You don't need a cable bill to keep watching MTV. 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 · 11 options
You can stream MTV live without cable on Fubo, DIRECTV, Philo, Hulu with Live TV, Sling TV + Entertainment Extra, YouTube TV, Spectrum TV Stream, Youtube TV Entertainment Plan , YouTube TV Sports + News + Entertainment Plan, or Youtube TV News + Entertainment + Family Plan .
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Yes, with a free trial. MTV is on Fubo, and you can watch it free for Fubo's 7-day free trial. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing.
Fubo is known as a sports-forward live TV streaming service, but it also airs a good number of entertainment channels, including MTV. Unfortunately, it had to let go of Discovery and A&E channels because of a carriage dispute, but it’s still home to plenty of specialty sports channels like Willow TV and Golf Channel. You can also add Paramount+ as an add-on if you want to watch even more MTV shows.
It leans heavily on sports, and a regional sports fee of a few dollars up to about $17 by ZIP gets added on top.
Fubo plans
Yes, with a free trial. MTV 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 with Live TV combines 90 live channels with countless on-demand titles, as provided by Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+. Hulu’s Live TV plan is already packed with content, but if you want more, it gives you the option to add Paramount+ with Showtime, which is where you’ll find MTV classic hits and present shows.
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. MTV 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 is expensive, but with that price tag comes everything good about cable, minus the hassle. It has a consistently crisp streaming quality, unlimited DVR, on-the-go viewing, and more than a hundred live channels, including MTV, local news, and more regional sports networks than any other service. Unlike DirecTV cable, DirecTV Stream is contract-free, which means you can cancel it anytime you wish. Just be ready for a potential price hike, considering DirecTV Stream has gone through a couple in the past few years alone.
The price climbs steeply between tiers, and a regional sports fee gets added on top.
DIRECTV plans
Yes, with a free trial. MTV 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 currently the most affordable way to watch MTV and plenty of other entertainment channels. The live TV plan only costs $28/month, and it already comes equipped with cloud DVR, on-the-go viewing, and simultaneous streams. It’s able to offer all these and more because it doesn’t come with local channels or live sporting events, so if those are dealbreakers for you, you can either pair Philo with an antenna or consider more comprehensive live TV services, like Sling or DirecTV Stream.
It carries no sports and no local channels, so it only covers entertainment and lifestyle networks.
Philo plans
Yes, with a free trial. MTV 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 comprehensive cable alternative that gives you access to more than a hundred live channels, including MTV, MTV2, and MTV Classic. The great thing about YouTube TV is that you can record as many shows as you want using its easy-to-use cloud DVR. And apart from a free trial, it also offers new customers an introductory discount (it varies, but right now, it’s half price for two months). That said, it notoriously doesn’t have the best picture quality, and it doesn’t carry A&E channels. Like Sling and Hulu with Live TV, YouTube TV offers Paramount+ as an add-on, in case you want to watch MTV on demand.
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. Sling TV doesn't carry MTV.
No. Paramount+ doesn't carry MTV.
No. Peacock doesn't carry MTV.
No. Frndly TV doesn't carry MTV.
No. Disney+ only streams the Disney family (ABC, FX, Nat Geo, ESPN and the Disney kids channels), and MTV isn’t part of it. The best way to watch MTV without cable is YouTube TV above (free-trial).
No. HBO Max only streams the Warner Bros. Discovery family (HBO, Discovery, HGTV, TNT, CNN and the rest), and MTV isn’t part of it. The best way to watch MTV without cable is YouTube TV above (free-trial).
No. There’s no Prime Video Channels add-on for MTV, so Prime can’t stream it on demand or live. The best way to watch MTV without cable is YouTube TV above (free-trial).
The honest way to watch MTV 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 MTV, odds are you want CBS too. It's a sister channel, so every service above that carries MTV carries CBS as well, and the same free trials get you both. See our full guide to watching CBS without cable for the per-service breakdown.
| Service | From | Free trial | Plans | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fubo |
$84.99/mo | 7 days | 2 | Get it |
| 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 |
| YouTube TV |
$9.99/mo | 7 days | 2 | Get it |
MTV 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 MTV with: Hulu + Live 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 MTV with: Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, Philo
Get Surfshark →Whichever you pick, connect to a US city first, then sign in to MTV or the service that carries it as normal. Choose a VPN with a money-back window so you can confirm it un-blocks MTV before you commit.
No. MTV 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 MTV 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 MTV through Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, and YouTube TV. To set it up, add the channel from the Roku Channel Store, sign in, and open MTV in the live guide.
On Amazon Fire TV, you can watch MTV through Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, and YouTube TV. To set it up, download the app from the Amazon Appstore, sign in, and open MTV in the live guide.
On Apple TV, you can watch MTV through Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, and YouTube TV. To set it up, install the app from the App Store, sign in, and open MTV in the live guide.
On Android TV & Google TV, you can watch MTV through Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, and YouTube TV. To set it up, grab the app from the Google Play Store, sign in, and open MTV in the live guide.
On Chromecast, you can watch MTV through Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, and Philo. The gap: DIRECTV and YouTube TV 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 MTV in the live guide.
On Samsung & LG smart TVs, you can watch MTV through Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, and YouTube TV. The gap: Fubo doesn't offer a Samsung & LG smart TVs app. To set it up, install the app from your TV's own store (Tizen or webOS), sign in, and open MTV in the live guide.
On phones & tablets, you can watch MTV through Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV, Philo, and YouTube TV. To set it up, download the app from the App Store or Google Play, sign in, and open MTV in the live guide.
On game consoles, you can watch MTV through Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV. The gap: Fubo, 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 MTV in the live guide.
Cheapest is the question everyone starts with, and it's the wrong place to stop. A $35 plan that drops MTV 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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