If you’re tired of the rising cost of streaming, like I am, free streaming services are an easy way to find something new to watch without reaching for your wallet. And just as there are tons of paid streaming services to choose from, there are equally many free services where you can watch thousands of movies and TV shows at no cost.

These apps are typically referred to as FAST (free ad-supported TV) services, and some of the biggest names you might already recognize include The Roku Channel, Plex, Pluto TV, MyFree DirecTV, and Tubi.

Tubi, in particular, is one of the largest free streaming services around. It’s owned by the Fox Corporation, which means it has a deep content library to draw from, including more than 275,000 TV episodes and movies, as well as around 300 original shows.

That said, as great as it is to have that much content available for free, one of the first questions I always ask about any streaming service is whether it streams in 4K. Most smart TVs nowadays output a 4K image for a cleaner, sharper picture. But if a streaming service doesn’t stream in 4K, the image on your TV might not look as crisp as it could. So, with that in mind, how does Tubi fare when it comes to offering 4K content?

number of users

80 million

notable shows

Hemlock Grove, Babylon 5, Spartacus, Gotham, Columbo

notable movies

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Child’s Play, White House Down, Knives Out, It

Premium Subscription

No

4K is rare in free streaming

Tubi streams in 720p

Unfortunately, Tubi, like many other free streaming services, doesn’t stream any of its content natively in 4K. That includes its free on-demand shows and movies, as well as its hundreds of free ad-supported TV channels.

The resolution that Tubi streams most of its content in is actually 720p, which may sound a bit ancient in 2026. That means that if you’re watching Tubi on a 4K TV, the image quality simply won’t look as sharp as it could and may appear more pixelated. Though that isn’t exactly the end of the world either.

At the end of the day, Tubi is a free streaming service, so if your objective is to save some money and stream without a recurring monthly bill, there will be some compromises. In Tubi’s case, that means watching ads and dealing with reduced streaming quality.

Though in all fairness to Tubi, it isn’t alone in this regard. Most streaming services that offer free content, like Plex, Fubo, and Pluto TV, don’t stream in 4K because it eats up bandwidth and costs more. So most resort to streaming at 720p or 1080p. The outlier for free 4K streaming is The Roku Channel. While it doesn’t stream all of its content in 4K for free, it does offer a rotating selection of 4K content for free through its 4K Spotlight channel.

It’s worth noting that Tubi has streamed in 4K before. Last year, Fox hosted the Super Bowl on Tubi for free, and it offered it in 4K, the first time it has ever streamed a program in 4K on the service. However, since then, no other events have been streamed in 4K on Tubi, and it hasn’t yet been announced whether the 2026 Super Bowl will be streaming in 4K for free on Tubi either.

Overall, if you’re looking for 4K content for free on Tubi, you won’t find any, but it’s still worth checking out the service for its large selection of free TV shows and movies. If you’re specifically on the hunt for free 4K shows and movies, The Roku Channel is where you’ll want to look, though the selection is limited.