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The One With the Streaming: Here’s Where to Watch ‘Friends’ Online for the Series 30th Anniversary
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Quick Answer: Watch every season of Friends with a Max subscription starting at $9.99/month, or by purchasing episodes through Prime Video. You can also get three months of Max included with a DirecTV Stream subscription.
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Get Max Subscription From $9.99/month
When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month or even your year, you can always tune into Friends and relive the memories of Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) making a truly awful trifle, or Ross (David Schwimmer) saying the wrong name at the altar.
With the 30th anniversary of the show coming after the passing of Perry last year, it’s a bittersweet time to return to the series. Premiering in 1994 and running for 10 full seasons on NBC, it still makes our list of the 100 Best TV Sitcoms of All Time. “The idea of friends being the family you choose had its power, but mainly because they were these Friends, played by these people,” wrote Rolling Stone‘s Chief TV Critic Alan Sepinwall. Perry’s highly-personal memoir released just months before his death continues to remain on Amazon’s bestsellers lists online.
Along with rewatching Friends: The Reunion, here’s how to watch all the past episodes of Friends online with Monica, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, and Chandler from your own couch.
How to Watch Friends Online on Max
You can stream every episode of Friends with an Max subscription. The streaming service starts at $9.99 a month for the most basic, ad-supported plan, but once you sign up you can binge watch all 10 seasons of the show with unlimited streaming.
Get Max Subscription From $9.99/month
Can You Watch Friends for Free Online?
Similar to Disney+, Max doesn’t currently offer a free trial, but there’s still a way for you to stream all of the streaming service’s content for free without paying the standard $9.99 monthly subscription. AT&T customers can get Max included with eligible Unlimited plans. (Check out if your plan qualifies for a free Max subscription on att.com.) Cricket Wireless customers, meantime, can also get the ad-supported Max plan with the company’s $60 monthly package. You can also get three months of Max included with a DirecTV Stream subscription (after that, your Max subscription will cost the standard $15.99 a month for the ad-free package).
How to Watch Friends Without a Max Subscription
Aside from Max, your best bet for watching the entire iconic series is by purchasing it on DVD or Blu-ray with the Friends 4K box set, which officially releases on September 24. When you buy it, you’ll always have access to the hit show at any time, even if you don’t have WiFi or don’t want to pay to subscribe monthly to Max.
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Friends: The Complete Series features all 236 original episodes spread over 25 Blu-ray discs, with the episodes remastered and released in 4K Ultra HD quality for the first time. The box set also comes with more than two hours of bonus content, including behind-the-scenes featurettes, blooper reels and more.
If your DVD-playing days are well behind you, you can still stream all the classic Friends episodes if you have an Amazon Prime account with Prime Video. You can buy each season of Friends on Prime for $14.39 each, or you can purchase specific episodes for $2.99 a piece, from memorable ones like when Phoebe performs “Smelly Cat” for the first time, to the one where Ross gets his sandwich stolen, or the one where a turkey gets stuck on Joey’s head.
Watching Friends on Prime is also a good option if you’ve never seen the show before and want to see what it’s all about. Once you download the episodes, they are yours to keep, so you can watch Friends online, on your TV or computer anytime you want.
Is Friends Still on Regular Cable?
There’s still a way for you to watch Friends and feel like you’re at Central Perk with the cast even if you don’t have Max or a Prime account.
TBS regularly streams Friends, playing every single episode in order, just like you would’ve watched them when they aired on TV (though this time, you don’t have to wait a week to watch the next episode). You can livestream channels like TBS with a DirecTV Stream free trial (plans go up to $79.99/month after that).
You can sign up for a Hulu + Live TV plan, which lets you watch a ton of live TV, including access to channels like TBS, Bravo, CBS, and ABC (though check ahead of time to see which ones are offered near you). The ad-supported package costs $76.99/month, and also comes with Disney+ and ESPN+.
Get Hulu + Live TV From $76.99/month
Another option: Sling TV is an easy way to watch channels like TBS if you’re not paying for a standard cable package at the moment. The Sling Blue plan carries TBS as part of your subscription, and it starts at $22.50/month for your first month of streaming. The price increases to $45/month after the trial period.
Get Sling Tv From $22.50/month
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