Cable vs IPTV Cost: How to Compare a Full Year, Line by Line

To compare cable and IPTV costs fairly, add up a full year of your cable or satellite bill, including theme packs, box rentals, fees and sales tax. Compare that with a 12-month internet TV plan for the same number of screens, plus any device you have to buy. Our 12-month plans start at $77 for one screen.

Why the monthly price misleads

TV prices are advertised by the month, and the advertised figure is rarely what you pay. Box rentals are charged per TV. Theme packs and premium channels sit on separate lines. Sales tax is added at the end, and introductory discounts often have an end date that is easy to miss.

A full year evens all of that out. It captures every rental, every fee and the tax, and it shows what happens when a promotional price ends partway through. It also matches how many internet TV plans are sold: our longest plan covers 12 months with one payment.

This guide uses no sample cable prices. Prices vary by provider, region, bundle and promotion, and any figure we printed would be wrong for most readers within months. Instead, you’ll fill in your own bill, which is the only comparison that matters for you.

What goes into a full year of cable or satellite

Get your latest bill, on paper or in your provider’s app or account page. Ideally use a bill that covers a normal month, without one-time charges such as installation. Then find each of these lines:

• Base package. The core channel package, sometimes called basic or starter.
• Theme packs and extra channels. Sports, movies, kids, news or international packs, and any channels you added one at a time.
• Premium add-ons. Movie channels or other extras billed separately.
• Equipment. Rental of a box or receiver for each TV, and any recording box or cloud recording fee.
• Other monthly fees. Any line that isn’t a channel or a box, whatever it’s called on your bill.
• Credits and discounts. Promotional credits and bundle discounts, with their end dates.
• Sales tax. GST, HST, QST or PST, usually at the bottom of the bill.

Satellite bills follow the same pattern, with receivers instead of cable boxes. If you bought your satellite equipment outright, there may be no rental line, but count any repair or replacement plan you pay for.

Reading a bundled bill

When TV, internet and home phone come on one bill, the TV share can be hard to see. Bills usually group charges by service, with a heading for each, but discounts are sometimes listed once for the whole bundle.

1. Find the TV section and copy only its lines into the worksheet.
2. Look for a bundle or multi-service discount. Note it separately; don’t subtract it from the TV lines yet.
3. Check one-time charges, such as a technician visit or a pay-per-view rental, and leave them out of the monthly figures.
4. Compare two or three recent bills. If the TV total changes from month to month, use an average.

The bundle discount is dealt with later, when you ask your provider what internet alone would cost. That keeps the comparison honest: the discount only matters if it disappears when TV goes.

Satellite and rural homes

Satellite TV is common where cable doesn’t reach, and those are often the same places where home internet is slower or has data caps. That changes the comparison more than the TV price does.

Before comparing costs, make sure your connection can carry live TV at all. Run a speed test in the evening, when connections are busiest, and compare it with what one HD stream needs. If it can’t manage one steady stream, the cheapest TV option is the one that works, whatever the worksheet says.

If the connection is borderline, a mixed setup may suit you: internet TV on the main TV, the satellite receiver kept for a while as a backup, and the worksheet run for both options after a month of real use.

Sales tax by province and territory

Sales tax on TV services can add more than a month’s worth of charges over a year, so don’t leave it out. The rates below come from the Canada Revenue Agency’s rate table and the summary of sales taxes in Canada on Wikipedia, both current in October 2026. Nova Scotia’s HST fell from 15% to 14% on April 1, 2025.

In the provinces with a separate provincial sales tax, whether it applies depends on the service and the provincial rules. Your bill settles it: if it shows a PST line, use the combined rate; if it only shows GST, use 12.60. Apply the same rule to anything you buy for internet TV.

The fill-in-your-bill worksheet: cable or satellite

Copy this table onto paper or into a spreadsheet. Fill the monthly column from your bill, multiply each line by 12, and total it. If a promotion ends during the year, use the regular price for the months after it ends.

If your TV is part of a bundle, use only the TV lines here. A bundle discount spread across services needs a separate check, covered further down.

What internet TV costs over a year

With internet-delivered TV, the subscription is one line. Our plans are paid in advance for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months, and the 12-month plan has the lowest monthly cost. The price depends on how many screens can stream at the same time.

