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Streaming Services

How to find an ethical and eco friendly streaming TV and video service. Ratings for 17 streaming service providers, with best buys and what to avoid.

Changing viewing habits means that traditional live TV is watched less, and streaming television and video platforms are on the rise. This shopping guide looks into the ethics of these providers.

The guide rates traditional public service broadcasters like the BBC along with streaming providers like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+ and Sky. 

It rates them for tax policies (spoiler - some of them are appalling), their carbon footprints and policies on accessibility. Plus gives alternatives if you want to avoid the tax-avoiding tech platforms. 

About our guides

This is a shopping guide from Ethical Consumer, the UK's leading alternative consumer organisation. Since 1989 we've been researching and recording the social and environmental records of companies, and making the results available to you in a simple format.

Learn more about our shopping guides   →

Score table

Updated daily from our research database. Read the FAQs to learn more.

← Swipe left / right to view table contents →
Brand Name of the company Score (out of 100) Ratings Categories Explore related ratings in detail

Brand X

Company Profile: Brand X ltd
90
  • Animal Products
  • Climate
  • Company Ethos
  • Cotton Sourcing
  • Sustainable Materials
  • Tax Conduct
  • Workers

Brand Y

Company Profile: Brand Y ltd
33
  • Animal Products
  • Climate
  • Company Ethos
  • Cotton Sourcing
  • Sustainable Materials
  • Tax Conduct
  • Workers

What to buy

What to look for when choosing a streaming TV or video service:

  • Is it a public service broadcaster? They top our table (with the exception of Channel 5) and are required by law to provide a broad range of programming including arts, current affairs, and educational programmes.
     

What not to buy

What to avoid when choosing a streaming TV or video service:

  • Does it make questionable climate claims? Avoid companies that have been criticised for exaggerating their use of renewables.
     

  • Has it been criticised for avoiding tax? Several companies have reportedly avoided vast sums. Go for the ones that haven’t.

Best buys (subscribe to view)

Companies to avoid (subscribe to view)

In-depth Analysis

Find an ethical and eco friendly streaming TV and video service

The way we watch TV has changed. The arrival of video-on-demand and video sharing platforms has diversified our viewing habits and, in 2023, only about 40% of what we watched was live TV. Many of us catch up on shows we’ve missed through apps like BBC iPlayer. And more than 68% of UK homes now have subscriptions to streaming services, according to Ofcom. 

Netflix and Amazon Prime have the most subscribers with 58% and 45% of UK households respectively, followed by Disney+. Video sharing platforms such as YouTube are also taking up more of our viewing time, particularly amongst younger age groups.

Broadcast TV viewing (watching scheduled TV channels live or on catchup) is declining, particularly amongst the young, with a quarter of individuals and half of 16-24-year-olds not watching any broadcast TV. However, the broadcasters still top the list of the most watched programmes: in 2023, nine of the top ten shows were on BBC1 and the remaining one was on ITV.

Who’s in the guide?

To reflect the range in our viewing habits, this guide includes the newer streaming companies that only offer video-on-demand (Netflix, Disney+, etc.) and also the older TV companies that still offer scheduled viewing but now have their own well-developed catch-up platforms (such as BBC and ITV.) We’ve also included YouTube (owned by Google).

The companies all offer a wide range of content from films to TV shows and box sets. We haven’t included those that specialise in things like films or sport.

You can also get TV bundled with your broadband provider. For these companies – EE, BT, Virgin Media, and TalkTalk – see the broadband guide.

Disappointingly, most brands in this guide failed to score more than 15 points (out of 100). Read on to find out how the companies performed. 

Accessibility of streaming services

Streaming services are often not accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, or blind or partially sighted, because they don’t provide features like subtitles, audio description, and signing.

In 2020, Scope surveyed 3,300 disabled people and found that 4 in 5 had experienced accessibility issues. The most common issue was the lack of, or poor quality of, subtitles, followed by difficulty in navigating the app.

Non-disabled people may also just like having the subtitles on. Netflix revealed that 40% of its global users have subtitles on all the time, while 80% switch them on at least once a month – stats that far exceed the number of viewers who need captioning because of hearing-related requirements.

