Pros & Cons
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- Free
- Extensive library of movies and shows
- Live TV
- Modern apps and interfaces
- Supports watchlists
- Parental control features
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- 720p streaming resolution cap
- Lacks an ad-free option
Tubi Specs
| Ads | |
| Anime | |
| Concurrent Streams | Unlimited |
| Live TV | |
| On-Demand Movies and TV Shows | |
| Original Programming | |
| Starting Price | Free |
Video streaming services can devour a good chunk of your monthly budget if you pay for multiple platforms. Ease the monetary hit with Tubi, a free streaming service that has a library of popular movies and TV shows that surpass many paid services' catalogs. Even better, the lack of financial commitment encourages the kind of curiosity and discovery that made me fall in love with exploring art in the first place. Of course, since Tubi is free, the videos are ad-supported and lack the top features you'll find elsewhere, such as full HD streaming and offline downloads. Still, Tubi has many attractive features that make it our Editors' Choice winner for free video streaming services.
Price and Platforms: Free to Stream on Many Devices
As noted, Tubi is free. No-cost services are a great option for people looking to reduce monthly expenses amid an ever-fragmenting streaming market. Whether Tubi's inconveniences are fair trade-offs for paid services is a matter of personal preference. I strongly feel that Tubi's approach may represent the best possible future for streaming video. Note that there is no way to watch Tubi without ads; it lacks premium subscription tiers.
(Credit: Tubi/PCMag)Ad-supported plans on Disney+ and Hulu are available for a relatively affordable $11.99 per month. Horror-focused Shudder costs $7.99 per month. Those services are good options for movie fans and support full HD streaming.
Moving up in price, HBO Max ($18.49 per month) and Netflix ($19.99 per month for a Standard plan) are both excellent options for watching top movies and series. Netflix even has the advantage of original films, such as Frankenstein, KPop Demon Hunters, and Train Dreams. The Criterion Channel and Mubi are $10.99 per month and $14.99 per month, respectively.
Prime Video ($8.99 per month for the ad-supported plan), Paramount+ ($8.99 per month for the ad-supported plan), and Peacock ($7.99 per month for the ad-supported plan) are other options for watching popular network and original TV shows.
Tubi is available on all major platforms, including the web and mobile devices (Android and iOS). As for media streaming devices, Tubi has apps for Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, Roku, and TiVo. Tubi also supports gaming consoles (PlayStation and Xbox) and select Samsung, Sony, and Vizio smart TVs.
What Can You Watch on Tubi?
Tubi's library has approximately 275,000 movies and TV series—an impressive count that has more than doubled since our last review (though it is unclear whether individual TV episodes count toward that number). By comparison, the paid Criterion Channel has roughly 3,000 films. NBC's Peacock, which no longer has a free tier, has 80,000 hours of content. Tubi's library covers a wide range of genres, from recognizable mainstream hits to obscure cult oddities.
At the time of our review, some popular films on the service include 13 Hours, Creed II, Jack Reacher, Kickboxer, and Missing In Action. Note that shifting licensing deals make free streaming libraries prone to change at a moment's notice.
(Credit: Tubi/PCMag)Some of the TV shows on the platform include 24 Legacy, Miami Vice, Merlin, River Monsters, and The Twilight Zone. Many of those options have a free tier. In addition, a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery gives Tubi access to shows you won't find on HBO Max, including a variety of classic Cartoon Network shows.
Like some paid on-demand services, Tubi now produces original content. I saw schlocky monster movies like Bigfoot vs. Yeti and trashy true crime docs like Branded and Brainwashed. However, if you want to watch the latest streaming hits that people talk about, such as Disney+'s Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters, Prime Video's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or Paramount+'s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, you must pay for those respective services.
Other movie streaming services, including The Criterion Channel and Mubi, provide a superior collection of classic, indie, and international films for cinephiles.
For many free streaming services, a "Live TV" section is a 24/7 marathon of existing content. However, Tubi has genuine live TV options that feature news and sports channels. Tubi even aired the Super Bowl during the year Fox had the rights. Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, and Xumo also offer a wide variety of interest-based channels and aggregate content.
Streaming Tubi on the Web
To get started with Tubi, you can sign up for an account, but you aren't required to create one. Pluto TV doesn't have this requirement either. Setting up an account is just a matter of providing a name, email, and a few other basic details. Signing up has advantages, such as parental controls, adding titles to your personal queue, and viewing your watch history.
Tubi's web interface is attractive, with a dark interface and large icons. It has few navigation buttons, which keeps the emphasis on the content. The service organizes films and shows into a handful of categories (Browse, Movies, TV Shows, Live TV, Español, FIFA World Cup Fox Hub) with subcategories listed below. For instance, the Collections list includes Award Winners and Nominees, Cult Classics, Highly Rated on Rotten Tomatoes, and Not on Netflix.
(Credit: Tubi/PCMag)The search bar works fine and supports queries for anything that appears on a movie's or show's description page, such as an actor, director, or genre. From the account section, you can edit your profile details, delete your account, set up parental control options, and modify your viewing history. I would like the option to customize the account's profile photo. As it is now, the profile photo is just a circle with different shades of orange. Disney+ lets you change your profile icon.
