The best free TV streaming services of 2026 for news, movies, TV shows and more

What's offered: Live channels, on-demand movies and TV series | Account required: No | Downloads for offline viewing: No | Max. streaming resolution: 720p (live), 1080p (on-demand)

Pluto is my go-to when I want the sound of TV in the background, or I'm looking to relax with some "comfort" viewing. The service offers a mountain of ad-supported content spread out across live channels and on-demand libraries.

What kind of content? Pluto is owned by Paramount, which also owns CBS, so right off the bat you're getting a lot of stuff not found elsewhere. You can stream the latest seasons of Survivor and 60 Minutes and even select episodes of current series like NCIS and Tracker.

Meanwhile, Pluto's hundreds of live channels are divided into sections like Movies, Comedy, Classic TV, News, Reality, Kids and Sports. You can also find a good selection of on-demand movies (older titles, mostly, but some decidedly mainstream ones). I especially like the Kids Mode option, which strips away everything but the kid-friendly channels and movies.

Another Pluto strength: dozens of channels devoted to old shows and favorite genres. Trekkies, for example, can tune into multiple (!) Star Trek channels for round-the-clock movies and TV episodes, and there are others devoted to I Love Lucy, Baywatch, Matlock, Survivor and more. 

The only downside is the program-guide interface, which is oddly designed and takes a little practice to master. In most other respects, Pluto wins my vote for best free streaming service.

Rick's Picks: 60 Minutes, Arrival, Mission: Impossible (1, 3, 4 and 5), Star Trek: Voyager, True Grit

What's offered: On-demand movies, TV series, documentaries | Account required: Yes | Downloads for offline viewing: No | Max. streaming resolution: 1080p

Libraries are awesome; Kanopy is the greatest proof yet. All you need is a library card (from a branch that offers the service) and you can stream movies, TV shows, documentaries and more, all free of charge and ad-free.

Yep, Kanopy is one of just two services here to offer no-commercials viewing. Just one catch: It's not unlimited viewing. My library, for example, issues me 15 "tickets" per month, and when they're gone, I have to wait for the next month to get another batch. (Unused tickets don't roll over.)

How much content does that net? The Oscar-winning Anora, for example, costs four tickets. The comedy classic The Naked Gun (the original, not last year's reboot) is two tickets. TV series can be a little a tricky; you can get the hilarious BBC comedy The Outlaws, Season 1, for just four tickets, but you have only five days to watch all six episodes.

The exception to all this is Kanopy Kids; that content requires no tickets.

The Kanopy catalog spans over 30,000 titles. (Note that availability can vary between libraries; your branch may not have everything.) You'll find no shortage of classics, Oscar-winners, independent films, world cinema, documentaries, BBC television series, even instructional content like The Great Courses. Much like libraries themselves, Kanopy is the place to feed your brain — though there's some pop-culture goodness available here as well.

While I wish you weren't limited to just a handful of rentals per month, I do think Kanopy offers the best selection of quality films.

Rick's Picks: Catch Me if You Can, The Outlaws (complete series), Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Some Like it Hot, Captain Fantastic, The Life of Chuck

What's offered: Live channels, on-demand movies and TV series, original programming | Account required: No | Downloads for offline viewing: No | Max. streaming resolution: 720p

Fox-owned Tubi has been around for years, but it was only in 2025 that it gained serious national attention. That's because it streamed a little event called Super Bowl LIX (in 4K, no less). Indeed, what was once a service with little notable content has evolved to include live channels, original programming and some pretty solid movies and TV shows.

Just be prepared to sift through a fair bit of chaff to find the wheat. At this writing, the blockbuster selection was much thinner than the last time I looked, but I did find Oscar nominees like Aftersun, The Worst Person in the World and The Master. On the TV front, I was happy to see nearly every season of the reality series Alone and the entirety of The Shield, one of the all-time great cop shows.

Tubi also has one of the better mobile apps I've seen, with a polished UI and nifty TikTok-style feed called Scenes. This plunks you into an exciting moment from a movie or TV show and plays a clip that lasts a minute or two. Not interested? Swipe up to start the next one. Want to watch the whole thing from the beginning? Tap the bright yellow Play button. This is a really engaging way to explore Tubi's library and find something to watch, rather than just perusing endless thumbnail images.

There are lots of live channels, many of them thematic like Pluto's, but to me the selection here wasn't as interesting. For the moment, Tubi's strength is definitely its on-demand catalog.