Ofcom report into "access services"

Ofcom’s annual reports set out the extent to which broadcast television channels and on-demand programme services carry subtitles, audio description and/or signing (collectively, “access services”).

Under the Communications Act 2003, broadcasters like BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5, and Sky were required to make a certain proportion of their programmes accessible: 80% subtitled, 10% audio described and 5% signed.

On-demand (including catch-up) services were not under any statutory obligation to provide access services until The Media Act came into force in May 2024. It includes accessibility requirements for certain on-demand services, like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, which should be achieving the same accessibility as broadcasters. But this part of the bill probably won’t come into force until 2026.

The latest Ofcom report covers 2023 and a summary of the accessibility data is listed below. The report did not cover providers which were outside of UK jurisdiction (such as Apple, Netflix, Rakuten, or YouTube).

Best for subtitles

  • BBC iPlayer: 100% of content
  • Sky (except Sports & news): 100% of content
  • U: 99.57% of content

Extremely poor for subtitles

Of the brands that disclosed the data, Amazon had the lowest percentage of content with subtitles (57.91%). 

Best for audio description

Extremely poor for audio description

Of the brands that disclosed the data, NOW had the lowest percentage of content with audio description (0%!)

Tax and tech firms

Only two companies on the score table scored above 0 for their tax conduct: Channel 4 and the BBC

Channel 4 got top marks as it has no subsidiaries in tax havens. 

The BBC (iPlayer, U) scored 20/100 as it has one subsidiary in a tax haven and we could find no explanation for its presence there. This may seem a bit odd as the BBC is a not-for-profit corporation. But it has a commercial arm, BBC Studios, and it was the parent of this company, BBC Worldwide Holdings, that was based in the Netherlands.

All the other companies scored 0/100.

Some of these companies are notorious for tax avoidance. This is a common theme in the tech industry, and can be seen with broadband services, mobile phone networks and email providers. By not paying their fair share of tax, these companies are ultimately depriving public services of money. 

Amazon's tax avoidance

We have been running a boycott against Amazon for its tax avoidance since 2012. Its avoidance costs the UK millions in lost public funds every year and the same impacts are felt wherever Amazon operates around the world.

In 2023 alone, Amazon's corporation tax avoidance could have cost UK citizens around £433m in lost taxes. It should have paid £452m but only paid £18.7m. The lost taxes could have been used for vital public services in the UK. This includes recruiting staff or funding vital schemes for the public good.

Other UK wholesale and retail businesses paid £8.7bn in corporation tax between them in 2022/23. It is shameful that Amazon, the 3rd biggest UK retailer by sales, likely contributed just 0.2% of this total (£18.7m).

Our latest research estimates that between 2019 and 2023, Amazon should have paid £1.605bn in UK corporation tax but only paid £42.7m.

Netflix and tax

TaxWatch investigated Netflix’s tax affairs in 2020. It found that whilst the revenue from UK subscribers in 2018 was estimated to be £860m, Netflix had paid very little tax in the UK because those fees were billed to a Dutch company. Netflix reported UK revenues for that year of £43.3m and profits of just £2m at its main UK company, Netflix Services UK, and paid no tax. In fact it received a tax credit under the creative industry tax relief scheme.

As a result of TaxWatch’s research, a debate on Netflix’s tax affairs was held in the House of Commons in February 2020. Margaret Hodge, the then Labour MP for Barking and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Responsible Tax, called Netflix’s tax structure “scandalous, intolerable, and unfair.”

Google and Apple and tax

Meanwhile Google and Apple were two of seven companies highlighted by TaxWatch that jointly were estimated to have paid £750m in corporation tax in the UK in 2021 instead of a possible £2.8bn. The tax was avoided by companies shifting their profits from the UK to other countries. The TaxWatch figures come from corporation tax they should have paid if the profits had been declared on sales activity in the UK. All of this tax activity is currently legal.

Both we and TaxWatch are calling on the UK government to make companies more transparent and to provide publicly available data such as country-by-country reporting – publishing the sales, profits, and taxes a company has paid in each country that it operates in.

two people holding remote control and bowl of popcorn to watch tv

Carbon footprint of watching TV

In his book How Bad are Bananas?, Mike Berners-Lee examined the carbon footprint of an hour of watching TV. It varied depending on whether it was streamed or live and what you watched it on.

