Peacock is NBCUniversal’s US streaming app with tens of thousands of hours of free programming, plus more shows, movies, sports and originals if you …
Peacock is NBCUniversal’s US streaming app with tens of thousands of hours of free programming, plus more shows, movies, sports and originals if you pay. Paying members can access everything, including many (but not all) Premier League matches; cowboy drama Yellowstone; everything WWE; all nine seasons of The Office, plus extended episodes with deleted scenes from two seasons; and newer movies like Trolls World Tour and the Boss Baby 2. Peacock was one of a flood of new streaming services from tech and media giants that launched over the last year and a half. Competitors include other new services, like Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, Paramount Plus (the revamp of CBS All Access) and HBO Max, as well as vets like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu. But Peacock is unusual among these rivals in that it has this free tier. It’s also unusual among the crop of new services in that it has live sports and news; most of the newest streaming services are focused squarely on video-on-demand entertainment along the lines of Netflix. Other differences: Peacock has “channels” of TV, but these aren’t livestreams of its networks. Instead, they’re curated feeds of shorter programming or full episodes, organized around themes. So is Peacock worth paying for? All the finer details are below, but basically: Thanks to the free tier, it doesn’t cost anything to try it out for yourself. But paying for Peacock may be worth it for you if: You really want to watch all of The Office or any of its other paywalled shows or movies; you’re a WWE superfan who wants to access all that programming; or you’ve been spoiled by Netflix into hating ads. Peacock has three tiers: a limited one that’s free, an all-inclusive one that’s $5 a month with ads, and an all-inclusive one that’s $10 a month without ads. The free tier limits how much you can watch. For example, Peacock offers only select episodes of its originals free, withholding the rest inside its paywall. Free accounts can watch the first two seasons of The Office but no more. And though many movies are available on this free tier, some — including Boss Baby 2 — are blocked unless you upgrade. This limited free tier has access to roughly two-thirds of Peacock’s total catalog of movies, current season TV, TV classics, curated daily news, sports, Hispanic programming and curated channels. The paid tiers are basically all-access passes to the full catalog on the service. Peacock Premium is $5 a month or $50 a year with advertising, or you can upgrade to Peacock Premium Plus for ad-free viewing at $10 a month or $100 a year (this Premium Plus tier is also the only one that lets you download to watch offline). The tiers with advertising are supposed to have no more than five minutes of commercials per hour. Some people can score discounts that cut the cost of Peacock if they’re already customers of certain cable companies. Peacock gives Comcast X1 and Flex subscribers the paid versions of the service at a $5 discount. So if they want to watch with advertising, they pay nothing for Peacock Premium; if they want to watch ad-free, they need to pay $5 a month for Premium Plus. Cox customers also get that $5-off deal. Peacock has said it’s working on partnerships to offer this discount to a wider array of consumers. In January, NBCUniversal said that it reached a deal with cable company Charter Communications for Spectrum video and broadband customers to get an extended free trial to Peacock. Those offers haven’t begun yet. The pricing at Peacock’s competition runs the gamut.
