What it costs to stream the top 100 TV shows of this century
How to stream every show from the New York Times’ top 100 list, and how long it’ll take you to get through them all.
Jared Newman | 
If you have five years, four months, and $1,138 to spare, you might be able stream every one of the New York Times’ top 100 TV shows of the 21st century.
As you’d expect from any authoritative listicle, the Times’ plaudits have prompted plenty of debate about the honorees and snubs. It’s also a reminder of how much great TV already exists, and how much time you could spend watching critically-acclaimed shows from the past instead of trying to keep up with the present.
With that in mind, and with a little data sorting help from AI, I set out to determine the most efficient ways to stream them all.
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What’s available where
To determine where each show is available to stream, I relied on data from JustWatch and developer tools from The Movie Database (TMDB), which let you slice and dice the data in different ways.
Let’s start with a sortable list of the top 100 shows and where you can stream them:
Where to stream the NYT’s 100 best shows
US availability for every show on The New York Times’ list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century.
Filter by service
Data from TMDB, sourced from JustWatch as of September 29, 2026.
The cost to stream everything
To figure out the total cost to watch all these shows, we first need to sum up how many are on each streaming service:
| Service or bundle | Shows | Ad-supported | Ad-free |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disney+ and Hulu bundle | 26 | $13/mo | $21.99/mo |
| HBO Max | 35 | $11/mo | $18.49/mo |
| Netflix | 20 | $9/mo | $20/mo |
| Paramount+ | 11 | $9/mo | $14/mo |
| Peacock | 8 | $13/mo | $20/mo |
| Apple TV | 3 | $15/mo | $15/mo |
| Prime Video | 8 | $9/mo | $14/mo |
| BritBox | 5 | $11/mo (ad-free) | $11/mo |
| AMC+ | 2 | $8/mo | $11/mo |
| Roku Channel | 4 | $0/mo | $0/mo (w/ ads) |
| Hoopla | 3 | $0/mo (ad-free) | $0/mo |
| Louie | 1 | $30 (ad-free) | $30 |
| Total | 99/100 | $98/mo + $30 | $144.49/mo + $30 |
Should you pay upwards of $98 per month for access to all these shows? Of course not, because there aren’t enough hours in a day to watch even a tiny fraction of what’s available. If you really wanted to work your way through them all, you’d want to space out the subscriptions based on how much viewing time you’d realistically need.
To figure that out, we’ll calculate how many hours of New York Times-approved, 21st-century TV each service has to offer, based on data from JustWatch. To factor in time spent watching commercials on ad-supported services, we’ll use August 2026 data from Ampere (via Business Insider). We’ll assume Roku Channel and Tubi have similar ad loads, since data for the former is not available:
| Service | Estimated hrs. (w/ ads) | Hrs. (ad-free) |
|---|---|---|
| Disney+ / Hulu Duo | 1,549 | 1,337 |
| Paramount+ | 1,370 | 1,164 |
| HBO Max | 922 | 863 |
| Netflix | 594 | 570 |
| Peacock | 144 | 133 |
| Apple TV | 78 | 78 |
| Prime Video | 61 | 59 |
| Roku Channel | 56 | 56 (w/ ads) |
| AMC+ | 25 | 23 |
| BritBox | 18 | 18 (ad-free) |
| Hoopla | 1 | 1 |
| Louie | 22 | 22 |
| Total | 4,842 | 4,325 |
Given that the average American watches 2.5 hours of TV per day, here’s what it would cost to get through each service’s critically-acclaimed catalog, one show at a time:
| Option | Months needed (w/ ads, estimated) | Ad-supported cost | Months needed (ad-free) | Ad-free cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disney+ / Hulu Duo | 21 | $273 | 18 | $396 |
| Paramount+ | 19 | $171 | 16 | $224 |
| HBO Max | 13 | $143 | 12 | $222 |
| Netflix | 8 | $72 | 8 | $160 |
| Peacock | 2 | $26 | 2 | $40 |
| Apple TV | 2 | $30 | 2 | $30 |
| Prime Video | 1 | $9 | 1 | $14 |
| Roku Channel | 1 | $0 | 1 | $0 |
| AMC+ | 1 | $8 | 1 | $11 |
| BritBox | 1 | $11 | 1 | $11 |
| Hoopla | 1 | $0 | 1 | $0 |
| Louie | 1 | $30 | 1 | $30 |
| Total | 71 | $773 | 64 | $1,138 |
Note that you can combine Disney’s services with HBO Max and Peacock with Apple TV for additional savings. I’ve counted them separately here because it’s cheaper that way if you’re just plowing through each show one at a time.
Of course, these calculations will change drastically based on how much TV you tend to watch per day:
- At one hour per day ad-free, it’ll take 12 years and 4 months and will cost $2,654 to watch all 100 shows. With ads, it’ll take 13 years and 10 months at a cost of $1,770.
- At four hours per day ad-free, it’ll take 3 years and 7 months and will cost $751 to watch all 100 shows. With ads, it’ll take 3 years and 11 months at a cost of cost $509.
- Got eight hours to watch TV every day? It’ll take 2 years and 2 months and will cost $437 to watch all the shows without ads, or 2 years and 4 months at a cost of $302 with ads.
You might also want to exclude shows you don’t care about or ones you’ve watched already. Here’s a little tool for calculating the cost and time commitment based on your own habits:
What it takes to watch the NYT’s 100 best shows
Time and cost to watch The New York Times’ list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century, subscribing to one service at a time. Expand a service to drop shows you don’t plan to watch.
Plan
| Streaming service | Months to watch all shows | Total cost |
|---|
Runtimes and availability from TMDB, sourced from JustWatch as of September 29, 2026. Ad-supported viewing time is approximate, based on August 2026 data from Ampere (via Business Insider). Louie is a $30 one-time purchase.
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