Cutting the cord means trading a single cable bill for a mix of streaming subscriptions, and the real savings depend on exactly which services you keep. This calculator adds up your cable bill against your actual streaming choices — including a Live TV add-on for local channels, the standalone-internet surcharge many providers charge, and the one-time cost of an antenna or streaming device — so the comparison reflects your household instead of an industry-wide average.

Why the same streaming bundle saves different amounts for different people

The calculator's three presets show how much the math shifts based on what you actually need. A Basic Cord-Cutter keeping just one streaming service plus a $30 antenna saves over $80/month against a $120 cable bill. A Full Streaming Bundle of three services with no antenna still saves about $60/month. But add a Live TV add-on at $72.99/month to replace cable's local news and live sports, and the monthly savings shrink to just $9 — the closer your streaming setup gets to replicating everything cable offers, the smaller the gap in price.

The standalone-internet surcharge is easy to miss

Many cable providers bundle internet and TV at a discount, and cancelling the TV portion often bumps your internet bill by around $20/month to the standalone rate. This calculator includes that surcharge as a checkbox specifically so it isn't overlooked — leaving it checked when it applies (or unchecking it if your provider's internet-only rate is unchanged) keeps the monthly-savings number honest instead of overstating how much cutting the cord actually saves.

Why the 5-year number differs between the two tabs

The main result card's '5-Year Savings' stat is a flat calculation — today's monthly savings times 60 months, assuming nothing changes. The 5-Year Savings tab instead compounds cable prices at 4% per year and streaming prices at 9% per year, reflecting that streaming bundles have generally raised prices faster than cable in recent years. It also adds your one-time equipment cost to the streaming side immediately, since that's when you'd actually pay it. Because of the different streaming growth rate, the escalating projection can show smaller — or even negative — long-term savings compared to the flat estimate, which is why both numbers are shown rather than just one.

What the Content Check tab is really measuring

Cost isn't the only tradeoff. The Content Check tab flags what a pure streaming bundle without a Live TV add-on will miss: same-day local news, live sports broadcasts, and same-day network shows (Hulu typically delivers those next-day instead). Adding any Live TV add-on — modeled here as a single input so you can price out YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, or a similar service — immediately flips those rows to covered, which is exactly why the Sports Fan preset pairs a Live TV add-on with a smaller monthly savings number: you're paying for completeness, not just content variety.