Since the service launched in 2014, it has been sitting quietly on our devices. But all the while it has been growing like a weed, joyously embraced by millions. Tubi streamed 10 billion hours of content in 2024 and recently surpassed 97 million users, a jump of nearly 20 million from May, while paid services such as Netflix and Hulu grow evermore expensive while adding ad-supported tiers that still require a monthly subscription fee.
(Tubi is not to be confused with Mubi, the arthouse-movie-focused service and distribution company. Tubi is a fast-food drive-through compared to Mubi’s Michelin-starred tasting menu.)
The Tubi user interface.
Other FAST services, including Samsung TV Plus and Roku TV, are nipping at its heels, but Tubi appears to stand alone in fan loyalty. Search “Tubi” on any social media platform, and you’ll unearth such enthusiastic posts about it that you’ll wonder whether Fox planted the endorsements itself.
“Tubi is the s—” reads a Reddit post. “Uninstall Netflix and Prime, folks – learn to love Tubi and physical media,” director Andrew Rakich proclaimed on Bluesky. One X post, like most posts about Tubi, is deliciously over the top: “1. Nationalise Tubi. 2. Outlaw all other streaming services. 3. Put all content on Tubi. 4. Also: make it a social network.”
“We just try to really respect the viewer and what they’re into and lean into it, no matter how ridiculous and out of pocket it can be,” Parlapiano says. She wants the service to “feel too good to be free. That’s what we aim for – delight and surprise. We just want you to find your rabbit hole on Tubi.”
It’s a lot like cable, says Christy Turner, a 53-year-old photographer and IT consultant in Calgary, Canada. “It’s like picking up the remote in the old-school days, just scrolling through and finding something.”
Tammin Sursok in the Tubi original Blood, Sweat and Cheer.Credit: Tubi
Tubi also offers a growing – and equally eclectic – bunch of original programming, including Blood, Sweat and Cheer, starring former Home & Away star Tammin Sursok, and the daytime talk show-esque We Got Time Today, hosted by Deion Sanders and Rocsi Diaz.
“The joke is that Tubi will take anything, and sometimes it does feel that way when I see a movie like Sharks of the Corn, which is about sharks attacking a cornfield in Kentucky,” says 24-year-old Austin Elliott, a film enthusiast and Tubi superfan who lives in Connecticut.
On the other hand, Elliott says, “I appreciate that they’re so open door that they’ll take any independent filmmakers’ work, whether they spent $50 or $50 million making their projects.”
Gregory Frye, a 41-year-old American expat living in Europe and working as a consultant, says he installed a VPN to watch Tubi from afar because no other service offers the same thrill of discovery. “I feel like I’m walking into my dream rental shop, where I can find all this crazy stuff I didn’t know existed – and old-school cult classics,” he says.
One of Tubi’s many classics: the 1960s gothic soap Dark Shadows.Credit: ABC Television
Having her own movies in that shop made 41-year-old filmmaker Delinda Kay feel like a celebrity in her small town of South Boston, Virginia. For Black filmmakers such as herself, she says, Tubi is a godsend.
“Tubi doesn’t need to market for you,” Kay says. “Tubi is the market. … Where I live, that’s all that everyone talks about. For Black cinema, it’s golden.”
That’s one reason 50-year-old Dallas author Candice Johnson loves the service. Sure, not all the movies are perfect. It’s not uncommon to see a boom mic in a shot. But, she says, “we may not get to see these movies … otherwise. And that’s what keeps people watching. For some of us, we get to see people who look like us.”
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For better or worse, it seems like Tubi has no gatekeepers. Or, really, any keepers at all.
Tubi’s video-store quality can be a double-edged sword for filmmakers. Indie filmmaker Michael Sarrow’s second feature film, Smile as You Kill, follows a man who kidnaps an advertising guru and forces him to create an ad campaign to pay for his health care. It was made on a shoestring and will probably have the best chance of reaching audiences when it hits Tubi and other FAST services.
“It’s so much easier to get someone to give a small film like ours a shot when it’s free to watch and they only have to sit through a few ads,” Sarrow says.
But such films can be difficult to find on a service celebrated for being supersaturated with content. “There are millions of other movies on Tubi,” Sarrow says, “so how do you stand out?”
For viewers, the fact that nothing immediately stands out is part of the fun. It’s the quest for the next gem. “That’s what I love about Tubi,” says Schmersal, the Tubi Treasures hunter. “They kind of take in the strays.”
The Washington Post
