NOW is sold on flexibility. No dish, no engineer, no contract, take it for a fortnight and stop.
That was true. It is now true only if you refuse the advertised price, and that is the single most important thing to understand before you sign up.
There is also a second problem, which is that the price you see is not the price of watching in a quality you would accept. Both below, with the arithmetic.
Figures checked 6 October 2026. We do not normally quote prices on this site, but an article called “price” has little choice.
What NOW costs
| Membership | Full price, monthly | Advertised offer | Minimum term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entertainment | £7.99 | £4.99 | 6 months |
| Entertainment & HBO Max | £9.99 | £6.99 | 6 months |
| Cinema | £9.99 | £6.99 | 6 months |
| Sports, monthly | £34.99 | £27.99 | 12 months |
| Sports, day | £14.99 for 24 hours | — | None |
| Boost | £6 | Free for 12 months with the Sports offer | — |
| Ultra Boost | £9 | — | — |
Entertainment carries eleven Sky entertainment channels and the box sets. Cinema carries eleven Sky Cinema channels and around a thousand films. Sports carries all the Sky Sports channels.
One thing to check before taking Entertainment & HBO Max at £9.99. That tier delivers the HBO Max Basic with Ads library — and HBO Max has been a standalone UK service since 26 March 2026, selling that same library for £4.99. So you are paying five pounds more for one app, one bill and the Sky channels alongside it, which may well be worth it, but it is worth knowing you are choosing it. Our guide to watching Sky Atlantic without a Sky contract sets out all three routes.
And if you held NOW Entertainment before March 2026, you were upgraded to Entertainment & HBO Max free of charge when HBO Max launched. Check your account before paying to add it.
The minimum-term problem
Every discounted price above comes with a commitment. Six months on the entertainment and cinema memberships, twelve on Sports.
And NOW’s own help pages are clear about what that means: cancelling during a minimum term does not take effect until the term ends. You can press cancel. You will keep paying.
So the choice is sharper than it looks:
- Take the advertised price and you have a contract, which is the thing NOW exists to avoid.
- Take full price monthly and you keep the flexibility, but you are paying £7.99 rather than £4.99.
The flexible option is the expensive one. That is a reasonable trade, and it is not how NOW is advertised.
Our judgement: if you genuinely want a fortnight of something, pay full price monthly and leave. If you know you want six months, take the offer and diary the end date. What you should not do is take the offer thinking you can walk away in March.
The price you see is not the price of watching
This is the part that surprises people on their first evening, and it is worse than most coverage admits.
Without Boost, NOW streams in standard definition, on one device at a time, with adverts on on-demand content.
Not “capped below Full HD”. Standard definition. On a large modern television that looks exactly as bad as it sounds, and on sport it is immediately obvious.
Here is what the two upgrades actually buy.
| No Boost | Boost, £6 | Ultra Boost, £9 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Picture | Standard definition | Full HD | Up to 4K with HDR |
| Devices at once | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Audio | Stereo | Dolby Digital 5.1 | Dolby Atmos |
| Adverts on demand | Yes | No | No |
| UHD sports channels | — | — | 4 dedicated |
So the honest price of NOW is the membership plus six pounds. Entertainment is not £7.99, it is £13.99. Cinema is not £9.99, it is £15.99. Sports is not £34.99, it is £40.99.
Every published price for this service, including the table at the top of this page, understates it by that much. Whether Boost is worth it is a real question, and our guide to whether NOW Boost is worth the extra goes through it properly, including the cases where it genuinely is not.
The day pass arithmetic, which has broken
This used to be the clever move for football. It still can be, but the sums have changed and the old advice is now wrong.
The Sports day pass rose from £11.99 to £14.99, a 25% increase.
So:
- One day pass — £14.99, against £34.99 for the month. Clearly worth it.
- Two day passes — £29.98. Still cheaper than the month, with £5 to spare.
- Three day passes — £44.97. Ten pounds more than the month.
