Best free option
DIRECTV
AMC's draw is appointment nights, the Walking Dead spinoffs and the Anne Rice run, so line the five days up with a premiere rather than burning them on reruns.
Start free trial →
You don't need a cable bill to keep watching AMC. Here's every way to stream it online, and how to do it for free.
Reviewed and updated September 2026 by our cord-cutting team · 8 options
You can watch AMC on Sling TV Orange, DIRECTV, Philo, YouTube TV, or Spectrum TV Stream.
The cheapest option to watch AMC is Philo for $25/month.
The fastest ways to watch AMC without cable, at a glance
AMC's draw is appointment nights, the Walking Dead spinoffs and the Anne Rice run, so line the five days up with a premiere rather than burning them on reruns.
Start free trial →Philo is built for exactly this channel: no sports, no news, just the entertainment tier AMC sits in, and Bundle+ throws AMC+ in on top.
Get Philo →Seven days of Philo covers a whole AMC weekend movie block and the week's new episode, and cancelling takes one click.
Start free trial →If AMC is one of six channels you watch rather than the only one, YouTube TV carries it inside the widest lineup on this page.
Get YouTube TV →We routinely follow over a hundred live TV and streaming services in the US, closely monitoring their plans, features, and channel lineups. All of that work is on our cord-cutting hub.
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.
AMC 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 Stream likely has everything you’re looking for in a live TV package. Apart from a stacked channel lineup that has AMC and a wide variety of channels, it also offers unlimited DVR and up to 20 simultaneous streams. It also has the highest streaming picture quality among live TV services, which is why it’s preferred by most sports and movie fans. Its high price is what usually makes cord-cutters look the other way, but DirecTV Stream is trying to remedy that by releasing skinny bundles that are around the same price range as Sling. Unfortunately, none at the moment carry AMC — to watch the channel, you’ll have to stick to the regular DirecTV Stream plans.
The price climbs steeply between tiers, and a regional sports fee gets added on top.
DIRECTV plans
No, not free. Sling TV carries AMC but has no free trial, so you pay from day one. At $45.99/mo it's the second-cheapest way to watch AMC on this list.
Sling TV is telecom provider Dish’s answer to affordable cordless TV. It has two plans: Sling Orange and Sling Blue. They share some of the same popular channels, including AMC, but Sling Orange has exclusives, namely: Disney Channel, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, Freeform, and MotorTrend. The rest of its lineup covers all bases for all ages, making it a well-rounded alternative to cable.
One stream at a time, capped at 720p, and the price has crept up over time.
Sling TV plans
AMC is on Philo, and you can watch it free for Philo's 7-day free trial. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing.
Philo is an affordable live TV plan that carries popular entertainment and lifestyle channels, nothing more, nothing less. Because it doesn’t have anything extra, like local channels or live sports, it’s able to offer more than 90 channels for as little as $28/month. With that, however, come impressive features like unlimited DVR and up to four simultaneous streams. It even gives you the option to add AMC+ for an extra fee.
It carries no sports and no local channels, so it only covers entertainment and lifestyle networks.
Philo plans
AMC is on YouTube TV, and you can watch it free for YouTube TV's 7-day free trial. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing.
YouTube TV is a live TV streaming package featuring a diverse channel lineup (though not a lot of local sports), capable cloud DVR storage, and decent streaming quality. But what makes it as popular as it is is its familiarity and ease of use. If you’re already on YouTube anyway, subscribing to YouTube TV is a breeze, and figuring out its interface comes intuitively. It helps, too, that it’s widely available on devices, from big smart TVs to tiny mobile phones.
At around $83 a month it's one of the priciest options, and add-ons push the bill past $100 fast.
YouTube TV plans
No, not free. Spectrum TV Choice carries AMC but has no free trial, so you pay from day one. At $53.19/mo it's the third-cheapest way to watch AMC on this list.
Spectrum TV Choice is an internet television service that is available only by call-in and only to Charter Spectrum internet customers.
The channels available to you will depend on your location, but usually you can choose 15 more channels to add to your plan. Please be careful that after 30 days, you might not be able to change the list of 15 channels you choose.
