Here is the problem with Prime Video Channels, in one example.
Prime Video spent September promoting Slow Horses to its subscribers. It appeared on the home screen, it turned up in search, and it sat in the recommendations alongside Reacher and Clarkson’s Farm as though it were part of the same library.
It is not. Watching it costs £8.99 a month more, because it belongs to Apple TV, which Amazon sells as a channel inside its own app. A reader following that recommendation finds out at the point of pressing play.
That is Channels in a sentence: genuinely useful, consistently confusing, and nobody explains it properly because almost every page about it earns commission.
What Channels actually are
A Prime Video Channel is somebody else’s subscription service, sold to you by Amazon and billed with your Amazon account.
You do not install another app, create another login or remember another password. The content appears inside Prime Video alongside everything else, and you can cancel from your Amazon account whenever you like.
That genuinely is convenient. The cost is that your Prime Video app now contains three kinds of thing that look identical, which our full guide to Prime Video UK goes through in detail.
A note on the prices below
We do not usually quote prices, because they go stale. An article titled “full list and prices” that refuses to give prices is no use to anyone, so here they are, checked in October 2026, from the most recently updated UK listing available.
Two honest caveats. These change without announcement, so verify before you subscribe. And no published list of Prime Video Channels is complete — Apple TV, one of the most important of them, is missing from most of them.
The nine that matter to most households
Sixty-odd channels exist. For the overwhelming majority of British viewers, these are the only ones worth knowing about.
| Channel | Monthly | Trial | Why you would |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple TV | £8.99 | 7 days | Slow Horses, Severance, Ted Lasso. The one Prime Video promotes hardest |
| Paramount+ | £6.99 | 7 days | Star Trek, Yellowstone, Mobland |
| Discovery+ Basic | £3.99 | None | Factual, motoring, property |
| Discovery+ Premium | £30.99 | None | TNT Sports. See the warning below |
| MGM+ | £4.49 | 7 days | Outlander: Blood of My Blood, American drama |
| Crunchyroll | £4.99 | 7 days | Anime, and the largest catalogue of it anywhere |
| hayu | £4.99 | 7 days | Reality television, same-day with the US |
| BFI Player | £6.99 | 7 days | Classic and world cinema, properly curated |
| ITVX Premium | £5.99 | — | The BritBox archive, and the only route to it in the UK since 2024 |
Two of those deserve a longer word.
The Discovery+ Premium trap
£3.99 and £30.99 are both called Discovery+. They sit two rows apart in every list, and the difference is almost eight times the price.
The reason is TNT Sports, which carries Champions League and Premier League football among other rights, and live sport rights cost what they cost. If you want the factual programming, Basic is what you want. If you find yourself about to pay £30.99 because the name looked familiar, stop.
Our guide to watching the Premier League in the UK sets out which service holds what, and whether paying that much is ever the right call.
Crunchyroll and BFI Player are the two genuine bargains
Crunchyroll through Channels gives you the deepest anime catalogue in Britain for under five pounds, and no separate app. We compare it with the Netflix UK anime shelf in our guide to Netflix versus Crunchyroll in the UK.
BFI Player is the tidiest route to classic and world cinema in Britain, and our guide to where to watch classic films in the UK explains why it beats hunting through the main catalogues.
The rest, by what you are actually after
This is where it gets long. Most of these exist for one specific enthusiasm, and if that enthusiasm is yours, they are better value than anything mainstream.
Film, for people who care about film
MUBI £9.99 · Curzon £6.99 · Arrow Video £4.99 · Arrow TV £4.99 · STUDIOCANAL PRESENTS £4.99 · Sundance Now £5.99 · Shudder £4.99 for horror · Full Moon £3.99 for cult · Icon Film £4.49 · Filmbox Live £4.99 · Fandor £3.49 · Realeyz £4.99 · Shorts TV £3.99 · Shout! Factory TV £2.99 · TV 1000 Russian Kino £2.99
MUBI and Curzon are the serious ones. Shudder is the best horror catalogue in Britain by a distance and not expensive for what it is.
Documentary and factual
History Hit £6.99 · The Great Courses £5.49 · Crime+Investigation £3.99 · HISTORY Play £3.99 · DocuBay £3.99 · Docsville £3.99 · PBS America £3.49 · CuriosityStream £2.79
History Hit is the one people stay subscribed to. Crime+Investigation is the obvious stop if true crime is your thing, and our guide to true crime documentaries in the UK covers what is included elsewhere before you pay for anything.
