Max outlines Australian pricing ahead of launch (and it’s cheaper than the USA!)

HBO’s Max streaming service will cost from $7.99 per month in Australia, but there’s some complexity in the plan offerings.

HBO announced that it would launch in Australia at the end of March last month and today (with a big hat tip in the direction of TV Blackbox’s Steve Molk, thanks Molk!) it’s announced just how much each of its plans will cost.

When I wrote up the Max announcement, I did a little back-of-envelope analysis of Max’s US offerings and prices which suggested if it kept to the three tier system it has there and didn’t offer Australian discounts, we’d be looking at something like $15.75/month, $26.77/month and $33.07/month for Max subscriptions.

It has kept to three plan tiers, but it’s notable that the pricing is rather lower than those estimates. Here’s how the plan pricing stacks up for each Max tier in Australia when it becomes available from the 31st of March:

The introductory plan pricing will apply through to the 30th of April 2025 and be valid for up to 12 months, after which the slightly higher pricing will kick in.

Those prices are substantially lower than the US pricing, and that does make me wonder what the content comparison is going to be like. As per TV Blackbox’s report, Max in Australia will get new content at the same time as it launches in the US, covering the major HBO franchises – your House of Dragons, The Last of Us and such – as well as a library of Warner Bros content and Turner Classic Movies content.

What’s not there – or at least not mentioned – are some of the other programming options that are part of Max in the states, such as the deal that it cut with All Elite Wrestling for its content in the States.

Sure, that’s maybe a niche comparison, but something tells me that Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t particularly interested in undercutting its US market – so it’ll be genuinely interesting to see what’s fully there when it launches in a little under two weeks time.