If you’re not using Tubi yet, it might only be a matter of time. While free services are growing in general, Tubi appears to be outpacing all others, and even beginning to give some of the popular paid services a run for their money.
Tubi, owned by Fox Corporation, is a completely free streaming service. While the service does offer the option to create an account, and there are benefits to creating an account, no account is required to watch any of the content on the platform. Instead, you can simply head over to the website or download the app and start watching for free.
This completely free approach, coupled with its library of hidden gems, has made Tubi a very popular option. According to the company, Tubi had 78 million monthly active users at the end of 2023, adding around four million in the last four months of the year alone.
Considering the service had around 64 million monthly active users at the end of 2022, Tubi managed to add 14 million during 2023 as a whole. A number that’s only likely to increase in the future.
Tubi’s TV Usage Continues To Grow
Another metric that can be used to get a sense of how quickly Tubi is growing is Nielsen’s The Gauge data. Released each month, these report details total TV usage overall, as well as TV usage by individual streaming services.
While the likes of YouTube and Netflix continually dominate, Tubi is one of the only companies that continues to increase in TV usage month after month and quarter after quarter. This is all the more impressive when considering Tubi didn’t appear on The Gauge‘s radar until February 2023.
Back then, Tubi hit the 1% TV usage share, putting it on par with Peacock (also 1% at the time) and just ahead of Pluto TV (0.7% at the time).
Fast forward to the latest The Gauge data and Tubi had risen to 1.8%. In contrast, Peacock accounted for 1.1% in May 2024 and Pluto TV accounted for 0.9%.
While Peacock has risen above its May 2024 level in the past, it has declined again, and doesn’t appear to have made any significant progress since Feb. 2023. In contrast, and even though Tubi has also seen the occasional decrease in TV usage since February of last year, its trajectory is clear to see.
Even if we look at YouTube and Netflix, considered the two market leaders throughout Tubi’s existence on The Gauge, their trajectory is far less clean, with both services encountering more dips more often.
To be clear, YouTube has seen greater growth over the same time, jumping almost two percentage points from 7.9% to 9.7%, but we are talking about the consistency here. Tubi is close to doubling its overall TV usage share since February of last year, compared to YouTube’s roughly 20% increase over the same period.
In Netflix’s case, the popular streaming service has seen so many ups and downs since Tubi’s arrival on The Gauge that it had only increased 0.3% at last count (from 7.3% to 7.6%). Netflix has increased as high as 8.5% (an increase of 1.2%) in the past, but that just highlights how much its TV usage has fluctuated since February 2023.
So how high can Tubi go?
In reality, it seems unlikely that Tubi will hit the dizzy heights of YouTube or Netflix anytime soon, if ever. However, its sustained growth throughout 2023 and 2024 would seem to suggest that it will keep growing in the future.
With Tubi already now typically seeing higher TV usage than the likes of Max, Peacock and Paramount+, and closing in on Disney+, it is continually edging closer to breaking in to the top five services. Which, in itself, would be a huge achievement.
Interestingly, The Roku Channel is another free service that appears to be worth keeping an eye on. After only making its debut in The Gauge in June 2023, its TV usage climbed to 1.5% in May 2024.
Unlike Tubi, however, The Roku Channel does come backed by an entire platform and operating system, which seems likely to make it easier to get the free service in front of users to begin with.
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