Peacock free vs. Premium vs. Premium Plus: Is an upgrade worth it?

Sarah Tew / CNET

Peacock’s free subscription tier may be the streaming service’s biggest strength: As so-called streaming wars continue and newcomers HBO Max, Disney Plus, and Apple TV Plus compete for their monthly payment, neither have offered an option. free. And while the mainstay Hulu offers the option to watch with or without ads, you still have to pay $ 5.99 a month for the ad plan. CBS All Access also uses the same model. (Editor’s Note: ViacomCBS, the parent company of CNET, owns CBS and Showtime, and competitors to Peacock, Pluto TV, and CBS All Access.)

You can subscribe to the free version of Peacock, well, for free – all you need to do is create an account with your email and password. No credit card is required, unless you choose to try the seven-day free trial of any of the premium levels.

The free tier includes access to approximately two-thirds of the Peacock Library – approximately 13,000 hours of advertising programming. You’ll find shows, movies, news, live sports, and parody-style clips, with highlights including Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, Yellowstone, The Bourne Identity, Jurassic Park, and The Matrix trilogy.

You’ll also be able to watch new episodes of current NBC shows a week after they air, including hits like This Is Us and The Blacklist. In terms of sports, the free tier includes some Premier League soccer games, coverage of the US Open Championship and Women’s Open Championship, an NFL Wild Card Playoff Game and certain upcoming events Tokyo Olympics and the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.

Since it’s free, you’ll see some ads: Peacock promises five minutes or less per hour. From what I can tell based on my tests, the way the ads appear seems to depend on your device and the program you’re watching. While watching Jurassic Park on an Apple TV and a MacBook Air, for example, I saw six ads scattered throughout the film, ranging from 20 to 60 seconds each. But when I started the movie on the iPhone app, I got a notice that I’d see 190 seconds of ads at first, and none for the rest. I’d also love to have that option on my Apple TV to remove the ads, but you can’t choose the format of your ad.

The free tier will give you a couple of episodes of Peacock Originals to watch, but you’ll have to upgrade to premium to watch full seasons. At launch, there are seven originals: Brave New World, Psych 2: Lassie Come Home, The Capture, Intelligence, Cleopatra In Space, Curious George, and Where’s Waldo?

Signing up for the free version of Peacock is a no-brainer. Sure, it won’t replace your subscription to Netflix or Hulu. But for casual viewers, it’s a great option for finding older movies and shows you’ve missed or want to watch again, and to stay up-to-date with current NBC shows as long as you don’t mind a few ads. Read our Peacock review.

Sarah Tew / CNET

Peacock Premium costs $ 4.99 a month or $ 50 a year. The update gives you everything you would get in the free tier and more, for a total of approximately 20,000 hours of content. But you will still see the same number of ads you would see in the free version: five minutes an hour or less, according to the company.

Premium gives you access to the full catalog of Peacock Originals, including the flagship series Brave New World and the sequel to the movie Psych. Four more originals will arrive later this summer, including the third season of AP Bio, which Peacock picked up from NBC. You’ll also get more shows, including the popular Yellowstone series and each season of Law and Order: SVU. Premium movies include Shrek, Ted, Children of Men, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Clearly, you won’t find a ton of new movies here (and Peacock has no immediate plans to stream movies that were originally in theaters during the coronavirus pandemic, as Disney Plus did with Hamilton). But there are many good old options if you have exhausted the catalog on other streaming services during the crash.

For fans of current NBC shows, instead of waiting a full week, they will be able to watch new episodes the day after they air. Another cool perk: once Late Night Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon return to studio production, you’ll be able to see them before they air, at 8 p.m. ET, rather than waiting until 11 a.m. : 30 pm ET.

The premium tier also brings you more in terms of sports, including over 175 Premier League matches for the 2020-2021 season and coverage of the Tour de France. Starting in August, you’ll find over 100 hours of WWE content, including Steve Austin’s WWE Untold series and Broken Skull Sessions, and compilations like John Cena’s best games at WrestleMania.

If you’re a big fan of Premier League football, want to eat the Peacock originals, or are interested enough in the broader catalog, it might be worth upgrading to Peacock Premium for $ 4.99 a month with ads. Dealing with commercials is annoying if you are used to the ad-free Netflix experience, but there’s still less than you would see on live TV.

Sarah Tew / CNET

Peacock Premium Plus costs $ 9.99 a month, or $ 100 a year. The upgrade gives you everything you get on the old Peacock Premium plan, only ad-free. Peacock’s mobile apps don’t offer downloads yet, but when that feature is added later this year, only Premium Plus subscribers will be able to download titles for offline viewing.

Due to the terms of some of Peacock’s broadcast rights, some of the programming on Peacock Premium Plus will still have some announcements. This includes Peacock channels, events, and a limited number of shows and movies, according to its website. (Hulu and CBS All Access ad-free plans have the same caveat.)

During the trial of a free trial Premium Plus membership, I saw many commercials known as promotions: short ads marketing the service you are already using. In Peacock, these were typically 30-second spots for their originals or for the service itself. These are common elsewhere: Amazon Prime Video often runs promotions for your originals before beginning to stream the video you selected. At Peacock, I didn’t run into promotions before every title I saw, but I did it for many.

Deciding whether or not to upgrade to the top tier depends on three things: How much do you plan to watch compulsive-watching shows in Peacock, how much do you hate commercials, and whether you want to spend $ 10 a month on another streaming service.

Personally, I think the free or premium versions give you almost everything you need. But I don’t mind the ads here and there on a service you’re probably not seeing every day.