You don't need a cable bill to keep watching Food Network. Here's every way to stream it online, and how to do it for free.
Reviewed and updated June 2026 by our cord-cutting team · 12 options
You can stream Food Network live without cable on Sling TV Blue, Sling TV Orange, DIRECTV, Philo, Hulu with Live TV, Spectrum TV Stream, Youtube TV Entertainment Plan , YouTube TV Sports + News + Entertainment Plan, Youtube TV News + Entertainment + Family Plan , or YouTube TV.
I started A Good Movie to Watch in 2013, and for a long time cord-cutting was something we covered because readers kept asking about it, not because we went looking for it. The prices changed that. We now keep paid accounts on more than a hundred live TV and streaming services in the US, and we hold onto them on purpose, since the only reliable way to know that a service has raised its price or dropped a channel is to be the one getting the bill. The rest of that work is on our cord-cutting hub.
This Food Network guide has been up since 2021, and we come back to it whenever something we wrote has stopped being true, which is more often than it should be. No company pays us to move it up the list, and we hold no stake in any of them. The affiliate links on this page are part of how we keep it free to read, but they have no effect on the ranking or on anything we say about a service. When one of them is overpriced or a chore to use, we tell you that, even the ones paying us a commission.
Start with these. Every service below comes with a free trial, so you can watch Food Network without paying a cent, at least to start.
DirecTV Stream is an all-encompassing live TV package. It has everything you’ll need from a cable-replacement plan, including unlimited DVR, simultaneous streams, on-the-go viewing, and local channels. It also carries channels similar to the Food Network, like HGTV, HLN, and Discovery. Its only real drawback is its hefty price. The service has seen multiple price increases in recent years, though it is trying to remedy this by coming up with skinny bundles aimed at rivaling Sling.
The price climbs steeply between tiers, and a regional sports fee gets added on top.
Philo is an affordable way to add live channels to your streaming lineup. It’s pretty limited in its offerings (no news and sports channels here) but it does carry a good number of popular channels, including The Food Network and The Cooking Channel. It also boasts unlimited DVR and up to three simultaneous streams—not bad for $28/month.
It carries no sports and no local channels, so it only covers entertainment and lifestyle networks.
Hulu with Live TV’s most obvious edge over other cord-cutting plans is that it comes with Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu on-demand at no additional cost. Hulu, in particular, has a robust catalog of on-demand titles dedicated entirely to food and cooking. Shows like Tucci in Italy, Next Level Chef, Kitchen Nightmares, and the Food Network’s very own Chopped are perfect complements to your food-filled viewing.
It caps you at two simultaneous streams, the fewest of the big live-TV services; lifting that cap costs about $10 more a month.
Spectrum TV Choice is a cordless live TV plan exclusive to Spectrum internet users. You’ll have to call or visit a branch to sign up, but the trouble may well be worth it if you’re the type to try out different channels. True to its name, Spectrum TV Choice lets you select up to 15 channels (from a pool of 60) and change them every month according to your liking. Since you’ll be picking among local channels, you’ll also be charged a “flat tax” of $23.20/month.
You need Spectrum internet at a serviceable address, you usually sign up by phone, and the build-your-own list is fiddlier than a normal app.
YouTube TV is a live TV streaming service that boasts great DVR capabilities, an intuitive interface, and a robust channel lineup you can boost with add-ons. Not that you might need them, considering YouTube TV has more food-related channels than any other live TV service in this list. But if you choose to customize your plan, you’ll have a wealth of options from premium channels like Showtime and HBO to sports passes like the NBA League Pass and NFL Sunday Ticket.
At around $83 a month it's one of the priciest options, and add-ons push the bill past $100 fast.
These don't offer a free trial, so you'll pay from day one. They're here for completeness and for the cases where they're cheaper or carry something the trial services don't.
Sling TV’s other live TV plan is Sling Blue. Though it’s missing key channels like ESPN and Disney, it has channels you won’t find in Sling Orange like FS1, NFL Network, and USA, making it a better fit for all-around sports fans. Food Network fans will also find much to like in Sling Blue’s lifestyle lineup. And if you’re hoping to get local channels, you’ll be happy to know Sling Blue streams affiliates of FOX, ABC, and NBC in select markets. Just be warned, Sling Blue charges a mandatory $5/month if you do get local channels in your area.
There's no ESPN on the Blue lineup, and local channels only come in a handful of markets.
Sling TV’s Sling Orange is a live TV plan that gives you access to popular channels like AMC, HGTV, and The Food Network for just $46/month. It also carries exclusive channels, like ESPN and the Disney Channel, which you won’t find in Sling’s other plan, Sling Blue. Both plans are easy enough to sign up for and cancel, plus they have add-ons in the form of premium, international, and specialty channels. However, if ESPN and Disney are non-negotiable in your household, then Sling Orange is the way to go.
