Indians are paying much lesser for video streaming subscriptions in India compared with a lot of other countries, including the Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar subscriptions. This is according to research by personal finance website Finder.com. The research suggests the average subscription cost for these three streaming platforms in India is US$4.02, which works out to around Rs 302 per month. In comparison, subscribers in the US pay around $9.66 per month, which is around Rs 725 per month, for Netflix, Amazon Video and Disney+ streaming apps. Video streaming apps have gained a lot of importance over the past few months, with millions around the world staying at home amidst the Coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe.

For the research, Finder.com analyzed the cost of streaming in 13 countries, and also factored in the average monthly income to draw a percentage of the expenditure on video streaming subscriptions based on the income. While India has the lowest subscription cost for Netflix, Amazon Video and Disney+ Hotstar, the country also has the lowest average monthly salary at $145 (around Rs 11,000 per month). The average monthly salary in the US, in comparison is $4,458 (around Rs 3,34,000) per month. Finder.com says they have sourced the net national income per capita (US$) data from the World Bank.

�Of the 13 countries, India is the least affordable country to subscribe to streaming services, with the average cost of a streaming service accounting for 2.77% of the average monthly income. That�s a far cry from all the other countries included in the research, with streaming costs in those countries making up less than 0.50% of their monthly income,� says the research.

In India, Netflix offers four subscription plans. These are priced at Rs 199 (Mobile: SD for mobile only), Rs 499 (Basic: SD streaming), Rs 649 (Standard: HD streaming) and Rs 799 (Premium: 4K streaming). Amazon Prime subscription costs Rs 129 per month or if you want to pay annually, is priced at Rs 999 for the entire year. The Prime subscription also bundles, apart from Prime Video, some shopping benefits for purchases made on Amazon.in and also Prime Music streaming and Prime Gaming, to name a few. Disney+ Hotstar has two subscription offers in India right now. The Disney+ Hotstar VIP plan is priced at Rs 399 while the Disney+ Hotstar Premium plan costs Rs 299 per month or Rs 1499 per year. In India, subscription offers for these streaming platforms are also bundled with prepaid and postpaid mobile plans offered by Reliance Jio, Airtel and Vodafone. Depending on which postpaid plan or prepaid recharge you pick, you might be able to snare a limited time subscription bundle for any of these streaming platforms.

The Finder.com research collects the subscription cost data for 13 countries, including UK, Switzerland, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, Australia, Germany, France and Canada. US remains the most expensive with the average monthly cost of $9.66 followed by Switzerland at $9.54 per month. That being said, US also gets the largest library size of content across these apps, clocked at 12,506 titles, the UK gets 10,005 titles and India logs in with just 3,909 titles available for streaming.

�It�s widely known that Netflix in the United States has one of the most impressive streaming libraries in the world, but you might not know that it also has the biggest Amazon Prime library, at a whopping 31,167 titles. With their big content libraries, both the US offers the best bang for your buck out of the 13 countries, with the average cost per title across all three streaming services coming out at a measly $0.0008. Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom also average at $0.0008, while New Zealand ($0.0010) and India ($0.0010) weren�t too far behind,� says the research.