I Cancelled All My Streaming Apps But One, and It Made TV Fun Again

Recently, I realized we were spending over $80 a month for streaming services.

And we were still scrolling for 10 minutes trying to find something to watch every night.

So my spouse and I decided to test the “one in, one out” method. We cancelled almost everything. Then, we chose to pay for one app at a time, one month at a time — and it changed our whole outlook on at-home entertainment.

The problem with having it all

There's a concept in personal finance called "lifestyle creep" — when occasional indulgences quietly become fixed expenses you barely notice.

Something similar was happening with our streaming use: I called it app creep.

It happened gradually. Netflix felt like the baseline — we'd been subscribers since the DVD-by-mail days. Then Hulu for network shows. Prime Video came bundled with shipping. Peacock for classic NBC. Shudder for horror. And before we knew it, we'd tacked on Max and Paramount+ too.

Each one felt justified. Each one cost less than a lunch out. But together? Yikes.

That's $1,073.16 a year if nothing changed — and over the years, prices have just kept climbing. What felt like a steal a few years ago was now a gut punch every time the auto-charge hit.

Note: These prices reflect what we were paying in 2025, when we first started the experiment. Here’s a snapshot of my credit card charges for Netflix as evidence. Pricing tiers and bundle options have definitely changed since then.

Image via Beth Buczynski

The fix: Round-robin streaming

Here's what we changed, and what you can steal.

We paused or cancelled every app except one* and committed to watching the heck out of it until we ran out of things we wanted to see. Then we'd move on to a new app.

No overlap. No redundancy. Just one app, fully enjoyed, before rotating. I called it “round robin streaming.”

Here's how to do it:

*OK, technically two. Because Prime Video is bundled with our overall Prime subscription, we set that to the side, and cancelled all of the other standalone apps except one (it was Peacock).

Which Canadian services let you pause?

This is the part most people don't know about.

Cancelling sounds drastic, but pausing is low-commitment — and several popular services support it. For those without a pause option, cancelling and restarting is penalty-free — you just lose your billing date continuity.

What we saved (and what we didn't lose)

After a year of round-robining, we cut our streaming spend from $89/month to $20/month on average — a savings of about $833 a year.

The financial win was satisfying but somewhat expected.

What surprised me was:

We don't feel deprived. We can still watch anything we want — we just have to be thoughtful about it and prioritize. That constraint turned out to be a feature. Shows accumulated on each platform until we had a genuinely satisfying queue waiting for us, which made the switch feel like getting a new TV service every month.

The FOMO is manageable. Yes, we're sometimes behind friends watching in real time. But avoiding spoilers is easier than it sounds — and there's something genuinely pleasant about building anticipating for something we KNOW is gonna be good.

We can indulge in ad-free tiers. Because we're only paying for one service at a time, we splurge for the ad-free version without guilt. Goodbye, 160-second mid-episode ad breaks.

So, is it really worth the effort?

Totally.

The main cost is a little calendar discipline. You need to track renewal dates and occasionally go through a reactivation flow. That's it.

For $800 back in my pocket annually — and a more enjoyable way to watch TV — it's worth it.

Use the calculator below to see how much you could save using this same technique.

Canada streaming service cost calculator