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Reseller subscriptions $8.53 cheaper than official plans: a hidden privacy cost

With the dark, stay-at-home season in full swing in many parts of the world, we analyzed reseller subscriptions for 10 popular video, music, and online-learning platforms. The data shows consumers could pay 65% less through a reseller platform, resulting in an average monthly saving of $8.53. Yet, low prices often come with hidden trade-offs that can put your private data and money at risk. They may also take revenue away from the official platforms and creators behind the content you enjoy.

Key insights

• Across a sample of ten popular video, music, and online-learning subscriptions, reseller prices averaged $4.60 per month, compared with $13.13 for official plans. Consumers could therefore pay approximately 65% less through a reseller, equivalent to an average monthly saving of $8.53. However, lower prices can often involve trade-offs¹ such as shared accounts, upfront annual payments, reduced access control, and reliance on an intermediary for customer support.
• Cheap reseller subscriptions often break the service’s terms or rely on fraud, which puts consumers' accounts, data, and money at risk and takes revenue away from the official platforms and creators behind the content. For example, HBO Max Terms of Use² states that you may not sell, copy, distribute, publish, or otherwise share your Account details except as expressly permitted by these Terms, including via social media platforms, online marketplaces, or subscription sharing websites or platforms.
• Many reseller offers require customers to commit for a full year. Our analysis of two reseller websites found that the shortest available subscription period was 12 months for 8 of the 10 services in our study, while the remaining two had a minimum term of six months. These long-term offers create an attractive monthly price, but also expose customers to greater upfront risk than cancellable monthly plans. If access is terminated before the subscription ends, customers may have to rely on the reseller to restore the service or issue a refund.
• Purchasing subscriptions through intermediaries can introduce additional data-privacy risks. The checkout process on one analyzed reseller platform requested customers’ full name, physical address, ZIP code, and email address, while another asked for full name, country, and WhatsApp number. Sharing personal data and payment information with a reseller company may increase consumers’ exposure to data breaches, spam, phishing, and targeted scams.
• The potential reward from using resellers varies widely across services. Coursera showed the steepest average price drop at 86% below its official rate, while Apple Music and Spotify were 71% and 67% cheaper, respectively. At the lower end, HBO Max and Netflix had more modest reductions of 45% and 51%, with the remaining platforms falling between 53% and 63%.
• Reseller platforms listed different prices for the same subscriptions. Disney+ was listed at $3.08 per month on one reseller website and $9.16 on another, a nearly threefold difference. Similar disparities appeared for HBO Max, with prices ranging from $2.50 to $7.50, and Netflix, from $3.33 to $5.41, while Prime Video cost $5.00 on both platforms. These differences show that consumers who do not compare resellers could pay considerably more, eroding their expected savings while taking on the same privacy and security risks.

Methodology and sources

In this study, reseller pricing, plan terms, and checkout requirements were collected from Cheapzy and Cheapsubs for 10 subscription-based services. The sample included five popular video-streaming platforms (Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney+, and YouTube Premium), three music and audio services (Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer), and two online-learning platforms (Duolingo and Coursera).

These two reseller websites were selected because both publicly list prices across multiple subscription categories, making them suitable for comparison. For each service, we selected the official plan with the lowest monthly price or monthly equivalent for a term of up to one year. Both official and reseller prices were expressed as monthly equivalents: monthly prices were used as listed, while longer-term plan prices were divided by the number of months covered. Where both reseller websites listed a service, their monthly equivalents were averaged; where only one did, that price was used. Dollar savings and percentage reductions were calculated against the selected official monthly price or monthly equivalent.

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