You don't need a cable bill to keep watching A&E. Here's every way to stream it online, and how to do it for free.
Reviewed and updated July 2026 by our cord-cutting team · 8 options
A&E is available without cable on Sling TV Blue, Sling TV Orange, Philo, Hulu with Live TV, Frndly TV, NOW TV, Spectrum TV Stream, or Spectrum TV Choice.
The cheapest way to watch Ae is Frndly TV for $8.99/month.
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Beyond this, we have been reviewing the best on streaming services since 2013, recommending highly-rated but little-known movies and shows: we find the gems that you haven't yet watched, that you will probably like.
Yes, with a free trial. A&E is on Hulu + Live TV, and you can watch it free for Hulu + Live TV's 3-day free trial. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing.
Hulu + Live TV plan adds 90+ channels to all that Hulu has on-demand. So along with all the Hulu Originals, you can enjoy streaming A&E live. Want even more channels? Hulu Live TV’s Entertainment Add-on adds a handful of news and lifestyle channnels you might enjoy.
It caps you at two simultaneous streams, the fewest of the big live-TV services; lifting that cap costs about $10 more a month.
Hulu + Live TV plans
Our breakdown of Hulu + Live TV →
Yes, with a free trial. A&E is on DIRECTV, and you can watch it free for DIRECTV's 5-day free trial. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing.
DIRECTV plans
Yes, with a free trial. A&E is on Philo, and you can watch it free for Philo's 7-day free trial. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing.
Formerly known as Tivli, Philo expanded beyond streaming in universities to streaming to the whole nation. They’ve also expanded their channel list, adding channels like A&E to their line-up, but they continued to keep their prices student budget-friendly.
It carries no sports and no local channels, so it only covers entertainment and lifestyle networks.
Philo plans
Yes, with a free trial. A&E is on Frndly TV, and you can watch it free for Frndly TV's 7-day free trial. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing.
Frndly TV is the cheapest way to stream A&E without cable. The price is low because it doesn’t have much sports or local news. But for lifestyle enthusiasts and true crime fans, there’s plenty of channels from the genres they enjoy.
It carries only a small set of mostly lifestyle and family channels, with no sports and no major news networks.
Frndly TV plans
No, not free. Sling TV carries A&E but has no free trial, so you pay from day one — at $45.99/mo it's the third-cheapest way to watch A&E on this list.
If you want to watch A&E, without sacrificing local news and other entertainment channels, it’s better to choose Sling Blue than Orange. There’s also the option of having both Orange and Blue, as well as all the add-ons Sling TV has to offer.
There's no ESPN on the Blue lineup, and local channels only come in a handful of markets.
Sling TV plans
No. Fubo doesn't carry A&E.
No. Paramount+ doesn't carry A&E.
No. Peacock doesn't carry A&E.
No. YouTube TV doesn't carry A&E.
No. Disney+ only streams the Disney family (ABC, FX, Nat Geo, ESPN and the Disney kids channels), and A&E isn’t part of it. For A&E on demand, the A&E Crime Central add-on on Amazon Prime (below) is your best bet.
No. HBO Max only streams the Warner Bros. Discovery family (HBO, Discovery, HGTV, TNT, CNN and the rest), and A&E isn’t part of it. For A&E on demand, the A&E Crime Central add-on on Amazon Prime (below) is your best bet.
Yes, with the A&E Crime Central add-on. Add it through Prime Video Channels for $4.99/mo and you get A&E’s true-crime catalog on demand without leaving the Prime app. It’s on-demand, so there’s still no live A&E feed, and you need a Prime membership ($14.99/mo) or standalone Prime Video ($8.99/mo) underneath it.
Prime Video itself won’t have the live channel, but its Channels store rents the network’s own app as an on-demand add-on, billed through Amazon.
The honest way to watch A&E for free is a free trial, and the trick is not to spend them one at a time. Start one, then start the next when it ends, and you can string together a few weeks of free live TV back to back, usually enough to cover a tournament or a playoff run without paying for a month.