Rick's Picks: Almost Famous, Loudermilk (complete series), Mr. Robot (complete series), The Shield (complete series)

What's offered: On-demand movies and TV series | Account required: Yes | Downloads for offline viewing: Yes | Max. streaming resolution: 480p

Your library gone digital. That's Hoopla in a nutshell, a service stocked with e-books, audiobooks and — you guessed it — movies and TV shows. Assuming your local library offers the service and you've got a valid card, you can stream anything in the catalog ad-free — and even download some titles for offline viewing in the Hoopla app. That's one benefit unmatched by any other free service.

Unfortunately, Hoopla isn't the most TV-friendly option here, for one key reason: It streams at 480p resolution, which is fine for phones and tablets but not good for the big screen. Video looks soft, washed-out.

But let's not overlook the potential value of that download option. On a recent vacation I rewatched the delightful Richard Linklater film Before Sunrise; it was available in the in-flight movie library. But the sequel, Before Sunset, was not. After consulting JustWatch, a great service that tells you where to find anything you want to stream, I discovered the film was available free from just one source: Hoopla. I downloaded it and watched it on the flight home (and fell even more madly in love with Julie Delpy).

Alas, that wouldn't have worked with, say, 2023's Past Lives; as with most free streamers, the content here is decidedly on the older side. I struggled to find a single recent movie in the catalog (which includes over 90,000 titles, according to Hoopla). The majority seemed like straight-to-video releases I'd never heard of.

On the TV side, it's a lot of Acorn, BBC and PBS content, with a smattering of AMC mixed in. Again, not a lot of mainstream stuff, but some real gold if you're into British series.

As with Kanopy, you're limited to fixed number of "borrows" per month. The good news is you can access both services from your same library card — assuming your branch offers both.

Rick's Picks: Babylon Berlin (4 seasons), Ken Burns: The Dust Bowl, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Quiz Show

What's offered: Live channels, on-demand movies and TV series | Account required: No | Downloads for offline viewing: No | Max. streaming resolution: 720p (live), 1080p (on-demand)

If you're not familiar with Philo, it's one of the better-kept secrets of the streaming world (and our favorite budget streaming service, full stop). For just $28 monthly you get 70+ live cable channels, including AMC, Comedy Central, History, Hallmark and Nickelodeon. 

Philo Free Channels is the freebie version, with even more channels (120+, though not the same ones) and a DVR option. That's a nice little perk, though as you'd expect, you'll need to create an account if you want to save shows for later viewing (up to 30 days). Doing so also lets you mark channels as favorites and maintain a watch history.

The challenge with Philo Free Channels is the same as with Philo proper: finding what you want to watch. The program guide is something of a mess, with no way to filter by channels or category or anything else. (You can read my full review of Philo's paid service for a more detailed account of the interface issues.)

It's probably worth the effort, though, because while the on-demand movie selection isn't great, there's some notable TV content here — including a batch of renowned AMC and Showtime series (Mad Men, Nurse Jackie, Weeds, etc.). Just note that some of them are incomplete; Mad Men, for example, locks you out of the final two seasons unless you have a paid Philo subscription.

The user interface makes Philo Free Channels tough to love, but as with all the services in this roundup, you can't argue with the price.

Rick's Picks: Boyhood, Halt and Catch Fire (2 seasons), Limitless, Mad Men (5 seasons), Party Down (1 season)

What's offered: Live channels, on-demand movies and TV series | Account required: No | Downloads for offline viewing: No | Max. streaming resolution: 1080p

If you're looking for a cable-TV replacement without the monthly bill, Sling Freestream gets you pretty close — at least in terms of interface and features. You won't get the familiar cable channels afforded by a paid Sling subscription, but you will enjoy an attractive program guide, live-stream pausing and time-shifting (a rarity among the free streamers), even 10 hours' worth of free DVR.

Of course, content is king, and Freestream's is decidedly mixed. Although it offers 600-plus live channels, including a lot of city-specific ones for news, there's a pretty small selection of on-demand movies and TV series. Yes, there are a few gems mixed in among the latter, including all five seasons of Kim's Convenience and a smattering of Rick and Morty. But many of the other freebie services here have much deeper on-demand catalogs.

However, none of them lets you rent movies; Freestream does, provided you've signed up for a free account. Doing so also lets you create user profiles, mark channels as favorites, create a watchlist and access the aforementioned DVR. Well worth the effort of maintaining another password.

