The 10 most popular streaming services, ranked by subscriber count

By Phil Nickinson and Jen Karner Updated November 20, 2025

Viewers today are spoiled for choice when it comes to finding something to watch. From the best live streaming services to FAST providers that deliver free content, there are plenty of options to choose from. However, trying to narrow down the “best” streaming services is easier said than done.

Comparing them only by subscribers isn’t exactly a fair fight, especially when not all streaming services are available worldwide. The number of subscribers doesn’t exactly address the “worth” of a service, much less whether the app is easy to use. It doesn’t even touch on whether the catalog of programming is good or has what you want to watch on it, which is truly the best metric out there.

However, when we take a closer look at total subscriber counts, we gain a better understanding of how each service performs from a global perspective. We’ve taken a look at everything from the big names in streaming like Netflix and Prime Video, to the range of “plusses” like Disney+, Paramount+, and Hulu.

So with that, and mostly using information published by the streaming services (or their parent companies), here’s a look at the top 10 streamers in terms of total subscribers.

Peacock is NBC’s streaming service. And while it’s definitely had a bumpy road — much of its initial slate of exclusives were canned because of low viewership — its corporate overlords have stuck it out. And as of the second quarter of 2025, Peacock weighed in at a healthy 41 million paid subscribers. That’s up from 33 million at the end of 2023, and more than quadruple the 9 million subscribers it had at the end of 2021, according to FlixPatrol.

Not bad for a streaming service nobody wanted, eh? The popularity is likely due to its affordable price, as well as being the U.S. streaming home of the English Premier League. And there’s still plenty of other stuff to watch on Peacock, too.

Hulu has undergone a number of changes over the years, both in terms of what it offers and who owns it. As of the first quarter of 2024, Disney — which previously owned a big chunk thanks to its purchase of 21st Century Fox — now basically owns and controls the whole thing.

Hulu is known for on-demand boutique content like The Handmaid’s Tale and Only Murders in the Building, and there’s a wealth of other on-demand content available, especially from the Fox side of the equation. Hulu has a total of 55 million paid subscribers for its on-demand product.

Complicating things a little is that you can now watch Hulu from within Disney+ if you’re subscribed to both services. But not everything on Hulu is available on Disney+. Also, Hulu Plus Live TV subscribers are automatically enrolled in the Disney bundle and are also counted as subscribers of Disney+ and ESPN+.

However, by 2026, Hulu will no longer exist as an individual streaming app, as it will be integrated into the Disney+ app.

A number of major brands fall under the Paramount umbrella and are included in Paramount+, including CBS and Showtime, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, and BET. Paramount+ also has served as a streaming home for Champions League soccer and the NWSL. And if you’re a Star Trek fan, it’s the place to be.

Paramount+ had reached 77 million subscribers by the second quarter of 2025. This is 5 million more subscribers than the total Paramount+ had on September 30, 2024. However, the company still lost a reported 1.3 million subscribers from its first quarter of 2025 ahead of its merger with Skydance Media.

As one of China’s leading streaming services, iQiyi, owned by tech giant Baidu, has been described as “the Netflix of China.” While most of its subscribers dwell in China, it is also available in several East Asian countries, as well as the United States. This has helped it reach 101.1 million subscribers as of March 2024, according to FlixPatrol.

Known for acclaimed original productions like Tientsin Mystic and Burning Ice, iQiyi offers a wide selection of films, anime, and documentaries from China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Taiwan. While you can stream certain content on iQiyi with a free account, you can unlock a lot more with a VIP subscription.

Since its launch in 2011, Tencent Video has become China’s most popular streaming service. Though Tencent Video, in its original form, is only available in China, the latter is one of the most populous countries in the world. This has allowed the platform to amass an incredible number of subscribers. By the second quarter of 2025, it had a reported 114 million subscribers. It also has an international version, WeTV, available outside China.

Tencent Video streams a variety of Chinese and international films, TV shows, and original productions. The company even has an agreement with Disney that allows it to stream the latter’s movies, shows, and documentaries.

When Disney+ launched in November 2019, it wasn’t shy about its global ambitions. It certainly didn’t start small, either, hitting more than 10 million subscribers in its first day of existence.

Let that number sink in for a minute.

Disney+ has also been extremely aggressive in bundling itself with other Disney-owned streaming services — Hulu and ESPN+ — pricing the bundle so that you’re encouraged to just go ahead and get all three. So there’s going to be a bit of overlap.