In the scheme of things, he concluded that it is a relatively low carbon pursuit. The average UK adult spent 4 hours 31 minutes a day watching TV and video content at home in 2023. If that was done watching live TV on a 55-inch LED screen it would account for 280kg CO2e a year which Berners- Lee says is quite a low figure for 1,642 hours of activity and is equivalent to driving 500 miles in an average petrol car.

Emissions depend on what device you are watching on and whether it is live TV or streaming. Live TV has a lower carbon footprint than streaming. The difference is in the transmission emissions, which includes emissions from the data centres.

In terms of devices, a laptop is best, then an LED screen, and lastly a plasma TV.

Carbon and data centres

Data centres are buildings full of computers. The computers store the cloud and all its web pages, databases, video content, photos, and applications. Due to their quantity, they consume huge amounts of electricity to power them and huge amounts to cool them down with air conditioning.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the market leader in cloud computing services. Globally, it has 31% of the cloud market.

Microsoft follows with 24% of the market. Google is the closest competitor to these two with 11% of the global market. Between them they account for 67%.

Virtually all the streaming services use Amazon data centres

Virtually all the streaming services mainly use AWS but may use Google Cloud. 

Given the reliance of streaming on data centres and the market dominance of AWS and Google, the ability of those two companies to reduce their carbon footprint is critical to successful carbon reduction in the streaming sector. 

However, both have a long way to go.

Misleading renewable claims? 

Netflix, which relies 100% on AWS data centres, has claimed that the electricity powering its computing needs is 99% renewable.

It based this on information from AWS about its sourcing of renewable energy. However, Amazon’s claims have been criticised by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice for creative accounting and an over-reliance on low-quality renewable energy credits. According to the group’s calculations, Amazon is only using 22% renewable energy across the US and it’s building new data centres in locations heavily dependent on oil, coal, and gas, such as Saudi Arabia.

Google is slightly more upfront about the amount of carbon-based energy it uses. Its 2024 environmental report contains a world map of its data centres which shows the percentage of carbon-free energy used in each. For the UK, this figure is 92% while for Saudi Arabia and Qatar it’s 0%. It claims that globally the figure is 64%. However, Google uses the term “carbon-free” rather than renewable because its figures include nuclear power. It’s not clear what percentage of its energy comes from renewables.
 

Climate rating

We rated all the brands in this guide for their climate policies and practices. 

The results are a bit of a mixed bag: only four companies scored 50 or more (out of 100) for climate. 

Channel 4, BBC, and ITV scored well as they had comprehensive reporting of their emissions and credible reduction targets. 

Apple also had good reporting and targets but lost marks for misleading messaging in relation to some models of its Apple Watch which it claimed were carbon neutral. The company was criticised by environmental and consumer groups for the claims. 

Apart from these four, the results are dismal, with scores ranging from 0 to 30/100.

Rakuten lost marks for misleading messaging as it claimed that it had achieved carbon neutrality “group-wide” in 2023 even though it didn’t include scope 3 emissions in its calculations. Rakuten scored 0/100 for climate.

Privacy

TV and streaming services haven’t come under much scrutiny for their approaches to privacy, but a 2021 report by US-based NGO Common Sense Media showed that it’s common for streaming services to track users and collect data on them to build up a profile and share the data for advertising.

Are they selling your data?

Several brands, such as Disney and Paramount, sold users’ data for profit to third parties but it was Netflix that received the lowest score for its overall practice.

As the report was US-focused it didn't include iPlayer, U, Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5, Now, Sky, or Rakuten. The report is a few years old and states that it’s a snapshot of what the streamers were doing at the time of the research, in a sector which changes rapidly.

The report advises that people check their privacy settings as they all allow some features to be turned off. It also recommends removing unwanted streaming apps or TV subscriptions to limit information collection.

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Company ethos

This rating rewards positive practices – such as living wage certification – and penalises negative ones – such as membership of lobby groups and excessive director pay. 

Most companies scored 0 but there were some high scoring exceptions. 

