The best subscription gifts to send your friends and family

In a year where the big streaming video platforms have continually gotten more expensive, Disney’s latest content bundle feels like a breath of fresh air. For $17 a month, you can gift your favorite TV junky access to Disney+, Hulu and Max ($30 / month gets you ad-free playback and downloads, among other premium features). Each platform has its own benefits and particular focuses, making it a package that covers a ton of ground.

Hulu is great for catching up on current programming from major networks plus a fair handful of original content like Only Murders in the Building and the treasure trove of great FX shows out there like The Bear and Reservation Dogs; it also has a solid rotating movie library. Max is the place to get HBO originals like Succession, House of the Dragon and The Last of Us along with classics like The Sopranos and The Wire. It also has a vast movie catalog and remains the only place to stream Friends. And, of course, Disney+ covers the massive Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars catalogs, including new movies like Inside Out 2 and shows like Agatha All Along. All told, together it’s a massive library with a ton of content you won’t find elsewhere. — Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Editor

Duolingo is currently the gold standard for learning a new language. The app offers lessons for dozens of languages (including a number of endangered languages), starting from the very basics, and it teaches in a fun and rather addictive way. You can use the app for free, but the Super Duolingo upgrade removes ads and gives you unlimited “hearts” so that making a mistake won’t slow your progress. It also builds customized personal lessons based on things that it thinks you need more help with.

Individual plans start at $7 per month (billed annually), but a $10-per-month annual family plan lets you share the app with loved ones. If you have a vacation to a foreign land coming up, getting Duolingo and learning the local language with your family can be pretty delightful. — N.I.

Being a human in the year 2024 is not easy, and the Headspace app can add some peace to a loved one’s day. It features a wide variety of guided meditations, including sessions for beginners as well as specific exercises that focus on reducing anxiety, learning breathing techniques, increasing your compassion and so on. It goes beyond meditation, though, with personalized content to help manage your stress levels throughout the day via different check-ins, meditations and video content.

There are also yoga and fitness sessions, and parents can also check out a “mindful parenting” category as well as play back stories for their kids. Plus, there are sleep tools like soothing music and “sleepcasts,” while other audio programs center on focusing, moving more and starting your day. For $13/month or $70/year, Headspace can be a great tool to bring someone much-needed peace of mind. — N.I.

You can almost think of MasterClass as an elevated streaming platform. Yes, it’s a learning app, complete with step-by-step instructions from A-list instructors, plus assignments that encourage trying new skills in the real world, but it’s also just a lot of fun to sit and idly watch. It makes a good gift for anyone you know that’s always quoting an article they just read or a documentary they just watched, but also for those who appreciate entertainment that’s a little more sophisticated than reality TV (not that there’s anything wrong with the latter).

The MasterClass lineup reads like the course catalog from a mythical university: David Sedaris teaches humor and storytelling, John Legend teaches songwriting, Amy Poehler teaches improv-based life skills, Roy Choi teaches intuitive cooking. Each class ranges from about two to eight hours and is split up into manageable five- to 15-minute lessons. If you faithfully follow along, taking notes and putting effort into the assignments, you’ll come out the other end better at whatever the topic was.

But I found MasterClass also lends itself to idle, popcorn-in-hand couch viewing. Everything is beautifully shot and set to lovely music, with plenty of backstory on the instructors and slo-mo close-ups. A subscription gives you access to classes on iOS and Android devices and Apple, Roku, Fire TV and Android TV interfaces.

Despite its big-name instructors and high production quality, a MasterClass subscription won’t run you much more than standard ad-free streaming services. Gift subscriptions are bundled by the year and range from $120 for an individual account and $240 for a premium account, which allows offline access and up to six devices at once. Keep an eye out: The gift packages often go on sale for the holidays. — Amy Skorheim, Reporter, Buying Advice

If you know someone who loves audiobooks but wants to support a service that isn’t Amazon or Spotify, Libro.fm is a good option. The service works with local booksellers — when you sign up, you can choose a store to support and they’ll get a portion of the sales. A $15/month subscription provides one audiobook credit and 30 percent off of any additional titles. If you’re giving this to a particularly avid listener, the $24/month subscription includes two book credits. Naturally, Libro has apps for iOS and Android, and you can download DRM-free files for playing on a computer or other device. And in my searching, Libro’s catalog seems extensive, with plenty of new titles and classics alike. — N.I.

Amazon’s Kindle lineup remains a juggernaut in the ereader space — if you know someone who got a new Kindle for the holidays, outfitting them with a Kindle Unlimited subscription will ensure they can get reading immediately. A $12 monthly subscription opens up access to millions of print books, thousands of audiobooks and a variety of magazine subscriptions. As with other Kindle content, you can read this all on a dedicated Kindle device or your smartphone, tablet or computer.

While Amazon touts millions of books, there’s a long tail of lesser known titles here, so don’t expect to find the newest or most popular books on the service immediately. But at this point, the catalog is large and diverse enough that most readers should find plenty of books to keep them busy. — N.I.

If you know someone with an iPhone and at least one other Apple device, chances are they’re already paying for a little bit of iCloud storage, and maybe a few other Apple services like Music or Arcade as well. If that’s the case, consider giving them an Apple One subscription. The basic plan offers a combo of Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and starts at $20 / month with 50GB of storage (you can add more on top of that for an extra charge). If you spring for the $26 Family plan, 200GB of storage can be shared with five other family members.

The $38 plan bumps storage up to 2TB and adds subscriptions to Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+ too, making it a good choice if you know anyone looking to expand their exercise routine. At this point, all of Apple’s offerings are pretty good – Arcade has a load of fun games with no ads, TV+ has a number of excellent shows and movies at this point including Severance, Disclaimer, Slow Horses, Silo and Pachinko, to name just a few. Meanwhile, Apple Music differentiates itself with features like spatial audio and lossless playback to go along with its massive catalog.

