Cord-Cutting Savings Calculator

Why cable feels cheap until you do the math

Most cable bills look like a single friendly number — $89, $99, $119 a month — and you pay it on autopilot for years. Then the promo period ends, the price quietly jumps $20, and the bill starts growing fees you never agreed to by name: a broadcast TV fee, a regional sports fee, $12 a month per cable box rental. Add those up and many households pay well over $100 a month just for the TV part, before internet.

Streaming looks cheap in comparison because the price is right on the signup page — $8, $11, $15 a month. But the trap runs the other way: the services pile up. Two becomes four, four becomes six, and suddenly the "cheap" stack costs almost as much as the cable you were trying to escape. Neither side is honest on its own, which is exactly why the comparison has to be done on paper — or with a calculator.

How the calculator compares the two sides

This calculator keeps the comparison fair. You enter what you pay for the TV portion of your cable bill, your internet bill (which you keep either way — streaming needs it), how many streaming services you would realistically keep and their average price, and what you would spend once on streaming devices.

It then shows the numbers that actually decide the question: your monthly TV saving (cable bill minus the streaming stack), your first-year saving after the device cost, and how many months the devices take to pay for themselves. Your internet bill is shown in the new household total, so nothing gets double-counted or quietly ignored.

A worked example

Say your cable TV portion is $120 a month and internet is $60. You plan to keep three streaming services at about $12 each ($36 a month) and buy one streaming stick for $60. Your TV saving is $120 − $36 = $84 a month, or $1,008 a year. Subtract the $60 device and your first-year saving is $948 — the stick pays for itself in under a month. But change one number and watch the story flip: keep six services at $12 each ($72 a month) and the monthly saving drops to $48. Add premium add-ons to two of them and it can vanish entirely.

Tips to save even more after you cut the cord

Rotate subscriptions instead of stacking them — binge one service for a month, cancel, move to the next. Check the free ad-supported services first; they have improved enormously and cost nothing. Buy your own streaming devices instead of renting provider boxes, and look for annual billing discounts on the services you keep all year. Finally, call your internet provider once a year: without the TV bundle, standalone internet promos are often cheaper than the rate you are paying.