The BBC and Channel 4 are both publicly owned not-for-profit corporations and received marks for their not-for-profit status. ITV and Channel 4 are both living wage certified employers.

Many companies lost marks for excessive director pay. 

Tech sector director salaries tend to read like telephone numbers and many companies in this guide paid considerably more than £10m.

Amazon, Apple, Google (YouTube), Netflix, Paramount, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery all paid over £10m. 

In 2023, Apple CEO Tim Cook received over US$63m in total compensation and Walt Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, received over US$31m. The companies which paid over £10m to their directors all also lost marks for membership of corporate lobby groups.
 

Public service broadcasting

The BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 are all public service broadcasters (alongside STV in Scotland, UTV in Northern Ireland and the Welsh language service S4C).

They’re all required to provide certain types of programming in order to meet public service objectives rather than to serve purely commercial interests. These objectives include providing programmes suitable for children, covering a wide range of topics such as science and religion, reflecting the diversity of the UK, and supporting the UK economy through commissioning. People may disagree about the extent to which the public service broadcasters meet these objectives, but they can at least hold them to account for their performance.

Such objectives are not necessarily profitable and the on-demand commercial companies such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are not required to meet them. With the growth in popularity of these newer platforms, public service broadcasting is under increasing financial pressure. 

It’s also more difficult in the crowded online environment for public service broadcasters to reach audiences with their news content. The communications regulator Ofcom identifies this as a risk as people are increasingly exposed to misinformation through social media.

The radical changes to the TV and media landscape over the last 20 years have prompted debate about whether there is still a role for the public service broadcasters. They seem safe for now but if you want that to continue, make sure you keep watching them.

Backs of two people watching large tv screen

What do streaming services cost?

In financial terms, watching television and video can cost very little, to quite a bit. This partly depends on if you watch the free channels or pay for a subscription or TV licence. 

There are, of course, other 'costs' to watching streaming TV and video, as discussed in this article, such as the impact on the environment, workers and the economy.

Price per month of streaming service (listed by A to Z)
Streaming service Free version? Price per month without ads
Amazon Prime Video No £11.98
Apple TV+ No £8.99
BBC iPlayer No £14 (Licence fee)
Channel 4 Yes £3.99
Discovery+ Yes £3.99
Disney+ No From £7.99
ITVX Yes £5.99
My5 (Channel 5) Yes na
Netflix No From £10.99
Now No £15.99
Paramount No £6.99
Rakuten Yes Pay per view
Sky (except Sports & news) No £26
U (BBC) Yes na
YouTube Yes £12.99

Note: All the free versions have adverts.
BBC iPlayer is the only streaming service that you have to have a TV licence to watch, hence the fee of £14/month
 

Streaming companies’ links to Israeli apartheid

The BDS Movement is calling for pressure, including boycotts, against three tech companies in this guide: Amazon, Google (which also owns YouTube), and Disney.

In May 2021, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud signed a $1.22 billion contract to provide cloud technology to the Israeli government and military. Join the #NoTechForApartheid campaign.

According to the BDS Movement, the Disney-owned Marvel Studios is promoting the next Captain America film “Brave New World”, which features a “superhero” that personifies apartheid Israel. Both companies are therefore complicit in “anti-Palestinian racism, Israeli propaganda, and the glorification of settler-colonial violence against Indigenous people,” as Palestinian cultural organizations have stated. The organisations are calling for a boycott of the Captain America film.

Meanwhile, since 2018, The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has been calling on Netflix to dump the “thriller” series “Fauda,” which it says is an “anti-Arab racist, Israeli propaganda tool that glorifies the Israeli military’s war crimes against the Palestinian people”. When the campaign against Netflix started in 2018, Netflix was just about to release season two. The program is now in its fifth season.

On the other hand, in October 2024, Netflix faced calls for a boycott after removing all bar one of the “Palestinian Stories” collection of films. Netflix says that after three years the licences have now expired. The decision not to renew the Palestinian Stories licences prompted a coalition of human rights groups led by Freedom Forward to write an open letter to Netflix’s executive team asking it to explain why it had removed 19 films by or about Palestinians.

