Five decades ago, there were just four major television networks: ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. Finding something good to watch was not guaranteed, but the choices were relatively straightforward.
Things were about to change: the number of cable networks rose from 28 to 79 through the 1980s, as cable subscriptions more than tripled from 16 to 50 million. Today, the number and variety of video streaming websites are uncountable. Still, FlixPatrol notes that the top eight subscription streamers in the U.S. are Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, Max, Prime Video, Apple TV, Peacock and Paramount+.
Choosing which movies and shows to watch on these platforms is no picnic. But before you do so, first comes choosing which streaming service to subscribe to. With so many variables — from price to quality to genre availability — it helps to play the platforms at their own game: data. So, NetCredit found the cost and average user ratings across genres for the new movies and TV shows the leading platforms deliver and ranked them by quality and value.
What We Did
We used JustWatch.com to gather the new movies and TV series released between January 2023 and June 2024 on Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, HBO Max, Prime Video, Apple TV, Peacock and Paramount+. We calculated each platform’s Value (subscription cost per newly released highly-rated title) and Quality (percentage of low, mid and top-rated titles).
Key Findings
- Prime Video is the best value streaming platform for new movies, at $1.95 per highly rated movie.
- Netflix is the best value service for quality TV shows, costing $2.21 per top rated show.
- Disney Plus has the best proportion of top-rated movies — 26% of its newer titles are rated 7.5 or more.
- HBO Max has the highest average rating for shows in the Action & Adventure, Fantasy and Science Fiction genres — more genres than any other TV streamer.
The Best Value Streaming Services for Movies and TV
First, we compared the price of the leading streamers to the number of 7.5+ rated movies and TV shows they deliver. Amazon Prime Video offers by far the best value for quality new movies, at an average cost of $1.95 per title.
Netflix offers the best value on quality TV shows (see below) but the second-best value on movies. The price difference per movie title between Netflix and Prime is significant: Netflix costs $4.81 per 7.5+ rated movie, which is two and a half times the price of a top movie on Prime.
In addition to buying acclaimed movies, Amazon has produced movies since 2008, acquiring the MGM studio in 2023. This also means that Amazon has inherited MGM titles, including the then-work-in-progress Challengers, which now has a 7.3 rating on IMDb. Prime retains its edge over Netflix for quality and maintains a larger catalog. Oscar-winning The Holdovers (7.9) is one example of a top new movie that’s on Prime but not Amazon.
Subscribers pay the best part of $20 or more per high-rated movie on Hulu ($19.05), Max ($30.58) and Apple TV ($44.96). But when we look at the best value service for TV shows, only one service is comparably expensive: Paramount+, where 7.5-rated shows work out at $21.58 each.
The Paramount+ library mainly consists of titles from the Viacom and CBS catalogs. The channel also produces original programming, such as the Star Trek series Discovery and Picard. While Picard is rated 7.5 on IMDb, Discovery is just 7.0, and the overall quality of Paramount+ is dragged down by originals such as Big Brother: Over the Top (6.4). Meanwhile, Netflix ($2.21 per quality show) and Prime Video ($2.25) offer the best value for highly-rated TV shows.
The Streaming Services with the Highest Quality Movies and TV in 2024
We’ve seen the streaming services that offer the most quality per subscriber dollar (above). But which ones offer the surest chance of landing on a top-rated movie or show? For movies, it’s Disney Plus. The Disney Plus service is the only one where more than a quarter of new movies are rated 7.5 or more on IMDb. It also has the second lowest rate of turkeys (rated 0-5).
Meanwhile, Apple TV offers the best prospect of seeing a halfway decent movie: none of its newest pictures are rated below 5.0 on IMDb, and Apple has the third-best hit rate for movies that rate 7.5 or higher.
