Is Starz Worth $12 a Month? Here’s Our 1-Year Review

We found Starz to be a good streaming service with a decent amount of quality originals that are worth watching. However, it is hard to fully recommend continually paying for a subscription each month at full price, and especially at a time when there is so much competition.

Streaming Better Rating

★★★☆☆

In our opinion, Starz is a bit overpriced. While Outlander and Power are great for dedicated fans, we don’t see much long-term value for average consumers.

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Starz has been around for quite some time now and while it is available as a premium channel that you can bundle with a live TV plan, it is also available as a standalone service and subscription, priced at $11.99 a month.

While Starz isn’t a must-have subscription in our eyes, that doesn’t mean it won’t be for you. If the library, especially originals like Outlander and Power, appeal to you, then Starz is likely to be worth paying for. Even then, however, we still recommend waiting for a deal before signing up.

Still unsure whether Starz is worth your subscription dollars? Our full review provides a closer look at the streaming service.

Starz Specs: What You Need to Know

Below is a summary of some of the main specifications and features you might want to know before signing up to Starz.

Experience: What It’s Like to Use Starz

Starz offers a good, but not quite premium, experience. Unlike some other streaming services, Starz has been around for some time now, and that age and maturity has resulted in a very reliable app experience. Not to mention, a varied level of device support.

So while subscribers shouldn’t encounter too many issues when looking for a device to stream on, they might find the apps to be a little on the basic side.

Overall, everything you would expect to be here, is here. It is just there isn’t much polish or premium features with the app offering a bare-bones experience.

The smart TV and streaming player apps open to a typical Home section where Starz primarily utilizes a row-based system for recommendations.

Rows include This Month Only, Starz Originals & Exclusives, Trending Now, Just Added, Recommended For You, Your Playlist, and Leaving Soon, among others.

The Home section also offers rows that are more specific to the viewer. For example, if you add Outlander to your watchlist then you’re likely to see an If You like Outlander row appear on the Home screen as well.

In addition to these recommendation rows, the Starz app also features a side menu where users can filter the library by My Stuff, Movies, Series, and Browse.

The Series and Movies sections look and work as expected, with Starz using the same row-based system to display filtered results for shows and movies.

Title pages are also as to be expected. App users have the option to play the title, watch a trailer (if available), and add the title to their watchlist.

Titles pages also include the option to browse episodes (if a series), view available extras, and see titles that other viewers of the movie/series have watched.

If adding the title to you watchlist, it will become available to access in the Playlist section of My Stuff.

If you are someone that tends to add a lot of stuff to a watchlist, then you may find this area becomes a little busy over time.

Starz orders its watchlist based on when you added (most recent additions are listed first) and there’s no way to rearrange the order. As an example, it cannot be changed to alphabetical.

There’s also no separation of content, with movies and shows all listed together. While not an issue if only adding or or two titles, it could become a problem if you have a lot content bookmarked for later and no way to choose how the content is sorted.

Another unusual design choice is that the My Stuff section includes an Other Titles To Add To Your Playlist subsection.

While not necessarily strange in itself, what is strange is that the section often suggested titles that were already in our playlist, making the section feel somewhat redundant.

Downloads and the Mobile App

Starz offers the option to download videos but only on mobile devices.

Starz is pretty strict when it comes to downloads in general. Although the 25-title limit is fairly standard for a streaming service, the app only keeps downloads for a maximum of two weeks. At which point, they are automatically deleted.

Speaking of the mobile app, it does come with some additional settings that are not found in the TV apps, including the ability to restrict playback to just Wi-Fi or choose video quality.

Here’s a closer look at the mobile app.

A last point to note about the experience. Even though Starz is an ad-free service, it does tend to show previews of other movies and series before a movie or episode begins.

These are very short and come with the added ability to add the previewed title to your watchlist.

Content: What You Can Watch on Starz

We found the Starz library to be both a weakness and a strength.

In terms of being a weakness, Starz isn’t packed full of content. With a far smaller and more curated library, some will feel that they quickly run out of content to watch.

In terms of being a strength, Starz’s smaller and more curated library is generally full of quality content, and that an important distinction.

