its lead over the second-largest Western service widened from about 148 million at the end of 2023 to more than 190 million at the end of 2025.

Net additions in 2025 make the same point more directly. Netflix added at least 23.4 million, Warner Bros. Discovery 14.7 million, Disney+ 8.9 million in its fiscal year and Peacock 8 million. Paramount+ is left out of the comparison because its 2024 and 2025 figures are on different bases after the restatement.

Netflix still adds the most: even the minimum implied by its milestone exceeds the 2025 gains of HBO Max and Disney+ individually.

Growth also cost more in some cases than others. HBO Max grew mainly in lower-priced international markets, which is why its global ARPU fell while its subscriber count rose. Netflix grew while raising prices in several markets, which is why its revenue rose 16 percent in 2025. Price levels by market are compared in our data on Netflix ARPU by region and Disney+ revenue per subscriber.

Amazon and Apple: the two big blanks

Amazon has never published a subscriber count for Prime Video. Prime Video is included in Prime membership in most markets, and the last membership figure Amazon gave was more than 200 million Prime members worldwide, in Jeff Bezos letter to shareholders of April 2021. That figure counts paying Prime households for shopping benefits as well as video, and Amazon has not updated it since. Our Amazon Prime overview looks at the membership side.

What Amazon does publish is reach for its advertising. In November 2025 it said Prime Video reached an average of more than 315 million ad-supported viewers each month worldwide, measured from September 2024 to August 2025 across 16 countries where ads run, up from 200 million when it first reported the metric in April 2024. At its May 2026 upfront, Amazon said its ad-supported properties reach over 300 million consumers in the US alone, a figure that covers more than Prime Video. These numbers count viewers, including people in households that pay for Prime, and cannot be compared with subscriber counts.

A different metric, not a bigger audience: Amazon and Netflix now compete on viewers reached with ads, a number that is always larger than accounts.

Apple has never disclosed how many people pay for Apple TV, the service called Apple TV+ until October 2025. Apple reports services revenue as a single line that also includes the App Store, iCloud, Apple Music and AppleCare, so the video business cannot be separated. Estimates of around 45 million subscribers circulate widely, but they are analyst figures and are not used here. Regional adoption survey data are in our report on Apple TV+ penetration by region.

India and China: large services, patchy reporting

Some of the largest subscription video services in the world are in Asia, and their reporting is even less regular than in the US. JioHotstar, formed when Reliance and Disney merged their Indian media businesses into JioStar in November 2024, is the clearest example. In its results for the April to June 2025 quarter, Reliance said JioHotstar had a subscriber base of 287 million during IPL 2025. It did not say how many of them were paying subscribers, and the figure was tied to the cricket season, when demand peaks.

Reliance has not repeated a subscriber figure since. Its later releases give monthly active users instead: an average of more than 460 million in the April to June 2025 quarter, 500 million in January to March 2026 and 530 million in April to June 2026, according to JioStar. Those are users of a service that also offers free content, so they are much broader than the paid base.

In China, the 116 million Tencent Video subscriptions of the third quarter of 2024 are the most recent stand-alone video figure we could confirm in Tencent statements. Newer results give only a combined total for video, music and other paid services, which fell 2 percent in the year to the second quarter of 2026. iQIYI, the other leading Chinese platform, stopped publishing its subscriber number with its first-quarter 2024 results, after an average of 100.3 million in the last quarter of 2023.

Prices are a fraction of US levels and none of these services operates at scale outside its home region, but at least two of them have been in the same size range as Disney+ and HBO Max.

Home market versus international subscribers

Three of the largest services have published a domestic and international split in their final or recent tables. The comparison shows how far each has moved beyond the US and Canada. Netflix had 89.63 million memberships in the US and Canada at the end of 2024 and 212.0 million in the rest of the world, 70 percent of its total. Disney+ and HBO Max are both close to an even split, with about 55 percent abroad.

Netflix is the most global: seven in ten Netflix memberships were outside the US and Canada, against about 55 percent for Disney+ and HBO Max.

The domestic numbers are strikingly close: Disney+ and HBO Max each had about 59 million customers in the US and Canada, while Netflix had about 90 million. That suggests the home market is approaching saturation for the largest services and that future growth will come mainly from abroad, where prices and ARPU are lower. Platform penetration among US households is compared in our data on US streaming penetration by platform.

Why the numbers cannot be added up

Adding the figures in the ranking gives more than 1.3 billion, but that total has little meaning. Many households pay for several services, so the same people appear in several rows. Bundles make the overlap explicit: Disney sells Disney+, Hulu and HBO Max together in the US, and each company counts the subscriber. Wholesale deals add another layer, because a telecom or pay-TV operator can include a streaming service in a package and the streamer counts each customer, which is why Paramount is now removing some international hard-bundle subscribers.

Definitions also stretch in different directions. Netflix counts one membership per account, although an account may serve a whole household, which is why it now speaks of an audience approaching one billion people. Amazon counts viewers reached by ads. Tencent and iQIYI average daily subscriptions over a quarter. The growth of ad-supported tiers adds yet another category, covered in our analysis of hybrid ad-supported and subscription tiers. The only honest way to compare services is one at a time, with the definition and date attached.

Outlook: fewer counts, bigger platforms

The direction for the next year is fairly clear. If the Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery merger closes, Paramount+ and HBO Max will become one service, and on the last figures each company published, the combined base would be about 213 million subscribers, more than the 196 million Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions in the final Disney table. Whether the new company keeps reporting a subscriber count, as Paramount does now, or follows Warner Bros. Discovery in stopping, will decide how much of the market can still be tracked.

Paramount Skydance expects total paid subscribers to be modestly higher in 2026 than in 2025, despite the planned exit of about 4 million international bundle subscribers. Netflix has promised to announce paid memberships only when it crosses key milestones, so its next confirmed number will probably be a round figure.

For analysts, revenue and profit are taking over from subscribers as the main yardsticks. Netflix expects 51.0 billion to 51.4 billion dollars of revenue in 2026, up 13 to 14 percent. Peacock and HBO Max are now profitable on an adjusted basis, and Paramount+ revenue is growing faster than its subscriber count. The subscriber league table will not disappear, but it will increasingly be a table of last known values.

Streaming subscribers by service in eight numbers

Questions about streaming subscriber counts by service