Updated — June 2026
The streaming landscape in Mzansi has changed more in the last nine months than it did in the previous five years. One platform that spent over a decade trying to become Africa’s Netflix is gone. A global giant that most South Africans wrote off as an afterthought just became the best value subscription you can buy. And the services that are still standing have reshuffled the pricing deck in ways that make your choices a lot more interesting.
We’ve updated this guide to reflect where things actually stand right now, not where they stood when we first wrote it. Prices have moved, the competitive order has changed, and one very significant funeral has taken place. Let’s get into it.
The One That Didn’t Make It: Showmax
We have to start here, because it would be strange not to. Showmax, the platform MultiChoice launched in 2015 with genuine ambition to become the dominant streaming service across Africa, is gone. It shut down permanently on 30 April 2026.
The short version of why: it bled money at a scale that eventually became indefensible. By the financial year ending March 2025, Showmax had racked up trading losses of R4.9 billion — an 88% jump from the R2.6 billion it lost the year before. Canal+, which acquired MultiChoice and inherited Showmax along with it, looked at those numbers and called it.
The longer version is more interesting. Showmax 2.0, the big relaunch that came with HBO firepower and a migration onto Comcast’s Peacock platform infrastructure, was supposed to change everything. Instead it came with a R6 billion platform fee obligation to Peacock that the subscriber base was never big enough to justify. Canal+ officially confirmed the shutdown on 5 March 2026, citing “financial discipline and investment optimisation” — which is corporate for: we tried, it cost too much, we’re done.
For subscribers who loved the local content, some Showmax Originals are accessible via DStv Stream. But the platform itself is gone, and the lesson it leaves behind is a harsh one: being African and locally-focused is not enough to sustain a streaming business if the unit economics are broken.
What’s Still Standing
Netflix is still the one everyone defaults to, and mostly for good reason. The interface remains witchcraft — it knows what you want to watch before you’ve decided — and the originals continue to pull cultural weight that nobody else quite matches. The challenge for South African subscribers has always been that we’re watching a pruned version of the catalogue. The full US library is not coming. Make peace with that early and you’ll have a better time.
- Netflix Mobile: R59/month — 480p SD, 1 stream, phone or tablet only
- Netflix Basic: R99/month — 720p HD, 1 stream, any device
- Netflix Standard: R179/month — 1080p Full HD, 2 concurrent streams
- Netflix Premium: R229/month — 4K, 4 concurrent streams
This is where the guide needed to update itself most significantly. Amazon Prime launched its bundled subscription in South Africa on 2 June 2026, dropping from R79/month to R59/month — and that R59 now includes not just Prime Video but free and fast delivery on Amazon.co.za orders.
The annual plan is where it gets genuinely silly: R399 per year, working out to R33.25 per month. That is cheaper than Prime Video’s own introductory price when it launched in South Africa in 2016. For context, Netflix Basic costs three times that. And for R59/month you’re getting 4K streaming with 3 concurrent streams — Netflix charges R229/month for those same specs. That’s not a small gap, that’s a chasm.
The content has grown up too. The Boys, Fallout, Clarkson’s Farm, Jack Ryan, Citadel, Rings of Power, Spider-Noir. It’s not a budget service with budget content anymore.
- Prime Mobile: R29/month — 480p SD, 1 stream, mobile only
- Amazon Prime: R59/month or R399/year — 4K, 3 concurrent streams, Prime delivery included
Disney+ arrived promising Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and National Geographic and has largely delivered. If any of those four categories mean something to you, it earns its spot. If none of them do, you might find yourself paying R179/month for a lot of content you’ll never touch.
4K streaming with 4 concurrent streams is solid. The annual plan brings the effective monthly cost to R133.25, which is more reasonable. But on a month-to-month basis, you’re paying parity with Netflix Standard for a significantly more narrowly defined library.
Apple TV+ is the outlier. The smallest library of any major service — around 100 movies and just over 200 series — but the hit rate on its originals is genuinely hard to argue with. Severance. The Morning Show. Slow Horses. Shrinking. Presumed Innocent. Silo. They don’t have quantity, but they play consistent quality with production values that are consistently cinematic.
YouTube Premium doesn’t compete in the same lane as the others, but for a large portion of South Africans, YouTube is where most of the actual watching happens. Premium removes ads, enables background play on mobile — critical for music and podcasts — and includes YouTube Music. If you’re spending two hours a day on YouTube with ads, the math on removing them is worth doing.
How the Prices Stack Up
| Service | Quality | Streams | Monthly Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Prime Mobile Cheapest | 480p SD | 1 | R29 |
| Netflix Mobile | 480p SD | 1 | R59 |
| Amazon Prime Best Value | 4K | 3 | R59/month or R33.25/month (annual) |
| Netflix Basic | 720p HD | 1 | R99 |
| Apple TV+ | 4K | 4 | R124.99 |
| Disney+ | 4K | 4 | R179 / R133.25 (annual) |
| Netflix Standard | 1080p Full HD | 2 | R179 |
| Netflix Premium | 4K | 4 | R229 |
So What Should You Actually Subscribe To?
What 2026 has made clear is that the streaming war in South Africa has produced at least one genuine winner for consumers. Amazon’s arrival at this price point means that 4K streaming with multiple streams is no longer a premium feature. It’s the floor. Every other service now has to answer why it costs more.
Showmax couldn’t answer that question. The others are still trying.
Prices as of June 2026. Verify current pricing directly with each service before subscribing.
