Discovery+ doesn’t offer an annual subscription, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still sign up and pay for the year ahead. It is just you’ll have to gift yourself a subscription instead. However, unless a sale happens to be in effect, buying and paying for a year in advance won’t result in any real savings on the cost of a Discovery+ plan.
Discovery+ launched in January of 2020 with two main plans to choose from. Priced at $4.99 per month, the standard plan provides access to all of the Discovery shows and content available through the service, albeit with ads. The second plan costs $6.99 per month and provides access to all the same shows, but without the commercials.
Although these plans are cheap enough to begin with, subscribers to a service can usually save even more over the course of twelve months by opting for an annual plan. The problem is, Discovery+ doesn’t offer an annual plan when signing up, leaving consumers with no option other than to subscribe on a monthly basis at the normal rates.
No annual subscription, but there are gifts
While there is no official way to sign up to Discovery+ through an annual subscription, consumers can actually buy a yearly gift subscription and use that instead. These are primarily designed as a way to gift a subscription to the Discovery+ networks service to someone else, but there’s nothing stopping consumers from buying one online and then using it for themselves.
As these are gift subscriptions, consumers will need to purchase and pay for one, receive a code, then use that same code to sign up to the service. Consumers can either provide an alternate email address to the one they plan to use to sign to the service or choose the “print and hand-deliver” option to skip the additional email address requirement.
The one caveat here is Discovery+ only offers a gift subscription for the service’s ad-free plan. Therefore, consumers don’t have any option to sign up for the cheapest plan overall on a yearly basis. Those who want to pay the absolute least over the course of twelve months will be better off signing up and paying for the ad-supported plan on a monthly basis.
Paying yearly not any cheaper
Besides the lack of the ability to purchase a subscription for the cheapest plan, buying an annual plan is highly unlikely to result in any savings. With the ad-free Discovery+ gift subscription currently costing $83.75, that works out to be around $6.98 per month. Considering the monthly cost of the same plan is $6.99, signing up to Discovery+ on a yearly basis is not any cheaper than monthly, for those interested in the ad-free experience.
The one exception here is those times when a sale is available. For example, back in February, Discovery+ was offering the option to buy a gift subscription at 30-percent less than usual. This effectively reduced the cost of the ad-free plan down to $4.99 per month, the same cost as the ad-supported version. Of course, there’s no way to know in advance when Discovery+ is going to launch one of these promotions, making it more of an opportunity-based solution than an everyday option.
For reference, the twelve-month gift subscription is not the only one on offer. Discovery+ also allows consumers to buy and gift a single six-month subscription as well. Again, this is only for the ad-free plan and with the price set at $41.75 per month, it works out to be around $6.96 per month.
Discovery+ annual subscription summary
While Discovery+ doesn’t technically offer an annual subscription, there is the option to buy a gift subscription and use it as a way to sign up and pay for the year ahead. However, not only is there no financial benefit to paying for a yearly gift subscription (unless on sale at the time), but there’s also no option to gift an ad-supported plan. All of which makes a yearly subscription as about as expensive as Discovery+ gets.
For those that do decide to make use of a gift subscription as an annual way to subscribe and pay for Discovery+, there are two options. Consumers can either sign up and watch Discovery+ shows for twelve months for $83.75 or purchase a six-month subscription for $41.75. both of which work out to to be around $7 per month, the same as paying for ad-free Discovery+ on a monthly basis.
Read more: How Discovery+ Is Different To Discovery Go
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