You can read more in our dedicated explainer here: Spectrum TV Choice Explained: Plans, Pricing, Channels.
The advertised $30 nearly doubles at checkout: a compulsory broadcast fee of up to $23.20 lands on top, before taxes. You also need Spectrum internet at a serviceable address, and you usually have to sign up by phone.
Spectrum TV Choice plans
Our breakdown of Spectrum TV Choice →
Yes, with the AMC+ add-on. Add it through Prime Video Channels for $8.99/mo and you get AMC’s shows plus the wider AMC Networks catalog without leaving the Prime app. It’s on-demand, so there’s still no live AMC 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 AMC 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 AMC, odds are you want BBC America too. It's a sister channel, so every service above that carries AMC carries BBC America as well, and the same free trials get you both. See our full guide to watching BBC America without cable for the per-service breakdown.
| Service | From | Free trial | Plans | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIRECTV |
$89.99/mo | 5 days | 4 | Get it |
| Sling TV |
$45.99/mo | None | 3 | Get it |
| Philo |
$25/mo | 7 days | 2 | Get it |
| YouTube TV |
$82.99/mo | 7 days | 2 | Get it |
| Spectrum TV Choice |
$53.19/mo | None | 1 | Get it |
AMC 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 AMC with: 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 AMC with: YouTube TV, Philo
Get Surfshark →Whichever you pick, connect to a US city first, then sign in to AMC or the service that carries it as normal. Choose a VPN with a money-back window so you can confirm it un-blocks AMC before you commit.
No. AMC 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 AMC 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 AMC through DIRECTV, Sling TV, Philo, YouTube TV, and Spectrum TV Choice. To set it up, add the channel from the Roku Channel Store, sign in, and open AMC in the live guide.
On Amazon Fire TV, you can watch AMC through DIRECTV, Sling TV, Philo, and YouTube TV. The gap: Spectrum TV Choice doesn't offer a Amazon Fire TV app. To set it up, download the app from the Amazon Appstore, sign in, and open AMC in the live guide.
On Apple TV, you can watch AMC through DIRECTV, Sling TV, Philo, YouTube TV, and Spectrum TV Choice. To set it up, install the app from the App Store, sign in, and open AMC in the live guide.
On Android TV & Google TV, you can watch AMC through DIRECTV, Sling TV, Philo, YouTube TV, and Spectrum TV Choice. To set it up, grab the app from the Google Play Store, sign in, and open AMC in the live guide.
On Chromecast, you can watch AMC through Sling TV and Philo. The gap: DIRECTV, YouTube TV, and Spectrum TV Choice don'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 AMC in the live guide.
On Samsung & LG smart TVs, you can watch AMC through DIRECTV, Sling TV, Philo, YouTube TV, and Spectrum TV Choice. To set it up, install the app from your TV's own store (Tizen or webOS), sign in, and open AMC in the live guide.
On phones & tablets, you can watch AMC through DIRECTV, Sling TV, Philo, YouTube TV, and Spectrum TV Choice. To set it up, download the app from the App Store or Google Play, sign in, and open AMC in the live guide.
On game consoles, you can watch AMC through Sling TV, YouTube TV, and Spectrum TV Choice. The gap: DIRECTV and Philo don't offer a game consoles app. To set it up, download the app from the Xbox or PlayStation store, sign in, and open AMC in the live guide.
Cheapest is the question everyone starts with, and it's the wrong place to stop. A $35 plan that drops AMC 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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The people who test, price-check, and update our cord-cutting coverage.
Four criteria, each out of 100. The overall score is their weighted average: content 38%, value 27%, apps 22%, streaming quality 13%.
Value for money
0The most expensive service of its kind.
100The cheapest service of its kind.
Content quality
0None of the ten most-watched cable channels, or nothing from our recommended list.
100All ten channels, or the deepest catalog of titles we recommend.
Apps and devices
0A one-star app that runs on none of the 12 major devices.
100Five-star apps on all 12 major devices.
Streaming quality
0Below 720p.
1004K on the plan we price.
Services are compared only against others of the same type and price range, so a full live TV package is never ranked against a single-channel app. Read the full methodology →