Your HBO Max subscription can be shared with up to five different profiles on the same account but is limited to three simultaneous streams.
HBO Max has grown to become one of the leading streaming services in the United States and the platform continues to draw in new users.
Although HBO Max does not have a family plan, you can create up to five different profiles and have three simultaneous streams on a singular account for both their ad-supported and ad-free plans.
How popular is HBO Max?
HBO Max was first launched in 2020 as a replacement for its predecessors, HBO Now and HBO Go, and it reflected Warner Bros. Discovery’s renewed focus on streaming content as a means to generate revenue.
This proved to be successful and by 2021, HBO Max had been downloaded 56.3 million times and had made the company $526 million in in-app revenue alone.
This success continued and by 2022, HBO Max had become more popular than Hulu and Disney+ in the United States, thanks to the variety of content available on the platform.
Can an HBO Max subscription be shared?
Even though HBO Max is currently among the most popular streaming platforms there are so many options to choose from when it comes to the different streaming services, that it can be difficult to find the right one for your household’s needs.
One of the things that usually gives people pause when they consider an HBO Max subscription plan for the first time, is that the platform only offers two plans: one with advertisements and one without, but no family plan.
However, even without a family plan option, the HBO Max platform will still allow you to create several profiles so that multiple people can share the subscription on a single account.
HBO Max allows their users on both the ad-supported and ad-free plans to create up to five profiles on each account.
This means that up to five members of your family will be able to create and use their own, individual profile on your account.
Profiles include the ability to create a personalised watch list, categorise the profile holder as an adult or kid, add a profile picture, and keep track of what everyone has watched on their own profiles through each individual’s profile.
This multiple-profile system is similar to what other streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu offer.
However, there are still some things, like simultaneous streaming restrictions, to keep in mind when you plan on sharing your HBO Max account with other people.
What can you watch with an HBO Max subscription?
One of the reasons why HBO Max has managed to grow in popularity so quickly, even within the competitive streaming market, is because of the sheer amount of content that is available on the platform.
HBO Max is owned by Warner Bros Discovery and, as a result, the platform has titles from the old HBO libraries, the WarnerMedia library, as well as many award-winning HBO Max original shows and films.
This culminates into over 10 000 hours of content, including popular titles like Friends, The Matrix Trilogy, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, and many more.
What do the different HBO Max plans cost?
Warner Bros. Discovery recently announced that they would be increasing the monthly subscription price for HBO Max across both of its plans from 12 January 2023.
This means that the current subscription options for the platform can be summarised as follows:
| Subscription plan | Ad-supported plan | Ad-free plan |
| Price |
|
|
To help justify the higher price of the Ad-free plan, it also allows you to watch content in 4K HDR and to download content to watch when you are offline.
Important things to keep in mind if you are sharing your HBO Max account
The fact that you can have multiple profiles on a singular HBO Max account may make it possible for you to share your account with many people inside and outside of your home and to split the subscription cost, but this is not always as simple as it seems.
It is important to remember that although you can have up to five profiles on your HBO Max account and effectively use an unlimited number of devices to access these five profiles, you will still only be able to stream on three devices at the same time.
You also need to share your login information with the people that you are sharing the account with so that they can access these profiles on their devices, which will allow them to make changes to the account.