Each plan includes 50,900+ live channels, 150,000+ movies and series, the TV guide, and catch-up on supported channels. You pay by Interac e-Transfer from any Canadian bank, and plans never renew automatically. Current prices for every plan length are on our pricing page.

A “screen” is one stream playing at a time, not one TV in the house. A household with four TVs that rarely uses more than two at once may only need two screens; our guide on how many connections you need walks through the count.

One-time costs: devices and player apps

Internet TV has no box rental, but each TV needs something to run a player app. That can be the TV itself, a streaming stick or a set-top box. Count what you already own before you buy anything.

• Smart TVs. Many recent TVs can run a player app directly. Our guide to IPTV apps on Samsung and LG TVs explains which models work and where a stick is still the better choice.
• Streaming sticks and boxes. A one-time purchase per TV. Prices vary by model and sale, so check current prices from a retailer you trust. Our streaming device buying guide compares the options.
• Phones, tablets and computers. These usually need nothing extra.
• Player apps. Many are free. Some charge once or yearly for extra features, sometimes per device. Our comparison of free and paid IPTV players shows what you get for the money.

For a fair yearly figure, divide a device’s price by the years you expect to use it. A stick you keep for three years adds a third of its price to each year, not the whole price to the first.

The internet plan you already pay for

Internet TV runs over your home internet, so it’s tempting to count that connection as free. It is, if your current plan already handles it. It isn’t, if you have to upgrade.

Check two things. First, speed: you need enough for the number of streams you watch at once, at the quality you want. Our guide to internet speed for IPTV gives the figures per stream and per quality. Second, data: if your plan has a monthly usage cap, live TV for several hours a day can use a lot of it, and the same guide shows typical use per hour.

If you need a faster plan or a higher cap, add the difference in monthly price, times 12, to the internet TV side of the comparison. If your plan already has room, add nothing.

The internet TV worksheet

Fill this in the same way as the cable worksheet. Every line is yearly, so the two totals compare directly.

Worked example: one viewer, one TV

Take a person who lives alone and watches on one TV, with a cable box rented for it. Their cable year is the base package, any packs, one box rental and any other fees, multiplied by 12, then by the tax multiplier for their province.

On the internet side, one screen for 12 months is $77, or $6.42 a month. If the TV can run a player app, there’s nothing else to buy. If it can’t, add a share of a streaming stick.

The quick test: if the cable bill’s monthly total with tax is above $6.42, plus a monthly share of any device, the internet plan costs less over the year. The worksheet gives the exact gap.

One thing a single viewer should check: whether they watch on a phone or tablet away from home. That still counts as one screen if the TV is off at the time.

Worked example: a couple with two TVs

A couple with a TV in the living room and one in the bedroom usually rents two boxes from a cable provider. Count both rentals in the worksheet, along with any fee for the second outlet or receiver.

On the internet side, the question is how often both TVs play at the same time. If it’s often, two screens for 12 months cost $142, or $11.83 a month. If it’s rare, one screen at $77 may do, with the second TV used when the first is off.

Devices are where couples often over-spend. If one TV is a recent smart TV, it may only need the app, and only the older TV needs a stick. Check before you buy two.

Worked example: a family of four

A family with three or four TVs, plus tablets and phones, is where box rentals add up fastest on a cable bill. Count every box, and every recording box or recording fee, in the worksheet.

On the internet side, count the busiest evening of the week, not the number of devices. If the living-room TV, a bedroom TV and a teenager’s tablet are all streaming at once, that’s three screens: $199 for 12 months, or $16.58 a month. Four at once is $255, and our largest plan, five screens, is $305. Our multi-screen plans page lists every option.

Families should also add the devices honestly. Three streaming sticks are a real cost in the first year, even if they’re cheap per year over their life. That’s fine, as long as it’s in the worksheet.

Monthly, 3-month, 6-month or 12-month?

The plan length changes the yearly cost as much as the number of screens. Paying month by month for one screen is $17 a month. The 3-month plan is $27 ($9 a month), the 6-month plan $47 ($7.83 a month), and the 12-month plan $77 ($6.42 a month).