Hulu has the lowest concentration of high-rated movies, with fewer than one in ten (8.02%) scoring higher than 7.5 on IMDb. However, Prime is arguably a worse bet: although the Amazon channel has a higher proportion (11.72%) of top-rated films than Hulu, Netflix (8.72%) and Peacock (11.35%), Prime also has far and away the biggest percentage of movies rated 0-5 (30.79%). One of Prime’s most notable low-hitters is the fictionalized Jennifer Lopez biopic This Is Me…Now, which scores just 4.2 on IMDb.
Apple TV fares well in the TV stakes, again with no new titles rated below 5.0. In this case, an impressive 37.04% of Apple’s TV shows are rated 7.5 or higher. Disney Plus has the highest percentage of top-rated shows (41.33%), but one in ten Disney Plus shows are turkeys.
Prime Video (31.30%) and Hulu (31.16%) have significantly fewer 7.5+-rated shows than both Apple and Disney. Along with Apple’s lack of films rated 0-5, this makes Apple TV the overall best bet for mid- to high-quality TV. Paramount+ and Peacock have nearly identical figures. They are the two channels with the lowest percentage of top-rated movies and the highest percentage of turkeys.
The Apple TV streaming service came relatively late to the game, launching in 2019. Due to its early focus on original material, the quality has remained relatively high, although Apple has since licensed pre-existing catalog titles to better compete in terms of variety. Ted Lasso was one of the flagship shows and retains an appropriately optimistic 8.8 rating on IMDb following an off-target 2023 finale; Presumed Innocent is a newer Apple Original with a score of 7.6.
The Best Streaming Service for Each Movie and TV Genre
Quality across the board is not such a concern if you’re mainly into a genre in which one particular streaming service excels. So, finally, we compared IMDb ratings for the newest movies and TV shows on each platform, broken down by genre.
Apple TV is the highest-rated for every genre in which it has sufficient titles to analyze: comedy, documentary, drama and romance.
Max, from HBO, has the highest-rated crime, horror, mystery & thriller movies. While HBO is associated with gritty, adult-themed content, as part of the Warner family, the streamer also has access to a range of lighter or youth-oriented movies. These include HBO Max Originals such as The Witches. Meanwhile, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock and Prime do not have the top-rated titles for any genre.
Further, HBO Max has the highest-rated TV shows in three genres: action & adventure, fantasy and science fiction. In 2023, HBO’s The Last of Us had elements of at least two of these genres, maintaining an 8.7 rating on IMDb. Longer-running science fiction shows such as Doctor Who and Rick and Morty continue to deliver the goods on HBO Max.
Two streaming services tie for second place with two top-rated genres each: Apple TV (animation and comedy) and Disney Plus (documentary and reality). The average rating for documentaries on Disney Plus is 7.58, the highest for any genre of show on any of these channels. Recent examples range from Jim Henson: Idea Man (7.8) to Secrets of the Octopus (8.3) to the Ryan Reynolds soccer documentary Welcome to Wrexham (8.3).
Masters of Streaming
With so many channels and so much content, finding something to watch is a gamble – nobody likes to waste half an evening discovering that their chosen title isn’t worth watching. Finding a balance of quality and value while catering to the personal tastes of your household is a challenge. Still, with careful comparison, it is possible to increase the odds of finding the right streaming service for you and your family.
Methodology
For this study, we focused on the top eight streaming services according to FlixPatrol: Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, HBO Max, Prime Video, Apple TV, Peacock and Paramount+. We also included the Disney Plus + Hulu bundle.
We used JustWatch.com to record the new movies and TV series released on each platform, as well as the IMDb user ratings associated with each title.
To assess the current quality of the services, we focused on new movies and TV series released from January 2023 to June 2024 rather than reviewing the complete back catalogs.
We analyzed each of these streaming services over that time period in three categories:
- Value = subscription cost ($) per newly released 7.5+-rated movie/TV series
- Quality = % of movies/TV series in each IMDb user ratings tier.
- Genres = the average IMDb user rating for movies/TV series in each genre.
This study was completed in July 2024.
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