My Philo Review 2026: I Love This Budget Service Despite Its Limitations

Philo offers a single streaming TV package, Core, which costs $33 a month and includes 70+ live channels and unlimited DVR. The service is able to keep costs down by omitting sports, local channels, and major news networks like CNN, MS NOW, and Fox News—which of course means you’ll be missing out on a lot of popular programming. But it’s one of the lowest-cost streaming TV services you get, and the monthly fee includes HBO Max Basic with Ads and discovery+. There are also options for add-ons like STARZ and MGM+.

As I was researching this Philo review, I found Philo to be easy to use and navigate. The live TV content all plays in 720p resolution, which doesn’t always look great on my 4K TV set, but channels loaded quickly, and I never experienced any issues with grainy images or buffering. I actually liked the lower resolution because it reminded me of channel surfing on a TV in the 1990s, adding to my nostalgia as I streamed classic shows like the Angela Lansbury mystery Murder, She Wrote.

Philo seems to be distancing itself from a live TV format, and on most channels, you can freely rewind and replay episodes from the beginning just as you would with an on-demand streamer. You can even set up Philo so that most channels automatically let you play a show from the beginning rather than mid-broadcast.

Philo’s unlimited DVR function proved to be incredibly useful, letting me fast-forward through commercials and save TV shows and movies in bulk. When I pulled up an episode of The Daily Show during my Philo review research, clicking Save in the viewing options automatically added the show to a Saved section, accessible in a site navigation menu at the top of my TV screen. Philo records that episode automatically, but it also records all future episodes, keeping everything in my Saved folder for 12 months (or as long as I keep the show “saved”).

I’ve seen reports from customers on Reddit that TV shows and movies can end up being saved for longer than a year, because the timer starts over whenever a specific title is rebroadcast. For example, let’s say you record 2002 romantic drama A Walk to Remember in February, as I did last week. If the movie shows again on Philo in June, that 12-month clock starts over, extending the shelf life of your saved movie. “This is how I watch The Breakfast Club whenever I want,” one Reddit user posted recently. “I never remove it from saved and every time it airs, it extends my 1 year.”

The obvious drawback with Philo is that it doesn’t have major sports or news channels, nor does it include local channels. However, this service has the edge on some of its competition by providing access to the entire AMC+ library (including Mad Men on demand!) as well as popular Warner Bros. Discovery channels, including Discovery Channel, TLC, and HGTV. Of course, it’s also a big win that a Philo subscription includes HBO Max, albeit with ads.

Generally, Philo is mostly limited to entertainment, and a lot of what I found while surfing the channels during my Philo review research stage was ambient TV stuff that I’d normally have on in the background while doing chores: Think old sitcoms and dramas, food shows, true-crime investigations, and blue-collar reality shows.

The service includes a handful of add-ons that let you bulk up on content from specific networks: See the full list below. Each add-on starts with a seven-day free trial.