How much does cable actually cost compared to IPTV?
A typical US household paying for cable plus two or three streaming apps spends roughly $120–$160 a month, or $1,440–$1,920 a year, before taxes and equipment fees. One Vivimate IPTV subscription on the 12-month plan works out at $5.83 a month. The calculator below uses published US list prices, last verified May 2026, so you can total your own stack instead of trusting an average.
Tick what you pay for today
US list prices excluding taxes, equipment rental and regional sports fees.
You pay now
$118.98
$1427.76/year
Vivimate (12 Months + 2 FREE)
$5.83
$69.99/year
Difference
−$113.15
$1357.77 saved a year
Why most cord-cutting estimates are wrong
Cable and satellite quotes are almost always promotional. The advertised rate covers the first 12 or 24 months, after which the price steps up — often by $30 to $40 — because the step-up is written into the agreement rather than being a price increase the provider has to announce. Tick Show post-promotional pricing above to see the number you will actually be paying in year two.
The second distortion is fees. Broadcast TV surcharges, regional sports fees and equipment rental are excluded from the advertised price and commonly add $20–$30 a month to a cable bill. None of them are in the figures above, so a real cable bill is higher than what this calculator shows — the comparison is deliberately conservative in cable's favour.
Where these prices come from
Every price is the provider's own published US list price, excluding taxes, equipment and promotional discounts, last verified in May 2026. The full dataset with sources lives in lib/streaming-costs.tsin this site's repository, and the audit that runs on every deploy fails the build once the data passes its re-verification date — so this page cannot quietly become a page of stale prices.
| Service | List price | After promo | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cable TV (typical expanded basic) | $85.00 | $120.00 | xfinity.com |
| Satellite TV (mid-tier) | $90.00 | $130.00 | dish.com |
| YouTube TV | $72.99 | — | tv.youtube.com |
| Hulu + Live TV | $82.99 | — | hulu.com |
| Sling TV (Orange + Blue) | $60.99 | — | sling.com |
| Netflix (Standard, ads-free) | $17.99 | — | help.netflix.com |
| HBO Max (ad-free) | $16.99 | — | max.com |
| Disney+ (Premium) | $15.99 | — | disneyplus.com |
| Prime Video | $8.99 | — | amazon.com |
| Paramount+ (with Showtime) | $12.99 | — | paramountplus.com |
| Peacock Premium Plus | $13.99 | — | peacocktv.com |
| ESPN+ | $11.99 | — | plus.espn.com |
| NFL Sunday Ticket (season, monthly equivalent) | $40.00 | — | tv.youtube.com |
What the IPTV column does and does not include
The Vivimate figure is the per-month equivalent of the 12 Months + 2 FREE plan at $69.99, which is the cheapest per-month rate offered. It includes the full channel list and VOD library on one connection. It does not include your internet service, which you need either way — that is the one line item cord-cutting does not remove. If you are unsure your connection is fast enough, the internet speed requirements calculator works out what you need for the number of simultaneous streams in your household.
Related
- How much does IPTV cost? — the pricing landscape across providers, and what a suspiciously cheap subscription usually means
- IPTV vs Sky TV — the feature-by-feature comparison behind these numbers
- Vivimate pricing — the plans used in the calculation
Stream Everything with Vivimate
55,000+ live channels · NFL · NBA · MLB · 4K UHD · No contract · From $19.99/month