Sport, beyond what Prime already gives you
LaLiga TV £14.99 · Viaplay Sports £14.99 · Echoboom Sports £3.99 · Motorland £1.99 · Nautical Channel £3.99
Worth remembering that Champions League and NBA are already included with your Prime membership, so check before you add anything.
Children
Hopster £4.99 · Okidoki £3.99 · Azoomee Video £3.99 · Up Family £3.49 · Pokemon £2.99 · Noggin £2.99
Before paying for any of these, try CBeebies on iPlayer. It is free, it is excellent, and a great many parents buy a children’s channel they did not need.
Arts, music and comedy
Stingray Qello Concerts £9.99 · NextUp Comedy £9.99 · Marquee TV £8.99 · Stingray Classica £5.99 · Stingray Karaoke £5.99 · Stingray dJazz £3.99
Marquee TV is opera, ballet and theatre, and there is nothing else like it in Britain.
Fitness and wellbeing
Daily Burn £14.99 · Gaia £8.99 · BeFit £5.99 · Acacia TV £5.99
International and specialist
Dekkoo £7.99 · H&C TV £5.99 · Hallmark TV £4.49 · ALCHEMIYA £3.99 · Eros Now £3.99 · Here TV £3.99 · MTV Play £3.99 · Acorn TV £4.99 · Pash £2.99 · Pongalo Next £2.99 · Pinoy Box Office £1.99
Acorn TV is the interesting one here: British drama sold mainly to Americans, which means it carries things British viewers remember and cannot otherwise find.
The trap, stated plainly
Three mid-priced channels cost more than the Prime membership they sit inside.
Apple TV at £8.99, Paramount+ at £6.99 and Crunchyroll at £4.99 comes to just over twenty pounds a month, on top of the £8.99 for Prime itself. That is more than Netflix, Disney+ and NOW Entertainment together.
And it is harder to notice than separate subscriptions would be, because it all arrives as one Amazon charge rather than three line items with three different names on your statement.
So the single most useful habit: once a year, open your Amazon account, find the channel subscriptions and look properly. Most people who do this find at least one still running for something they stopped watching months ago. Our guide to cancelling UK streaming subscriptions covers doing it cleanly.
About those free trials
Nearly everything offers seven days, which is deliberately short. Long enough to get interested, not long enough to finish a series.
Three channels run longer: Acorn TV gives fourteen days, MTV Play and Daily Burn give thirty. Discovery+ and the two fourteen-pound sports channels offer no trial at all.
A word of warning about how these get written up. In December 2025, one UK site ran the headline “21 Premium TV Channels Just Went Free On Prime Video”. What had happened was that trials on those channels went from seven days to thirty, until the sixth of January. Readers in the comments were not pleased.
If a headline says channels have gone free, it means trials. Set a reminder for the day before one ends, because they renew automatically.
Is any of this better than subscribing directly?
On price, almost never. Channels usually cost the same as going direct, sometimes a little more, because Amazon takes a share.
What you get for that is one app, one bill and one place to cancel, which is worth something to anyone who has tried to remember where they signed up for a service two years ago. If you are the sort of person who keeps three or four services running and loses track, Channels is a genuinely sensible way to run them. If you keep one thing for a long time, go direct.
Common questions
What are Prime Video Channels?
Other companies’ subscription services, sold and billed by Amazon and watched inside the Prime Video app. They are not included with your Prime membership.
Is Slow Horses included with Prime Video?
No. It needs the Apple TV channel at £8.99 a month, or an Apple TV subscription directly. Prime Video promotes it heavily regardless.
How many Prime Video Channels are there in the UK?
More than sixty, and no published list is complete. Only about eight matter to most households.
Why is Discovery+ listed at both £3.99 and £30.99?
The expensive tier includes TNT Sports and its football rights. If you want factual programming, the £3.99 tier is the one you want.
Do Prime Video Channels cost less than subscribing directly?
Generally not. You are paying for convenience: one app, one bill, one place to cancel.
How do I cancel a Prime Video Channel?
Through your Amazon account rather than through the channel itself, since Amazon holds the billing. It takes effect at the end of the current period.
The short version
A long list of mostly niche services, sold conveniently and billed invisibly. Apple TV, Paramount+, Discovery+ Basic, MGM+, Crunchyroll, hayu, BFI Player and Shudder are the ones worth knowing. Watch the Discovery+ Premium price, remember that three channels cost more than Prime itself, and audit the lot once a year.
For what your membership already covers, see our guides to the best series on Prime Video UK and the best films on Prime Video UK, and for whether the whole thing adds up, whether Prime Video is worth it.