One stream at a time, capped at 720p, and the price has crept up over time.
Now TV is a cable alternative offered exclusively to Xfinity users for $20/month. It carries popular live TV channels like the Food Network and TLC, offers 20 hours of DVR, and comes with Peacock Premium at no additional cost. Now TV also has what it calls “Now StreamSaver,” which bundles Netflix and Apple TV+ to your plan for an extra $15/month. Your total bill will depend on what internet plan you’re on, but prices generally start at $40/month.
It's Comcast's NOW TV and needs Xfinity internet at your address, so most people can't subscribe.
Spectrum TV Stream offers nearly 90 channels, many of them popular ones like Food Network and HGTV, for just $40/month. It doesn’t carry sports and local channels, which means you won’t get hidden broadcast fees or surcharges here. For the price, however, you might get more channels and features in plans like Sling Orange or Blue, or even in DirecTV Stream’s skinny bundles.
It's gated to Spectrum internet customers, so you can't subscribe without their home internet.
Imagine: What if you wanted YouTube TV, but only for the entertainment channels? You can now enjoy that dream through the new YouTube TV Entertainment Plan. It’s one of many skinny bundles that YouTube TV recently introduced so that viewers can save up on streaming costs. How? Rather than pay for the full base plan– whose extensive line-up automatically means additional RSN and local programming fees, mind you– subscribers who only want entertainment can get entertainment through this skinnier package. As of writing, the Entertainment Plan also happens to be the cheapest way you can enjoy YouTube TV.
It's an entertainment-only tier, so it carries no sports or news channels.
You could look at this plan as a combination of three skinny bundles, but really, the YouTube TV News + Entertainment + Family Plan is simply the YouTube TV base plan, just without all the sports channels. Obviously, that means this plan isn’t meant for sports fans– any stray ones who wandered to this page might suit the YouTube TV Sports Plan better. But for families without any sports fan living at home, switching to this package makes sense for the whole family. Removing the sports channels means removing the pesky RSN fees, while still keeping all the features and all the channels you already love from YouTube TV. Still not convinced? It’s 15% off the cost of the original YouTube TV base plan.
It skips the sports channels, so it's only worth it if you don't need them.
While one of the skinnier bundles now offered by YouTube TV, this plan is rather unexpected. After all, isn’t the point of making smaller, more affordable streaming plans? The combination of all three surely would cost a lot. Sports + News + Entertainment = Expensive? Surprisingly not. Despite combining all the three, somehow the cost is five whole dollars short of the original YouTube TV monthly base plan. It’s almost like getting a discount. If your plan will only be used by adults– there’s not much child-friendly channels in the line-up– swapping to this plan saves you a little for a rainy day.
Not interested in entertainment? Check out YouTube TV Sports + News Plan.
It's close to the full YouTube TV price, so the slimmer tiers often make more sense.
The honest way to watch Food Network 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 Food Network, odds are you want Investigation Discovery too. It's a sister channel, so every service above that carries Food Network carries Investigation Discovery as well, and the same free trials get you both. See our full guide to watching Investigation Discovery without cable for the per-service breakdown.
| Service | Price | Free trial | Channels covered | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIRECTV |
$89.99 | 5 days | 54 | Get it |
| Philo |
$25 | 7 days | 37 | Get it |
| Hulu with Live TV |
$88.99 | 3 days | 57 | Get it |
| Spectrum TV Choice |
$53.19 | 7 days | 41 | Get it |
| YouTube TV |
$82.99 | 7 days | 68 | Get it |
| Sling TV Blue |
$50.99 | None | 35 | Get it |
| Sling TV Orange |
$45.99 | None | 25 | Get it |
| NOW TV |
$20 | None | 18 | Get it |
| Spectrum TV Stream |
$45 | None | 41 | Get it |
| Youtube TV Entertainment Plan |
$54.99 | None | 20 | Get it |
| Youtube TV News + Entertainment + Family Plan |
$69.99 | None | 33 | Get it |
| YouTube TV Sports + News + Entertainment Plan |
$77.99 | None | 36 | Get it |
Cheapest is the question everyone starts with, and it's the wrong place to stop. A $35 plan that drops Food Network 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.
Some of the links on this page are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you sign up through one. It never costs you anything extra, and that money is part of how we pay writers and keep the site free to read.
What it doesn't do is buy a place on the list. We order these services by price, by the channels they carry, and by how they hold up in actual use, and a commission has no bearing on any of it. Plenty of the services we link to get called overpriced or a pain to use right here on the page. Prices and lineups also change constantly, so it's worth checking the current numbers on the provider's own site before you sign up for anything.
The people who test, price-check, and update our cord-cutting coverage.