In the U.S., Disney+ is home to all things Disney, of course, along with Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and National Geographic. And if you also subscribe to Hulu, you can now get that content inside the Disney+ app, too. Here’s how it breaks down: There were 59.4 million Disney+ subscribers in the U.S. and Canada as of June 30, 2025. And there were another 68.4 million subscribers internationally, for a total of 127.8 million worldwide.

No service has undergone a larger transformation than HBO Max. It used to be HBO Go and HBO Now before becoming HBO Max. And then, its owner, Warner Bros., merged with Discovery — forming the current parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. The streaming service was turned into Max before becoming HBO Max again.

In the third quarter of 2025, HBO Max had a reported 128 million subscribers. And HBO Max continues to evolve. It has added more news content with CNN Max, and the Bleacher Report sports add-on with more than 300 live events annually, including the NHL and NBA, and U.S. Soccer.

It has also expanded its reach to 90 markets this year, launching in Australia and Turkey in the first half of 2025. Later in the year, HBO Max expanded its reach to over 90 markets as it launched in 12 more countries.

On top of that, you can now bundle Max with Disney+ and Hulu.

Amazon Prime Video isn’t quite like all the other streaming services here. Well, it is and it isn’t. In one sense, it’s exactly like all the others because you can subscribe to it and watch all kinds of things. But it’s also part of the vast Amazon Prime ecosystem. You pay a monthly (or annual) fee for Amazon Prime, and you also get access to virtually countless movies and shows as part of that subscription fee.

But Amazon Prime Video is also where you can rent or buy shows and movies. So it’s entirely possible to use Amazon Prime Video without subscribing to Amazon Prime. It’s also a portal to other streaming services via Amazon Prime Video Channels. So you can subscribe to, say, Paramount+ or Max, within Amazon Prime Video. And Prime Video is home to some exclusive sports (in the U.S., anyway) that you can’t watch anywhere else, like Thursday Night Football for NFL games.

So there’s a lot going on here.

That said, Amazon Prime Video is huge. It’s global, available in more than 200 countries. Amazon CEO Andy Jassey, in the company’s Q3 2023 earnings call, said that “Prime Video continues to be an integral part of the prime value proposition, where it’s often one of the top two drivers of customers signing up for Prime.” Jassey, in his 2021 letter to shareholders — his first as CEO after succeeding founder Jeff Bezos — stated that Amazon had “over 200 million Prime customers.”

Various private estimates go up from there. But 200 million is the rough ballpark on the low end.

Formerly Disney+ Hotstar, the Indian streaming service rebranded itself as JioHotstar after the company’s merger with JioCinema in February 2025. That same month, JioHotstar reportedly had 300,000 hours of content, including movies, TV shows, and live sports, as well as over 500 million users. It also features content from studios like Disney, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO, and Paramount.

From December 31, 2024, to March 31, 2025, JioHotstar went from 15,000,000 subscribers to 100,000,000. In only three months, the platform experienced a nearly 700% increase in subscribers. This could be a result of India’s near-1.5 billion population and the amount of content available following such a massive company merger. Whatever it was, it helped JioHotstar reach a staggering 300 million subscribers by June 2025.

Netflix is the biggest streaming services in the world. The company reported roughly 301.6 million global paid memberships as of December 31, 2024. That’s 40 million subscribers more than the previous year.

The secret to Netflix’s success? Reach, for one. It’s been available globally longer than any of the other services on this list. (And, of course, not all the services on this list are available globally.) The U.S. and Canada combined account for 90.489 million subscribers. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa make up a reported 101.13 million. Latin America accounts for 53.33 million, while the Asia-Pacific region reaches 57.54 million. It’s a big world out there.

But the other reason is just the sheer scope of content that you can find on Netflix. Movies. Shows. Foreign. Domestic. And, in fact, Netflix has succeeded by blurring the lines between countries, thanks to some aggressive marketing, language dubbing, and subtitles. Take the Squid Game phenomenon, for example, which brought a Korean-language series to the entire world.

And because Netflix is constantly rotating in new content, there’s always something new to watch.

However, as of 2025, Netflix has ceased reporting quarterly paid membership numbers, as well as average revenue per membership numbers, because one membership is not the same as the next, insofar as revenue is concerned. That is, what Netflix earns from someone with the cheapest plan with advertising is different from what someone with the highest tier brings in.