Three day passes once cost roughly the same as a month. They now cost considerably more. If you are watching more than twice in a month, take the month.
And if you are watching a full season, the twelve-month saver at £27.99 is about 31% cheaper than paying monthly — with the twelve-month commitment that implies. Our guide to watching the Premier League in the UK covers which matches NOW actually carries, and our guide to watching Formula 1 in the UK covers the race weekends, where a day pass is still the obvious answer.
Four things NOW used to offer and no longer does
Worth listing, because people still search for all of them.
- The week pass. Gone. Day or month only on Sports, which removes the option that suited a run of midweek fixtures.
- Kids Pass, once £3.99. Folded into the Entertainment membership.
- hayu Pass, once £4.99. Now a separate service rather than a NOW pass.
- The seven-day membership free trial. Withdrawn entirely. A seven-day trial survives on the Boost add-on and even that is offered selectively, so do not plan around one.
Taken together that is a service that has become meaningfully less flexible in four separate ways while still advertising flexibility as its main virtue.
The hardware, which is quietly good value
NOW sells a Smart Stick at about £15 and a Smart Box at about £40, the latter 4K-capable.
The useful part: both run Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and iPlayer, and neither requires a NOW membership to do it. So if you have an older television that has lost its apps, a £15 NOW stick is among the cheapest ways to bring it back to life, whether or not you ever subscribe to NOW. Our guide to streaming on an old TV covers the options.
Which membership should you take?
Entertainment, if you want Sky drama and box sets. £7.99, or £13.99 with Boost. The HBO Max version at £9.99 is two pounds more and considerably more content, so if you are taking one, take that.
Cinema, only in bursts. A thousand films sounds a lot and the turnover is slower than it sounds. A month over Christmas makes more sense than a year.
Sports, by the day unless you are watching weekly. One or two days a month beats the monthly price. More than that, take the month, and take the twelve-month saver only if you are certain.
Nothing, if you were expecting a trial. There is no longer one on memberships, so your first month is a paid decision rather than a look around.
How it compares
NOW is not competing with Netflix and Disney+ on price, and it is not trying to. Entertainment with Boost at £13.99 is roughly Netflix Standard money for a narrower catalogue, and Sports at £40.99 with Boost is in a different category altogether because live sports rights cost what they cost.
What you are buying is Sky without a dish and without an eighteen-month contract. Our guide to UK streaming services compared puts it against the rest, and when you do leave, our guide to cancelling UK streaming subscriptions covers doing it cleanly — bearing in mind that a minimum term means cancelling and leaving are not the same thing.
Common questions
How much is NOW in the UK?
Entertainment £7.99, Entertainment & HBO Max £9.99, Cinema £9.99, Sports £34.99 a month or £14.99 for a day. Boost is £6 on top and Ultra Boost £9. Checked 6 October 2026.
Does NOW have a contract?
At full price, no. Every advertised discount carries a minimum term — six months, or twelve on Sports — and cancelling during one does not take effect until it ends.
Do I need Boost?
Without it you get standard definition on one device with adverts on on-demand content. On a large television, yes, effectively.
Is the NOW day pass still worth it?
For one or two days a month, yes. Three day passes now cost £44.97 against £34.99 for the month, so beyond two you should take the month.
Does NOW still do a week pass?
No. Day and month only.
Does NOW have a free trial?
Not on memberships. A seven-day trial survives on Boost, offered selectively.
What is the cheapest way to watch Sky Sports?
A day pass at £14.99 if you only want one or two days. Otherwise the twelve-month saver at £27.99, with the commitment that implies.
The short version
Entertainment £7.99, Cinema £9.99, Sports £34.99, and add £6 for Boost because without it you are watching standard definition on one screen with adverts. Every advertised discount carries a minimum term, so the flexible option is full price. On sport, one or two day passes a month beat the monthly price and three no longer do.
For what the service actually contains, see our complete guide to NOW and Sky UK.