When you find something of interest, click the program's thumbnail to view its details and begin playback. Tubi presents a playback window at the top of the screen, with other information laid out in cleanly outlined areas below it. Apart from a basic description of the title, the page also includes the run time, parental rating, genre, director, and main cast members. On the right side of the screen, you can add the entry to your queue or share it via Facebook or Twitter/X.
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Tubi displays recommendations for other content you may like. If any of those catch your interest, you can add them to your queue by hovering over the thumbnail. One missing feature that I'd like to see added is a user rating or review system. Mubi, Prime Video, and Shudder let you add ratings and written comments.
Streaming Tubi on Mobile
I downloaded Tubi's mobile app on a Google Pixel smartphone. The mobile app interface is visually consistent with the web version and uses a black, white, and orange color scheme. The bottom navigation bar houses three icons: Home, Discover, and Account.
The Home section is where Tubi displays its top content, whether through the top gallery or the overwhelmingly long list of subcategories. From the Discover tab, you can find all the subcategories and genres from the web's top menu (For You, Collections, Genres, and Channels). The Search bar also lives in this section.
The Account section has a few options, the most notable being a toggle for closed captions and the option to lock the app in landscape mode. I appreciate the well-designed Help Center interface, but it notably lacks options for streaming preferences and parental controls.
The Playback Experience
Tubi's video player on the web has an understated design, but all the standard features. Apart from the basic playback controls, you get 30-second rewind and fast-forward buttons, a menu for selecting streaming quality, and a button for toggling closed captions. Scrubbing the progress bar shows previews of each frame. The mobile playback screen looks largely the same. However, you can't control the playback resolution from that player.
Tubi says it runs ads (one to two minutes each) approximately every 15 minutes. That's not so bad, considering that Hulu's ad-supported tier behaves even worse (more frequent commercial breaks on shorter videos, and sometimes multiple ads play in a row at each break). Anecdotally, I only ever saw ads at the beginning of playback, if at all. Still, I would like the option to pay a minimal monthly fee to remove ads entirely.
Tubi states that it only requires internet speeds above 4Mbps (download) to enjoy its programming, which is a pretty low barrier. I tested the service's streaming performance over a home Ethernet connection (200Mbps download) and, as expected, encountered no stutters or lag.
Unfortunately, Tubi has a maximum resolution of 720p. Not all of its movies hit that quality either, with many popular films offering roughly 540p resolution. This streaming limitation is a big drawback. It would be much less of an issue if everything were available in at least 720p. That said, some paid services, namely Acorn TV and BritBox, also limit playback to 720p on the web and mobile devices. Peacock does not have this streaming resolution limitation.
For more on the video streaming field, check out five reasons why you may want to ditch your video subscription and keep cable; read how streaming has ushered in a new trash TV golden age; and learn why companies must preserve their streaming catalogs. In addition, you should visit our recommended video streaming guides if you don't know what to watch.
Parental Controls, Accessibility, and Other Features
Tubi doesn't support offline downloads for movies or shows, which is to be expected of a free service. That's one feature that's standard across the vast majority of the paid options, including Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu (ad-free), and Paramount+ (ad-free).
(Credit: Tubi/PCMag)As mentioned, Tubi offers parental control tools on the web. To set them up, head to the Parental Controls tab on the Account Settings page of the web interface. Here, you can select what content you want to be viewable in the account. The four options are Little Kids (Y, TV-G, and TV-Y); Older Kids (PG, TV-PG, TV-Y7); Teens (PG-13, TV-14); and Adult (R, TV-MA, NR, and NC-17). Tubi requires you to re-enter your account password to lock down these changes. Tubi also has a dedicated Tubi Kids section in its library.
You can create separate profiles for adult and child viewers, and swap between them with a PIN, preventing savvy kids from lifting viewing restrictions with your account password. However, Tubi is still ultimately a free service, so a child or teen could simply log out of the monitored account and watch whatever they want. If you don't see the movies and shows they say they are watching pop up in the watch history, then this may be an indication of their evasion.
Tubi's simultaneous streaming limits are somewhat irrelevant, since anyone can watch content with or without an account. In addition, I was able to stream content simultaneously on mobile and desktop without issues while logged in to the same account.
Tubi supports closed captions on the vast majority of its content. You can now customize subtitles directly from the player (font size and background), with more advanced options available in the settings section. You won't find any content that supports Audio Descriptions. Currently, Apple TV, Netflix, and Prime Video offer Audio Descriptions for at least some of their original content.
Using Tubi With a VPN
A VPN is a great way to protect yourself online from your ISP or malicious actors on a network. VPNs can also be used to spoof your location online. Many video streaming services may prevent you from streaming over a VPN connection since some content is locked to certain geographic regions. Oftentimes, they block access even if you are connected to a VPN in a supported country.
I tried to stream a movie on Tubi on a Windows 11 desktop in Canada, Sweden, and the US, using the Mullvad VPN servers. I had no streaming issues on US or Canadian servers, but Tubi wouldn't work with the Swedish server. Even if you find a VPN that currently works with all of your streaming services, it might not work with all of them forever. Most video streaming services actively work to block VPN traffic.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Tubi)
Tubi
Tubi's free, ad-supported library is delightfully large and frequently updated, offering movies and shows that may serve you well as a replacement for paid video streaming services.