The Combined HBO Max/Paramount+ Streaming Service May Be Too Expensive For Consumers

Will Skydance fly too close to the sun?

The Paramount/Warner Bros. deal is set to close on October 6, and we’ve just learned what the new company will be called. No, it won’t be Paramount/Skydance/Warner Bros./Discovery. It will simply be “Skydance.”

That solves one mystery, but there are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to the merger. As we reported earlier this year, HBO Max is supposed to merge with Paramount+ to create one single streaming service. But how much will that new service cost? How will Skydance manage all of the brands and media outlets in its portfolio?

Let’s talk about how things might shake out.

Poll: How much would you pay for a Skydance streaming service?

As part of a settlement with 12 U.S. states, Skydance has to promise that it won’t shut Pluto TV down or absorb it into another service for at least five years. But there was no such promise made about HBO Max or Paramount+, and the earliest reports about the merger confirmed that they would become one streaming service.

There’s one glaring issue: streaming services are expensive, and combining two already pricey services is a dangerous game. More content under one umbrella means a higher price tag, and at a certain point, consumers just start canceling.

I cover a lot of price changes in the streaming space, so I’m pretty used to hearing about these inflated bills. But I was curious how the public felt. So our social team conducted a poll earlier this week, asking for the most our readers would pay for a combined HBO Max/Paramount+ streaming service. We received responses from 43 readers.

How much would you pay for a combined streaming service?

Predictably, most people would prefer a cheaper option. But an ad-free HBO Max subscription currently costs $18.49/mo., so it seems unlikely that the combined service would cost less than that unless Paramount was willing to take a sizable loss.

I think it’s far more likely that the service will cost $20/mo. or more for an ad-free experience, with the price rising by a dollar or two every year. Skydance is trying to make its new streamer a serious Netflix competitor, and as of writing, an ad-free Netflix subscription costs $19.99/mo.

According to our 2026 Customer Satisfaction Survey, about 31% of Americans have a Paramount+ subscription. According to this new poll, only 25.6% of our readers would subscribe to Skydance’s new streamer if it cost more than $20/mo., so Skydance might start to lose people if it aims its sights too high. But this poll only handled ranges, and I wanted to find out if $20/mo. truly was the sweet spot.

So I decided to dig deeper, and ask our readers point blank: Would you subscribe to the Skydance streaming service if it cost $20/mo.? For this second poll, we received 30 answers.

Would you subscribe to an ad-free HBO Max/Paramount+ combined streaming service that costs $20/mo.?

(If you’d like your voice heard in future polls, be sure to follow us on Instagram @watchcabletv.)

Most people said yes. A surprisingly low number of people said they’d be interested in a cheaper ad-supported plan — nearly every streaming service is pushing ad-supported streaming pretty hard right now, since ad revenue can pad out revenue from subscriptions. But most of our respondents said they’d pay the higher price tag to get rid of the ads.

Granted, our poll was of CableTV.com readers, and our readership is full of TV lovers, which might explain why no one responded “No.” Keep in mind that, according to our 2026 Customer Satisfaction Survey, which had a larger and much more diverse respondent pool, only about 31% of Americans have a Paramount+ subscription, and 27% of Americans have an HBO Max subscription.

So Skydance might not pull in many new subscribers with this move, they might not lose many, either. It all depends on whether the new Skydance streaming service stays around $20/mo. and doesn’t balloon itself too high.

But what’s the most likely outcome? Let’s look at the rest of the streaming landscape.

How much might the new streaming service cost?

For an example of how two big streaming services might merge, we might look to the situation at Hulu and Disney+. Disney acquired a majority stake in Hulu in 2019, and in the seven years since it’s been raising prices on both Disney+ and Hulu until the two streaming services had equal price tags.

As of writing, Disney+ and Hulu each cost $21.49/mo. as a standalone service, and the version of the Disney Bundle that carries both services costs $21.99/mo.* With this pricing structure, Disney is encouraging customers to sign up for the bundle rather than either of the standalones, which are just a bad value in comparison.

So it’s very possible that Paramount might do the same thing when combining HBO Max with Paramount+. Right now, both services have very different price tags. HBO Max costs $18.49/mo., and Paramount+ costs $13.99/mo.

Paramount+’s last price increase happened in January 2026, and streaming services tend to increase their prices at the same time each year. So it seems very likely that Paramount+ will start increasing to match HBO Max’s $18.49/mo. price in January. But HBO Max’s last price increase happened in October 2025, so it’s also due for an increase.

The merger deal is supposed to close on October 6, 2026, so I wouldn’t be surprised if HBO Max increased in price after the ink is dry, but before Skydance launches its new service. That’s why I think that the new service, whether it’s called Paramount Max, HBO+, or Skydance TV, could pretty safely cost $20/mo.

But that’s only a conservative estimate. After all, the Disney Bundle is $21.99/mo. Skydance could try to get on Disney’s level by charging $22/mo. or more. But I think that would be a dangerous game — as our above poll shows, $20/mo. seems to be the cutoff for a lot of people.

*for demonstrative purposes, all prices in this section are given for the cheapest ad-free subscription tiers.

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