How to Watch TV Online for Free

A group of friends eating popcorn and watching TV. — Syda Productions/Shutterstock

So, you’ve ditched the cable company, but now you’re stuck with a dozen streaming services and their rising prices. Fortunately, you can watch TV online for free. It just takes a little effort and a little patience.

Streaming Services Are Getting Pricey

If you hate paying for TV, then you’ve probably calculated the yearly price of services like Netflix or Hulu. As it turns out, a subscription to Netflix and Hulu will cost you more than $200 a year, and additional services will only bring that number higher.

When you consider the current cost of streaming services, the yearly price hike of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and the addition of new services like Disney+, the future looks bleak—or at least expensive. We tend to think of these services as an escape from cable, yet they’re starting to look a lot like cable companies. Is there an escape from streaming services?

Luckily, you don’t have to pay for Netflix or Hulu to get your online TV fix. There are plenty of ways to watch TV online for free, and some of them will make you wonder why anybody pays $12.99 a month for a streaming service subscription.

Borrow Somebody’s Login

HBO Go sign-in to watch Game of Thrones

When it comes to account sharing, streaming services are pretty lax. In fact, most streaming services encourage account sharing, at least within a family, with separate user profiles and multi-user pricing plans. You ask a friend for their login info, add a profile to their account, and go to town.

You can also borrow a friend or family member’s cable login information to stream content directly from the websites of TV networks, like FOX or HBO. Some cable services, like DirecTV, even have their own streaming portals. It’s crazy how a single username and password can bring you so much free content.

Piggybacking on a friend or family member’s streaming or cable subscription can save you a lot of money, but in the end, somebody’s still paying that bill. If you’re trying to ditch streaming services and the ghost of cable entirely, then you’ll have to find a different path to the world of free TV.