When Netflix began verifying households in 2023, the assumption was that every other service would fall in behind it within a year, but three years on, that hasn’t quite happened. What we have instead is a split field: three services that genuinely police the household rule, two that wrote one into their terms and then left it at that, and a couple that never needed to bother, because handing over the login means handing over far more than a watchlist.

The Netflix password-sharing crackdown set the template, but the follow-through has been uneven, and the list of streaming apps you can still share a password on has held steadier than anyone expected. Going service by service is the only way to see it clearly.

How the household check actually works

Device IDs, the TV as anchor, and the periodic check-in

Every enforcement system in use right now broadly works the same way, as the service builds a picture of your primary address from IP addresses, device IDs, and viewing patterns, then treats the television in that home as the anchor. Phones and laptops are handled more loosely, which is why sharing tends to survive on mobile long after it has stopped working on a TV.

What keeps that leniency alive, though, is the periodic check-in. Netflix asks that an out-of-household device open the mobile app on your home Wi-Fi at least once a month to avoid verification prompts. HBO Max suggests a similar habit: open the app on the home network periodically. Neither is a hard lock, though. Both are a slow squeeze, and the practical effect is the same: sharing works best with someone who occasionally visits your house.

Nobody appears to have been thrown off a service for it, of course. The point is increased friction, not punishing customers.

Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu enforce it properly

The strict tier, and what the extra member slots cost

Netflix remains the strictest of the lot, and the most expensive to comply with. After the March 2026 price rise, a Standard plan is $19.99 a month, and Premium is $26.99, with an extra member slot costing $7.99 with ads or $9.99 without. Standard takes one extra member, Premium takes two, and the ad-supported plan can’t add any at all. Extra members get their own login, a single stream, and have to activate in the same country as the account holder.

Disney has held its extra member pricing since 2024, at $6.99 on the ad-supported plan and $9.99 ad-free, while the base plans climbed to $11.99 and $18.99 in Oct. 2025. That leaves it in a slightly odd position, in that the sanctioned way to share is now considerably cheaper relative to a second subscription than it was two years ago.

Only one extra member is allowed, and it’s not offered on the Disney bundles at all. Hulu’s on-demand service works the same way, which is unsurprising given the shared plumbing. Hulu + Live TV is a different proposition and much stricter — three mobile devices while traveling, and no out-of-home TV viewing whatsoever.

The current state of play, service by service:

HBO Max is heading into a very uncertain future

A crackdown with no settled owner

HBO Max started enforcing in the US in Aug. 2025, after months of quiet testing to work out who counted as a legitimate user, and our own HBO Max password-sharing crackdown coverage caught that turn as it happened. The extra member slot is $7.99 a month and carries the same benefits as the main plan, so a member added to a 4K ad-free account gets 4K and no ads. It’s only available if you subscribe directly rather than through a TV distributor or partner.

Warner Bros. Discovery said in Feb. 2026 that the global rollout would begin this year, with streaming head JB Perrette describing enforcement as being in its “second inning,” but nothing outside the US has landed yet.

Which is where it gets a little strange. Paramount agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery for $31.00 a share in Feb. 2026, a deal valuing the company at roughly $111 billion and explicitly intended to fold HBO Max into Paramount+. A federal judge then granted a temporary restraining order on July 20, 2026, after 12 state attorneys general sued, and the timeline has slipped since, potentially into 2027.

So HBO Max is midway through a global enforcement program while its future owner is argued over in court, and the streamer it would be merged into has never enforced a household rule at all. If you share an HBO Max account, I would expect the prompts to keep arriving and the international rollout to keep sliding.

Peacock and Paramount+ wrote the rule and left it alone

Restricted on paper, unrestricted in practice

This is the part of the picture that has barely moved in two years, and it’s the reason “the crackdown” is a misleading singular. Peacock quietly added a one-household clause to its terms in Dec. 2024, warning it could limit, suspend, or terminate access. Paramount+ carries similar language forbidding sharing with anyone outside your household, but neither has built the machinery to act on it. Both still allow three simultaneous streams from anywhere in the US, with no home-location check, no verification code, and no extra member slot to buy even if you wanted to go legitimate.

Calling that giving up is generous, though. Nobody at either company has publicly reversed course, and Paramount+ has been floated as the next candidate since 2024 without anything materializing. What has actually happened could be more interesting: two services weighed the revenue against the engineering and the churn, decided against it, and banked the goodwill instead.

Apple TV and Prime Video never needed a crackdown

When the account itself is the deterrent

Credit: Apple TV

Apple has never restricted out-of-home viewing on Apple TV, and it supports up to six simultaneous streams, the most of any major service. The catch is structural rather than contractual, as the Apple Account you would be handing over also unlocks iMessage history and iCloud Photos, which is a far larger ask than a simple password. A Family Sharing group is the sane route, and it does not require living together, though you can only belong to one group and cannot switch more than once a year.

Prime Video has the same problem. Three simultaneous streams, no household check, but anyone with your Amazon login can also buy things, browse your Photos, and talk to Alexa on your behalf. Amazon Family limits that, and stretches to exactly one other adult. YouTube Premium is the bluntest version: one stream at a time, and the password is your entire Google account.

Worth saying plainly, since this is where most sharing arrangements actually go wrong — if you are the one lending an account, be careful about storing passwords on a smart TV you no longer control.

What still works, and what stopped working in the background

The workarounds worth knowing about

Mobile and laptop viewing remains the most reliable route on the strict services, because the household anchor is the television. That comes with one caveat that caught a lot of people out, though: Netflix removed mobile casting to most TVs and streaming devices in late 2025, so the old trick of casting a borrowed account to a screen at your own place no longer works on newer Chromecast hardware or the Google TV Streamer. Older Chromecasts without remotes still function, on ad-free plans only.

Household resets are the other lever. Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max all let you move the home location using a code sent to the account holder’s email, and all three either cap the number of resets or decline to say what the cap is. Disney says there “may be a limit,” and HBO Max says you will end up talking to customer service, so treating it as unlimited is a mistake.

The travel settings, meanwhile, are legitimate rather than loopholes. Disney+ and Hulu both have an “I’m away from home” option, HBO Max has “I’m Traveling,” and Netflix will issue a temporary verification code by email. All three are built for the account holder on a trip, but none of them actually asks why you need it.

The bottom line is that three years of this and password sharing has not ended so much as stratified. If the shows you want sit on Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, or HBO Max, the friction is now high enough that an extra member slot at $6.99 to $9.99 is probably the least irritating option, and profile transfer at least means whoever you cut loose keeps their watch history.

Everything else is still open, and our older round-up of streaming services that still let you share your password has needed less revising than I expected. Peacock and Paramount+ have had two years to close the door, but given how the Warner Bros. Discovery sale is going, I would not expect Paramount to make it a first-week priority.

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  Price

  $13 per month

  Free trial

  7 day free trial and 3 months free if you buy an Apple device

  Simultaneous streams

  6

  # of profiles

  6

  Originals

  Yes

  Live TV:

  Limited (There are live sports and some add-on channels offer live TV)

  Apple TV+ is a global streaming service which offers on-demand access to a growing list of exclusive content, including Severance, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, and much more.

  
  

• 

  Simultaneous streams

  3

  # of profiles

  6

  Originals

  Yes

  Live TV

  Limited (some add-on channels offer live TV)

  Price

  $8.99 per month by itself or $14.99 per month as a part of Prime

  Amazon Prime Video is the commerce giant’s contribution to the streaming world. Featuring movies and TV shows across a variety of genres as well as its own original content, there’s always something to watch.