Netflix has stopped growing in the UK
Key Points
- SVoD take-up reached 70% of UK households in Q1 2026, just two percentage points above the 2022 figure
- Netflix's ad-supported tier now accounts for 43% of its UK subscribers, up from 31% in Q1 2024
- 90% of Amazon Prime Video subscribers in the UK take an ad-supported option
- SVoD revenues still grew 18% to £5.17bn, on price increases rather than new subscribers
- 13% of Netflix subscribers downgraded their plan in the past year, and 62% of them moved to the ad tier
Netflix sits in 18.1 million UK households, 61% of the total, and 43% of its subscribers now use its ad-supported tier, up from 31% in the first quarter of 2024.
The figures come from Ofcom’s Media Nations UK 2026 report, published on Wednesday (29 July), which shows subscription video-on-demand take-up across the UK has flattened.
70% of UK households held at least one SVoD subscription in Q1 2026, only two percentage points higher than the 68% recorded in Q1 2022.
Amazon Prime Video reaches 13.7 million households (46%), and Disney+ reaches 7.8 million (26%). Take-up of the top three services has not changed significantly in two years.
Despite this, revenues have increased, indicating that price rises could be to blame for the slowing growth.
UK SVoD revenues rose from £4.37bn to £5.17bn in 2025, an 18% increase, and Ofcom attributes the growth to price rises and hybrid monetisation rather than subscriber additions.
Netflix alone accounts for £2 billion of that total, over 40% of UK subscription revenues, with Amazon Prime Video on £981 million, Disney+ on £553 million and Discovery+ on £533 million. Those four services take roughly 80% of the market between them.
Subscribers are downgrading rather than cancelling
Ofcom’s VoD Survey found that 13% of Netflix subscribers downgraded their subscription during the previous year, and nearly two-thirds of them, 62%, switched to the cheaper ad-supported tier.
Cost remains the most common reason people give for cancelling an SVoD subscription altogether.
Among those who cancelled in the three months before the survey, 22% of former Netflix users and 35% of former Amazon Prime Video users said the service cost too much.
Ad-tier adoption now varies sharply by platform. Disney+ moved from 27% of subscribers on its ad-supported option in Q1 2025 to 43% in Q1 2026.
Amazon Prime Video sits at 90%, reflecting its default ad-supported structure. Ofcom describes the pattern as price-sensitive consumers managing costs through downgrading rather than exiting services.
Headroom for further increases looks limited
UK households that use SVoD services already subscribe to more than two on average, and 69% of households take at least one of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+. 20% subscribe to all three.
Ofcom notes that average SVoD prices have risen 35% since 2016, but that increases have become less frequent and more incremental, with some tiers holding steady for extended periods.
Consumer resistance has not yet shown up in stated attitudes. Only 18% of respondents to Ofcom’s VoD Survey agreed with the statement that they spend too much money subscribing to video-on-demand services.
Netflix remains the most-watched SVoD service in the UK at 24 minutes per person per day, more than half of all SVoD and AVoD viewing time across every age group, and 9% of all in-home video viewing.
