Paramount+’s One-Week Free Trial Is Back, Baby

Watching TV and movies has only gotten more expensive over the course of the year. The landscape is more fractured than ever, and so it’s not unusual for your favorite shows and movies to be strewn across half a dozen streaming services.

Signing up for one isn’t the spur-of-the-moment decision it was years ago, either, when subscriptions practically cost pocket change. It’s nice to have a free trial to test the waters. Many streaming services have ditched their free trials, though, including Paramount+ for a while.

Now it’s back. Grab it while you can, because while Paramount+ doesn’t quite have the name recognition of Netflix, Hulu, or even Tubi, it has a very worthwhile catalog of shows, films, and the all-important murder docs.

after the trial

You score the weeklong free trial whether you choose Paramount+ Premium or Paramount+ Essential, so you may as well go for the fancier service. As long as you cancel or downgrade before the week is up and Paramount charges your debit or credit card on file, you won’t end up stuck paying $13 per month for Premium.

Premium doesn’t subject you to the horrors of advertisements, except for live TV viewing. You can download movies and show episodes to watch offline, and you get access to 4K, Dolby Vision and HDR10 showings. You also get access to CBS Live and all of Showtime.

Essential costs $8 per month once your free trial is up, if you choose that as your trial (maybe you don’t want to chance forgetting to cancel or downgrade). You get none of the features included in Premium that I mention above, except you can access some (but not necessarily all) episodes of Showtime series.

So go sign up in order to watch the classics, such as Beavis and Butt-Head, Twin Peaks, and an awful lot of other shows and movies, new and old.