Freestream's interface is generally excellent, one of the best in the group. No surprise here; it's virtually identical to the subscription Sling interface, which shows the full polish of a cable TV replacement. However, the live guide is definitely jumbled in places; when you browse by category, it's not uncommon to find some out-of-place channels mixed in. While scrolling through News & Opinion, for example, I noticed Law & Crime Rewind. The Comedy section contained MTV Biggest Pop for some reason; Movies is home to The Ed Sullivan Channel, which is decidedly bereft of movies.

What's more, a lot of the content I viewed seemed pretty low-resolution. Watching Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation on the Miramax channel, it was clear I wasn't getting a 1080p stream; I'm not sure it was even 720p. That's not ideal for big-screen viewing, less of an issue on mobile devices.

Flaws aside, Freestream is a solid pick for anyone missing that cable-TV experience.

Rick's Picks: Chef, Kim's Convenience (complete series), Rick and Morty (limited episodes), The Commitments

What's offered: Live channels, on-demand movies and TV series | Account required: Yes | Downloads for offline viewing: No | Max. streaming resolution: 1080p

What was once the cleverly named Amazon FreeVee is now the cumbersome "Prime Video Free with Ads." This means that even if you don't have an Amazon Prime subscription, you can stream a bunch of movies and TV shows — with commercials, of course. The only real catch is that you do need to have an Amazon account, which you do if you've ever purchased a single thing.

You still use the Prime Video app (on mobile devices, smart TVs, streamers, etc.); you'll just find a more limited selection than if you had a Prime subscription.

And be prepared: In the streamer apps, Amazon mixes in plenty of not-free content — often to the point of confusion. One row might be labeled, "Free action and adventure movies," followed immediately by "TV finds" and "TV shows we think you'll like" — the latter two filled with content that requires a purchase or subscription.

Notably, the web version of the interface is much better, with nearly every row devoted to free stuff.

Unfortunately, the selection has dropped off a bit recently. I found very few movies I wanted to watch and fewer still I'd even heard of. The TV selection isn't much better, with one exception: Amazon Originals, including high-profile series like Fallout, Reacher and The Boys. You can watch some of these shows in their entirety, others a few full seasons. (Occasionally you might just get the first episode, like the new Nicole Kidman series Scarpetta.)

Freebie Prime Video also has a well-designed live-TV channel guide, with hundreds of thematic and local-news offerings. At this writing I'm watching a channel devoted entirely to Shark Tank reruns.

Clunky name notwithstanding, this is a good app to keep in your library, especially for watching some of Amazon's more prestigious shows.

Rick's Picks: Jury Duty, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (3 seasons available), Nobody, Reacher (1 season available), The One I Love

What's offered: Live channels, on-demand movies and TV series, original programming | Account required: No | Downloads for offline viewing: No | Max. streaming resolution: 4K

Its name notwithstanding, you don't need to own a Roku TV or streaming device to access The Roku Channel; it's available as an app for just about every platform, mobile and TV alike. (You can access it on the web as well.) In fact, you don't even need a Roku account, which is refreshing.

The service is home to a wide variety of movies, TV shows, live channels and original content, all of it accessible via Roku's friendly, familiar (to those who do have Roku devices) interface.

I do have a couple UI quibbles, however, like the confusing presence of a "Free TV" menu item right below "Live TV" and a few spots above "TV Series." (Additionally head-scratching: "Free TV" also contains movies.) It's also not uncommon to see premium (read: not free) content — some of which comes from Howdy, Roku's subscription service — in the mix, though at least that's fairly easy to spot thanks to the dollar-sign icon embedded in the thumbnail.

As with nearly all these services, Roku's content library is pretty hit-and-miss, with a lot of older and never-heard-of-it content. It's worth scrolling down the Home page to the Academy Award Winners & Nominees row to find the cream of the movie crop, but even there the selection is pretty middling.

Like Amazon, Roku produces original movies and TV shows — though it's not exactly prestige TV: The Great American Baking Show, The Spiderwick Chronicles, etc. The good news is that a lot of it streams at 4K, a rarity for free-TV streamers. 

And I do like the Roku Channel's live-TV guide, which is well-organized and includes access to over 500 channels — including some from Pluto TV.

While the overall selection could be better, The Roku Channel does have a smattering of gems if you're willing to seek them out.

Rick's Picks: Aftersun, Alone (all seasons), Castle, It Happened One Night, Paddington