As with many other streamers, Apple has raised prices on basically all of its services in the last year or so, with Apple News+ coming in at $13 a month; Fitness+ and Apple TV+ both cost $10 a month now. These Apple One plans have also gotten a bit more expensive, but they offer significant savings and the convenience of just having one subscription to think about. — N.I.

Adobe is an undeniable juggernaut in the world of creative software, and it is well-known for Lightroom and Photoshop. Lightroom is an excellent tool for managing and editing photos, and Adobe’s photography-focused plans are useful for anyone who has an interest in making images they capture look as good as possible.

The company offers a few different options: For $10/month, you can get Lightroom and a whopping 1TB of storage. If that much storage isn’t necessary, there’s another $10 plan that includes 20GB of cloud storage and both Photoshop and Lightroom. If the person you’re gifting this to has been really good this year, you can spend $20 and get them both apps alongside 1TB of storage, which is ideal for anyone shooting photos in RAW. The plans with Photoshop also include Photoshop for the iPad, so keep that in mind if you’re getting this for someone who loves Apple’s tablet. — N.I.

Crunchyroll is the gold standard for anime fans. It offers more than 1,000 shows as well as digital manga, merch and much more. Some of the content is available for free, but choose one of the three paid tiers and you’ll get a lot more. A premium plan removes ads, unlocks access to the entire Crunchyroll library, provides access to new episodes just one hour after they air in Japan and opens up the manga collection.

The basic $8 / month tier lets you stream on one device only, but the $12 and $16 plans let you stream on four or six devices simultaneously, and they both offer offline access, which can be crucial for watching when you’re away from Wi-Fi. It also includes 10 or 15 percent off of “select” items in Crunchyroll’s store as well as free shipping. The more expensive plans also include access to Crunchyroll’s game vault, which includes titles for iOS and Android that come with no ads or in-app purchases. — N.I.

If you know a YouTube junky, you’ll be their favorite person if you make ads on the platform vanish. A $14/month (or $140 / year) YouTube Premium subscription removes all advertising, but there are a number of other benefits as well. If you’re watching on a phone or tablet, you can download basically any video and save it for offline playback. Videos also can play in the background, which means you can switch to other apps without stopping. This comes in handy for picture-in-picture, or if you just want to hear the audio while you switch away to send a text message.

Premium also comes with a subscription to YouTube Music, the company’s competitor to Spotify and Apple Music. It’s a pretty solid service, and it does a few things that Apple and Spotify can’t offer. For example, all of YouTube’s music video content lives alongside its standard streaming catalog, which means users can build playlists that combine videos uploaded to YouTube alongside official artist releases. It’s also one of the few music services that lets you upload your own music files so you can access them along with the streaming catalog. For $14, the combination of a better YouTube experience and a full-fledged music streaming app is a pretty good deal. — N.I.

If you know someone who could use a little more tranquility in their living space, consider gifting them a subscription to The Sill. The company sells a huge variety of plants online, but it also offers 3- or 6-month subscription boxes, where you can send someone a new plant every month. It lets you choose factors like “easy-care” for newbies or “pet friendly” if there are curious cats in the house. There’s also an orchid-specific subscription if you want to choose something a little fancier. The company also smartly does not auto-renew subscriptions, so you don’t have to worry about remembering to cancel. Shipping plants can feel perilous, but in my experience they’ve been really well-packaged, and if the plant is damaged you can just send a photo within 30 days to get it replaced. — N.I.

A Planta app subscription could make a perfect companion to some plants from The Sill. For $8 a month or $36 a year, Planta helps plant-lovers who might not have the greenest thumb take care of their flock. Using your phone’s cameras, Planta can identify plants and offer care tips. If one isn’t looking great, Planta will offer a treatment plan to get it healthy again. It also has a light meter which can analyze a room and figure out if it gets enough light to support a particular plant, and there are a variety of tools to keep a plant collecting organized. Finally, the app’s watering reminders take into account 30 different parameters as well as local weather conditions to make sure specific plants are getting the water they need. — N.I.

Yoga and meditation are two practices that are almost universally believed to be beneficial, but they’re also rather intimidating to start. A Gaia Fitness subscription could remove some of the barriers to entry for someone who needs a little more peace and quiet in their life. The service has a host of ad-free instructional videos to remove some of the mystery from yoga for those new to the practice.

It’s not limited to content for beginners, though, as you can find a ton of different courses across different styles, skill levels, how much time you can spend and more. There are also loads of guided meditations available with a variety of topics to focus on (sleep, stress relief, emotional wellness) as well as different styles like breathwork, visualization and lucid dreaming. You can also dig deeper into various topics with longer documentaries or check out a variety of curated recipes. Plans start at $14 a month, or $10 with an annual subscription. — N.I.

Yes, the digital world is great, but getting things out of your head and on to paper — real paper, not a notes app — can foster organization and inspiration alike. If you know someone who could use a little of that in their life who also appreciates good design, check out Field Notes. Every quarter, the company produces a new variation of its classic notebooks, utilizing different printing techniques, designs, colors and a host of other clever things to make each release a work of art of its own. Past editions have included tributes to the US national parks, a set of notebooks with intricate foil-stamped covers and a snow motif where each of the 99,999 books they produced had a unique snowflake design on the cover. A $120 annual subscription includes four quarterly releases (each of which usually contains two 3-packs of the quarterly edition) as well as subscriber exclusives with each release, random freebies throughout the year and an ongoing 10-percent discount. — N.I.