If you're cutting cable for A&E, odds are you want History too. It's a sister channel, so every service above that carries A&E carries History as well, and the same free trials get you both. See our full guide to watching History without cable for the per-service breakdown.
| Service | From | Free trial | Plans | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hulu + Live TV |
$82.99/mo | 3 days | 2 | Get it |
| DIRECTV |
$94.99/mo | 5 days | 4 | Get it |
| Philo |
$28/mo | 7 days | 1 | Get it |
| Frndly TV |
$8.99/mo | 7 days | 3 | Get it |
| Sling TV |
$45.99/mo | None | 3 | Get it |
A&E and the US services that carry it are geo-locked to the United States, so your login stops working the moment you leave the country. A VPN fixes that: connect to a US server and the service sees a US address again. The catch is that streaming platforms actively block most VPN traffic, so the VPN you pick matters far more than the service does. These three reliably get back in:
A huge US server network (thousands of IPs across 15-plus cities) with SmartPlay DNS baked into every server, so streaming just works without extra setup. The best value of the top tier on a two-year plan.
Best for streaming A&E with: Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, Philo
Get NordVPN →The budget pick, and the one to get if the whole household travels: it allows unlimited simultaneous devices on one account, plus a Smart DNS for TVs. Reliable with the on-demand and lifestyle services.
Best for streaming A&E with: Hulu + Live TV, Philo
Get Surfshark →Whichever you pick, connect to a US city first, then sign in to A&E or the service that carries it as normal. Choose a VPN with a money-back window so you can confirm it un-blocks A&E before you commit.
No. A&E is a cable channel and doesn't broadcast over the air, so an antenna can't pick it up. An antenna only gets the free broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, The CW), which pair nicely with one of the services above; check which of those reach your address here.
Every service that carries A&E runs on the major streaming platforms, so you can watch on just about any TV, phone, or console. Here's how, device by device:
On Roku, you can watch A&E through Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, Frndly TV, and Sling TV. To set it up, add the channel from the Roku Channel Store, sign in, and open A&E in the live guide.
On Amazon Fire TV, you can watch A&E through Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, Frndly TV, and Sling TV. To set it up, download the app from the Amazon Appstore, sign in, and open A&E in the live guide.
On Apple TV, you can watch A&E through Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, Frndly TV, and Sling TV. To set it up, install the app from the App Store, sign in, and open A&E in the live guide.
On Android TV & Google TV, you can watch A&E through Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, Frndly TV, and Sling TV. To set it up, grab the app from the Google Play Store, sign in, and open A&E in the live guide.
On Chromecast, you can watch A&E through Hulu + Live TV, Philo, Frndly TV, and Sling TV. The gap: DIRECTV doesn't offer a Chromecast app. To set it up, cast it from your phone or use the built-in Google TV app, sign in, and open A&E in the live guide.
On Samsung & LG smart TVs, you can watch A&E through Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, Frndly TV, and Sling TV. To set it up, install the app from your TV's own store (Tizen or webOS), sign in, and open A&E in the live guide.
On phones & tablets, you can watch A&E through Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, Frndly TV, and Sling TV. To set it up, download the app from the App Store or Google Play, sign in, and open A&E in the live guide.
On game consoles, you can watch A&E through Hulu + Live TV and Sling TV. The gap: DIRECTV, Philo, and Frndly TV don't offer a game consoles app. To set it up, download the app from the Xbox or PlayStation store, sign in, and open A&E in the live guide.
Cheapest is the question everyone starts with, and it's the wrong place to stop. A $35 plan that drops A&E the month after you sign up hasn't saved you anything. So the first number we pay attention to is the real one, what you owe after the introductory month ends, not the figure in the ad. From there it comes down to whether the channels you actually want sit in the base plan or get stranded in an add-on, how the service behaves day to day (a slow app and a useless DVR wear on you faster than you'd expect), and how much of a fight it puts up when you decide to leave.
Whatever lands at the top of a list like this is the service that gets most of that right for the most people. Once in a while that's also the cheapest one. Usually it isn't.
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