You don't need a cable bill to keep watching MSNBC / MS NOW. 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 · 5 options
With MSNBC, get the latest original news and coverage as well as commentary from sister news channel NBC.
MSNBC is available without cable on Sling TV Blue, DIRECTV, Hulu with Live TV, Peacock, YouTube TV, or Spectrum TV Choice.
The cheapest way to watch Msnbc is Peacock for $10.99/month.
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 MSNBC / MS NOW 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 MSNBC / MS NOW without paying a cent, at least to start.
All signature DirecTV Stream plans come with MSNBC and other news channels like CNN, HLN, and Fox News. They also come equipped with 4k channels, unlimited DVR, and on-the-go viewing. But they are expensive, with the most basic plan priced at $86.99/month. So, if you don’t mind losing a couple of channels (particularly local and sports), then your best option is to go for DirecTV Stream’s “MyEntertainment” genre pack. At just $35/month, the plan already comes with MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, and 40 more channels. It’s also bundled with Disney+, Hulu, and Max at no additional cost, which makes it ideal for film and TV fans. It’s also more affordable than Sling, which is the next cheapest way to watch MSNBC live.
The price climbs steeply between tiers, and a regional sports fee gets added on top.
Hulu with Live TV combines Hulu originals with more than a hundred live channels, including MSNBC and other news outlets like CNN, HLN, and Fox News. It’s a popular choice for families, since Hulu with Live TV often comes bundled with Disney+ and ESPN+, so there’s something to watch for everyone. A potential downside, however, is that Hulu with Live TV only allows for two simultaneous streams. For reference, YouTube TV allows for three, while DirecTV Stream and Fubo offer unlimited simultaneous streams.
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 unique cable alternative that lets you pick 15 out of 60 popular channels, including news outlets like MSNBC, CNN, and BBC World News. You can then change your selection every 30 days. It should be noted, however, that Spectrum TV Choice is only available to Spectrum internet users, and you can only subscribe to it via phone call or a branch visit. Local channel availability is also quite limited.
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’s extensive channel lineup, unlimited cloud DVR, and familiar interface are some of the reasons why it remains a popular cable replacement option for cord-cutters. One particularly interesting feature is the service’s multiview function, which lets you watch four channels at once. Multiview applies to MSNBC and other news, sports, business, and weather channels.
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 Blue is a live TV plan that comes with nearly 50 of the most popular cable channels in the country. In select markets, it also carries local ABC, NBC, and FOX channels, but users in those areas are charged a monthly $5 broadcast fee. If you want to boost your news lineup, Sling does offer a “News Extra” add-on for $6/month. It carries business channels like CNBC and international news channels like NDTV World.
There's no ESPN on the Blue lineup, and local channels only come in a handful of markets.
The honest way to watch MSNBC / MS NOW 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 MSNBC / MS NOW, odds are you want USA Network too. It's a sister channel, so every service above that carries MSNBC / MS NOW carries USA Network as well, and the same free trials get you both. See our full guide to watching USA Network without cable for the per-service breakdown.
| Service | Price | Free trial | Channels covered | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIRECTV |
$89.99 | 5 days | 54 | 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 |
Cheapest is the question everyone starts with, and it's the wrong place to stop. A $35 plan that drops MSNBC / MS NOW 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.