“Netflix is a 300 billion dollar company that can afford to renew the licenses for the movies and films that it cares about. Palestinians are experiencing extraordinary suffering, and Netflix should be doing everything it can to share Palestinian stories with the world” said Freedom Forward executive director Sunjeev Berry.

Palestine demo at BBC HQ banned by police

A demo in January 2024 to protest against what organisers called “the pro-Israel bias of the BBC's coverage" was controversially banned by the Metropolitan police from gathering outside the BBC HQ in London. Instead, the protest took place as a static rally in Whitehall.

The police cited the proximity of a synagogue, which is, however, not on the route of the march from the BBC to Whitehall according to Palestine Solidarity Campaign. The Palestine movement has used the same route twice before with police permission in the last sixteen months.

A statement, signed by MPs, Peers, cultural figures, and civil rights campaigners, accused the Met of misusing public order powers to shield the BBC from democratic scrutiny.

The protest organisers said that the BBC’s bias was highlighted in a detailed report by journalist Owen Jones published on the Drop Site news website.

Alternatives to streaming services

There are a number of alternatives to using streaming services:

1) Stick with watching live, traditional TV like BBC, Channel 4, and Sky Arts which are available for the price of a TV licence (£14 per month). You need a licence to watch all live TV on any channel or service including watching live on streaming services like ITVX. A TV licence also covers you to use BBC iPlayer. The licence fee funds the BBC’s public service broadcasting.

2) Watch films and shows on DVDs. Many libraries still loan out DVDs.

3) Some libraries are signed up to the free film streaming service Kanopy. You just need a library card.

4) Find alternative platforms. For example, Ecoflix is a not-for-profit streaming service specialising in wildlife and nature programmes. 100% of your membership free (from £3.99 a month) goes to an NGO chosen by you.

Voice from the supply chain

Netflix animation workers speak out

Companies that make TV programmes have a huge cast of supply chain workers – including actors, producers, writers, and … animators. In October 2024, animation workers organised a march to Netflix’s California offices calling for fair wages, job security, and protection from the risk of AI eliminating the human side of animation.

Showrunner Joanna Lewis said, “We need to have staffing minimums, or this industry is going to go away. Our children will not be able to be animators in the future. It will cease to be a viable career path. They're outsourcing our jobs to different countries, and with the threat of AI, it's become an existential threat.”

Visual development artist Nash Dunnigan added, “My biggest fear right now is AI. We need to have guardrails to protect all of us and make sure animation has heart and people behind it – not algorithms."

Elianne Melendez, a production coordinator, stated, “Delivering this petition is flexing our power as a union. Workers, who have given a lot to this industry, are partners with the studios, but have not been treated as such.”

The Animation Guild (TAG) is a labour union representing over 5,000 artists, technicians, writers, and production workers in the animation industry.

Following three months of campaigning, in December TAG reached an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) – the trade association responsible for negotiating nearly all industry-wide collective bargaining agreements, including with Netflix, Disney, and Amazon.

The new agreement introduced extra rights around minimum staffing and a pay increase but does little to protect against AI. Some animators want an outright ban on AI in animation, but AMPTP said “producers would never have agreed to that.”

One TAG member, Sam Tung, was involved in the negotiations: “You get the best deal you think you can get with the leverage you have. I would like to see more, but I think this is the best we were able to get right now.”

Additional research by Shanta Bhavnani.

Company Profile

Disney+ is owned by The Walt Disney Company (TWDC). 

It mainly shows films and TV programmes produced by the Disney company and other brands owned by TWDC including Pixar and Marvel. It’s the third most popular subscription streaming service in the UK behind Netflix and Amazon Prime. 

TWDC began as an animation studio over a hundred years ago but now has subsidiaries operating in many areas of leisure and entertainment including theme parks, cruises, and consumer products such as toys. In the Workers category, TWDC received marks for supply chain transparency as it published the names of all its first-tier suppliers. It also had a publicly available list of permitted sourcing countries which excluded countries where there was a likelihood of forced and child labour. However, it lost marks because at the end of 2024, it had to settle a legal claim by 25,000 workers in California for failure to pay the minimum wage.

Want to know more?

If you want to find out detailed information about a company and more about its ethical rating, then click on a brand name in the Score table. 

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