The longer plans cost less per month but ask for more up front. A sensible path is to start with one month while you check that your devices and internet handle it, then move to a longer plan once you’re sure. Because plans never renew automatically, there’s no subscription to cancel when one ends; we send a reminder before the end date.

New customers are also covered by our 7-day money-back guarantee. The conditions are on the refund policy page.

The second year looks different

A one-year comparison can flatter either side, because the first year carries one-time costs. On the internet side, that’s the devices you buy. On the cable side, it may be an installation charge, or a promotional price that hasn’t ended yet.

Run the worksheets for year two as well. Leave out devices you bought in year one, unless you expect to replace them. On the cable side, use the regular price that applies once any promotion ends; your provider can tell you what it will be, and your agreement may list it.

If the internet side only wins in year two, that’s still a real saving; it just takes a little longer to arrive.

Bundles: check the internet price before you cancel TV

Many households get TV and internet from the same provider, with a discount for having both. When you drop TV, that discount may go with it, and the internet line on your bill can go up. That change belongs in the comparison.

1. Ask your provider for the price of your current internet plan on its own, with no TV.
2. Ask whether your contract or agreement has an end date or a charge for changing early.
3. Ask how and by when rented boxes must be returned, and whether there’s a charge if they aren’t.
4. Add any increase in the internet price, times 12, to the internet TV side of your comparison.
5. Add any one-time charge for leaving early to the first year only.

Get the answers in writing, through the provider’s chat or email, so you have them if the bill doesn’t match.

Keeping a smaller package instead of cancelling

Cancelling everything isn’t the only option. Some households cut down to the smallest package and add internet TV for the rest. Wikipedia’s article on cord-cutting calls this “cord shaving”: switching to a cheaper package of channels rather than dropping it.

It can make sense if one person in the house relies on the cable box, or you’re not ready to switch every TV at once. Run the worksheet twice: once for the full switch, and once for the smaller package plus internet TV. Often the smaller package costs more than it saves once its box rental and tax are counted, but your bill decides.

A related choice is how internet TV fits with the streaming apps you already pay for. Our comparison of IPTV and streaming apps covers how the two work together.

Costs that aren’t on any bill

Some differences don’t show up in dollars but still matter when you decide.

• Your internet becomes your TV. When the internet is down, so is internet TV. Cable TV can keep working through some internet outages, depending on how your provider delivers it.
• Setup is on you. No technician installs a player app, though the steps are short and support helps if you get stuck.
• Equipment is yours. Devices you buy can move with you, to a new home or the cottage. Rented boxes go back.
• Flexibility. Plans without automatic renewal mean you decide every time whether to continue.

None of these change the worksheet totals, but they’re worth weighing if the two totals come out close.

Mistakes that skew the comparison

Most lopsided comparisons come from the same handful of slips. Check your worksheets against this list before you decide.

• Promo price against regular price. Comparing a cable promotion with a regular internet TV price, or the reverse, tells you nothing about next year.
• Tax on one side only. Use after-tax totals on both sides, or pre-tax on both.
• Counting devices instead of streams. Five devices in the house don’t mean five screens if only two play at once.
• Charging a device to every year. A stick bought once is a first-year cost, or a share per year, not a yearly fee.
• Different plan lengths. Compare twelve months with twelve months; a monthly price against a yearly one hides the difference.
• Forgetting the bundle. A lost bundle discount on internet is part of the cost of switching.

Before you switch: a short checklist

1. Fill in both worksheets with real figures from your bill and your devices.
2. Count your busiest evening to choose the number of screens.
3. Check that every TV can run a player app, or price the devices you need.
4. Run our in-browser speed test on the TV’s connection, ideally in the evening.
5. Ask your provider for the internet-only price and any charges for leaving.
6. Start with a short plan, test on every TV, then choose a longer plan.

Our guide to eight questions to ask before paying for any internet TV service is a good companion to the worksheets.

Need help with the numbers?

If the worksheet leaves you unsure how many screens to choose or which plan length fits, ask us. Message Online Support with the number of TVs and other devices in your home, the most that play at once, and the devices you have. We’ll suggest the smallest plan that covers you.

When you’re ready, every IPTV subscription we offer is paid once by Interac e-Transfer, arrives by email and in the support chat within minutes of payment, and ends on the date you chose unless you decide to renew.

Questions people ask