After Neflix and Amazon Prime Video, Disney jumped on the TV series and movies streaming train with Disney Plus, the company’s long-awaited online streaming service on November 12th, 2019 in the United States and Canada. It is followed by a subsequent launch in New Zealand and Australia on November 19th, and it will be in UK in Spring 2020. This means you don’t have much time left before deciding whether to abandon your other streaming subscriptions or add another one to your monthly expenses.
In this article we will compare Amazon Prime Video and Disney+. We’ve gathered everything you need to know about Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video to help you choose which one’s right for you, based on the offers of each service, how it works and, most importantly, the content it offers.
Before deciding, remember that finding the right streaming service for you is something personal and it will depend on the series you can’t live with, the movie offerings, the features of the platforms and your budget.
What is Disney+ and Amazon Prime?
The Disney Plus and Amazon Prime Video are online streaming services that offer a wide range of television series, movies, cartoons and documentaries. You can stream content, as well as watch it later on a mobile device with the offline viewing feature, which is convenient if you travel without an internet connection.
Disney Plus has a broad portfolio from Disney, including Star Wars TV shows, Marvel movies and all the Disney movies you have loved.
On the other hand, the Amazon’s streaming service has been around for more than a decade and is already among the best streaming platforms in the world, even if it is falling behind to Netflix. It offers an extensive library of content, both new and old, as well as its own original television series and movies. In addition, Amazon Prime Video also allows you to pay to rent or buy movies and TV shows that are not part of the streaming subscription.
It is worth mentioning that there are also some other players in the online streaming ranking, including Netflix, Hulu and HBO Go.
Price and availability
At launch, Disney+ offered subscriptions for $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year after a 7-day trial. This subscription allows you to stream content to four devices at the same time, with a total of 10 mobile devices or tablets for a single account, and without restrictions on the amount of content you are serving.
Unlike Netflix, there are no differentiated pricing plans with Disney+. However, you can buy a package that includes ESPN+ and Hulu, all for $12.99 per month if you reside in the USA.
An Amazon Premium subscription seems much more expensive, at $12.99 per month or $119 per year if you choose to pay annually. With this, you can stream content on two devices at the same time with different formats (such as HD).
But when it comes to Amazon Prime Video, don’t forget that you will also have an Amazon Prime subscription. This will give you access to everything from Prime Video to the Amazon Music streaming service, as well as same day shipments, photo storage, exclusive offers and more.
Features and interface
Disney Plus interface looks similar to Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, movies and TV shows are listed horizontally and you can scroll also vertically through different categories. There is a “Recommended for you” stream and a “Continue Watching” stream, as well as five buttons at the top of the screen for the various channels available on Disney+, including Star Wars, National Geographic and Marvel.
Amazon Prime Video has the same format, recommending content based on your viewing habits and grouping titles in different genres. Sometimes, finding recently released content is not as easy as it should be, but everything related to Amazon Prime Video is intuitive enough.
Content
Since the launch, there are a lot of content available on Disney+, but will it be able to compete with the content of Amazon Prime Video?
Disney+ launched with 500 movies and 7,500 TV series’ episodes, there are many movies, cartoons and TV shows that you already know and love. This will include all your favorite Disney movies, old and new, all The Simpsons episodes and all Pixar movies. In addition to a large catalog of old content, a wide selection of upcoming television shows and movies will be available through Disney’s large budget, including the ones from Star Wars and Marvel series and Pixar.
One of the most anticipated new TV shows was The Mandalorian, the first TV series in the Star Wars universe. Many new live TV shows from Marvel, are under development, including WandaVision (about Scarlet Witch and Vision), Hawkeye, and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
Disney+ also has National Geographic, which means it will be a great service to see new documentaries.
Netflix, with rough estimates placing it as around 18,000 movies and 4,500 TV shows, compared to Netflix’s 11,000.
Although Netflix tends to dominate discussions about the best TV streaming services, Amazon Prime Video had an advantage in the large number of titles available, there are 18,000 movies and 4,500 TV shows compared to Netflix’s 11,000. Of course, this does not mean all is worth seeing: There are many mediocre content to go through, but if you’re looking for the numbers first, Amazon Prime Video outperforms the rest and offers great content, including Lost, Parks and Recreation and The X-Files.
Over the years, Amazon also spent a good amount of money for new content, such as Transparent, The Tick, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Boys and Carnival Row, and the company will also produce the next season of the famous science fiction show The Expanse, and they also got the rights to create a massive television adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
There are also many programs that they didn’t produce, but have exclusive licenses to broadcast in many areas, including Mr. Robot and the next Star Trek series: Picard.
The interesting thing contentwise is that Disney has joined forces with Amazon as well. So Amazon will broadcast Disney Plus movies and TV shows in regions where it has not yet been released. According to the reports, this agreement is only available in Latin America right now, but could be extended to other countries and regions in the near future.
Disney+ vs Amazon Prime Video: The conclusion
Disney+ might have started and look smaller, but they certainly are a strong competitor considering the investment they made in the last years, both on content and digital world. It can be worth changing your subscription from Amazon Prime and Netflix, if you only want or can afford one streaming service at all.
However, finding the right streaming service for you depends on the content you want to watch. So, when it comes to Disney+ vs. Amazon Prime, you will have to ask if there is the content on Disney+ is something you can’t live without. The Star Wars or Marvel movies are good examples, or if you can’t live without the Amazon Prime content such as Mr Robot and The Expanse, than maybe you shouldn’t change at all.
There is no doubt that Disney+ will have a lot of new fantastic content and stream great old content that will be hard to beat. However, Amazon also has an extensive catalog of movies and television shows already, as well as a strong track record of creating award-winning originals. Amazon Prime is also another advanage, offering premium benefits for Amazon members, such as ultra fast shipments.
Therefore, there is no winner in this race, there are only two excellent streaming services that offer different types of content.