If you find services like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max to be so packed with content that it is hard to find something to watch, Starz is likely to feel like a welcomed change.

Examples of Starz Originals and top titles:

• Outlander
• Power
• BMF
• Black Sails
• Spartacus
• P-Valley
• Hightown
• Shining Vale
• Party Down
• The Serpent Queen

For fans of Outlander and Power in particular, Starz is pretty much the go-to streaming service. In addition to all episodes of the original shows, a subscription includes access to spin-offs including Outlander: Blood of My Blood, Power Book II: Ghost, Power Book III: Raising Kanan, and Power Book IV: Force.

If you are a fan of either of these shows, and especially both, then access to all seasons and episodes could be enough of a reason to justify the cost of a subscription.

In addition to its own original content, Starz also tends to offer a good variety of newer movies, including theatrical releases.

New movies available on Starz (as of Oct 2026):

• Michael
• Beast
• Haunted Heist
• The Housemaid (2025)
• I Can Only Imagine 2
• In The Grey
• Outlaw Johnny Black
• Power Ballad
• The Strangers: Chapter 3

Naturally, the selection of third-party content will vary over time so some, possible even all, of the movies listed above might not be available when signing up.

Live TV: You Can (Sort Of) Watch the Live Network

Starz does technically offer a live TV element but compared to other services, it is a very limited experience.

Firstly, Starz only offers access to the standard Starz live channel. For anyone that subscribes to a live TV plan that includes Starz, the channel they get access to is the same one that’s included with a Starz standalone subscription.

What is probably more important to note is that Starz doesn’t currently offer access to this live channel through any of its apps, including smart TV apps.

Instead, subscribers can only watch the live channel feed through the Starz website. Even then, it is somewhat hidden.

While subscribers could previously sign in and click on Schedule, that option has since been removed. Instead, subscribers now need to go directly to the Schedule section of the Starz website through a browser

Once in the right place, they can then check the schedule for the next week or simply click on Watch Live to start watching the live channel.

Considering all of the live content is available on demand, combined with the limited level of app support for watching live, it is probably best to think of Starz as a service that doesn’t offer any live element – even though it technically does.

Cost: How Much You’ll Pay for Starz

A standalone Starz subscription costs $11.99/mo and it’s difficult to discuss the value without comparing Starz to other subscription services.

And that’s where Starz runs into some major issues for us.

It is not that Starz doesn’t offer good value for the money, it just $11.99 feels a little expensive for what you get.

Still, when considering this is an ad-free subscription, Starz remains one of the cheaper ‘no ads’ plans around.

While at the cheaper end of the ad-free spectrum, the value issue with Starz is made all the worse by the lack of any other tiers.

Unlike Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount Plus, and many other services, Starz doesn’t offer any ad-supported subscription tiers.

Without an ad-supported plan available, the cheapest monthly Starz plan is more expensive than the cheapest plans from many of the other premium streaming services.

Is $12 better spent on Starz than any of those other services? No, not in our opinion.

Although we are comparing apples to oranges here with an ad-free tier compared to ad-supported tiers, that will tell you how little long-term value we place on the Starz library.

Of course, if you are a big fan of Starz’s original content, then that changes everything, and the value offered is going to be much higher.

Is Starz Worth It? What We Really Think

It’s hard to recommend Starz over many other streaming services and this is where Starz runs into a major hurdle in our opinion.

It just doesn’t offer enough content to justify spending $12 a month, and especially at a time when there’s so much competition.

If Starz was to offer an ad-supported plan, that might change things. As it stands, however, $12 feels like a lot for Starz, and certainly on a permanent basis.

On that point, Starz routinely offers big discounts and if you can lock in a promotional price when signing up then a subscription becomes more worthwhile.

This is exactly how we plan to integrate this service into our streaming cycle going forward.

At full price, we struggle to find enough reasons to stay subscribed, but if we can secure another annual plan at a heavily discounted price then we will sign back up again.

That’s probably the main thing you should takeaway from our review. Starz is worth it, but only when the price drops low enough. Once it returns to full price, it is probably time for Starz to cycle back out of your streaming setup.

★★★☆☆

• Originals
• Movies
• Series

From $10.99/mo

Deal: $6/mo for 3 months

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