With the rising cost of streaming service subscriptions and cable, many people might feel limited by what they’re able to watch. It’s important to be able to unwind after a long, stressful day at work or school with a great movie or TV show, but the popular streaming services are not affordable to everyone.

In recent years, numerous free streaming services have come out, offering viewers a chance to view a wide variety of films and television without paying a cent. Here are four of the best free streaming services that you can watch on any device, along with a tool to help you find where you can stream any film or show you’re looking for. 

Tubi

Tubi has it all: documentaries like Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” classics such as “The Night of the Hunter” and “The Apartment” and popular comedy films such as “Friday” and “There’s Something About Mary.”

Unless you’re a die-hard “Columbo” fan, you probably won’t find much on Tubi in terms of TV, but they more than make up for it with their diverse, decade-spanning selection of films. Though the site may not feature thousands of popular, award-winning films, Tubi has always been one of my go-to sites for finding obscure hidden gems that aren’t available elsewhere.

Tubi also features a limited number of live television channels, including The TMZ Channel, the NFL Channel, as well as a variety of news stations, both local and national.

You’ll encounter a substantial amount of ads on Tubi, but not having to pay a pricey subscription fee can make the ads worth sitting through. 

Amazon FreeVee

Briefly known as IMDb TV in its early days, Amazon FreeVee is similar to Tubi. They offer a seemingly random, but often surprising, selection of TV shows and films.

On FreeVee, you can finally catch up on classic TV dramas like “Mad Men” and “Lost,” and if you’re in the mood for a movie, you can watch everything from “The Purge” to “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.” 

FreeVee also hosts its own original content with shows such as “Judy Justice,” which is essentially a reboot of “Judge Judy,” and “America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation.” Additionally, FreeVee offers a few oddly specific live television channels such as Divorce Court, Wipeout XTRA and Buzzr, a channel that shows classic episodes of game shows ranging from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Kanopy

If you have a local library card, chances are you have access to Kanopy. Unlike Tubi and FreeVee, Kanopy is completely ad-free. However, you are only given five to 10 viewing credits per month depending on your library.

Currently, Kanopy’s library includes content from channels like BBC, PBS and the History Channel, as well as a large selection of titles from Kino Lorber, a distributor that focuses on classic films, foreign films and arthouse films.

NIU currently has a limited Kanopy subscription, which means students can only watch the 350+ films specifically licensed by the university for classes and other educational purposes. However, many local libraries have access to the full Kanopy library so it’s worth checking to see whether you’re eligible. 

Pluto TV

Like Tubi and FreeVee, Pluto TV is run by ads. However, Pluto TV puts more of a focus on its live television selection.

Pluto TV features a vast array of channels including Black Cinema, Terror, ‘80s Rewind, Westerns and Paramount Movie Channel, which features films produced by its parent company, Paramount. 

Pluto TV also has its own rotating library of On Demand content featuring a similarly wide selection to Tubi and FreeVee. The content of the service will be of particular interest to classic film lovers, but they have many newer films available as well. Many of the films that are streamed on the live TV section of the site are also available to watch on demand.

Despite its impressive and diverse selection, I tend to avoid Pluto TV due to its awkward and clunky interface. The channels are easy to scroll through, but it’s difficult to navigate their on-demand section. The on-demand section is poorly organized and is impossible to look through without having a live TV window covering part of your screen. However, because of the quality of content they have available, Pluto TV is still a good option for any movie lover.

JustWatch

Because some of these free streaming services don’t have the most user-friendly interfaces, it can be difficult and time consuming to find what you’re looking for. An app called JustWatch makes things significantly easier.

On JustWatch, users can select which streaming services they have access to and search for whichever film or TV show they may be looking for. JustWatch will then tell you which of your streaming services it’s available on. If what you’re looking for isn’t streaming everywhere, the app also provides links to multiple options for digital rental and purchase.

JustWatch has saved me a lot of time over the years and I always make sure to recommend it to everyone I know. After all, it can be frustrating to spend half an hour searching for a movie on every single streaming service, only to find out it’s unavailable anywhere.