Pluto TV Drops to 75 Million Users as Rivals Gain Share

Pluto TV now counts about 75 million monthly active users — down from 89.6 million in 2025 and below the 80 million milestone it trumpeted back in May 2023. Skydance, formerly Paramount Skydance, disclosed the figure to shareholders on Monday as it reported third-quarter earnings, and the number lands at an awkward moment: CEO David Ellison closed his merger with Warner Bros. Discovery just last month with the stated goal of building a streamer that can stand up to Netflix and Disney.

The decline is steep, and it's recent. Here's the trajectory, drawn from company announcements and internal slide decks viewed by Business Insider:

• 2023: 80 million monthly active users (company announcement, May 2023)
• 2024: 84.2 million (internal slide deck)
• 2025: 89.6 million (internal slide deck)
• 2026: 75 million (company announcement, November)

The internal numbers came from an April town hall led by Paramount streaming finance chief Elizabeth Wright, where employees were told Pluto grew by 5.4 million users in 2025. The slides didn't specify whether those figures were annual averages or year-end totals. Either way, the direction has reversed.

What happened inside Pluto TV?

Two changes stand out. The first is technical. Paramount spent months merging the tech platforms behind Paramount+ and Pluto TV — a project known internally as "convergence." On Monday, Skydance's CEOs told shareholders the first phase is "largely completed," with Pluto now running on the same tech stack as Paramount+ across all major streaming platforms.

Running both services on one platform "lowers our cost to operate, speeds up product development, and gives us shared personalization and monetization capabilities across our free and subscription offerings," Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz wrote in their shareholder letter.

The second change was cosmetic, and possibly costly. In September, Pluto overhauled its interface to put on-demand content front and center, demoting the always-on live channels that had defined the service since its 2014 launch. The shareholder letter said the redesign and improved personalization are "already improving the user experience." Two Paramount streaming employees, however, said they thought the layout change could have contributed to the drop in monthly active users.

How far behind have the rivals pulled?

Pluto was an early mover in free ad-supported streaming TV, or FAST, launching alongside Tubi in 2014 and getting bought by Viacom in 2019. The Nielsen numbers now tell a harder story.

Pluto first appeared on Nielsen's monthly streaming charts in July 2022 with 0.8% of US TV viewing. Its individual share peaked at 1% in February 2025, after which Nielsen began reporting it together with Paramount+. Paramount's combined streaming share stood at 2.3% in August — the same level as March 2025.

Tubi, meanwhile, has taken off. The Fox-owned streamer climbed from 1% of US TV viewing in February 2023 to 1.9% in August, and its monthly active users grew from 74 million in September 2023 to 110 million as of August.

The Roku Channel grew faster still. It rose from a 1.1% share in May 2023 to 2.9% in August, enough to rank fifth among streamers — behind YouTube, Netflix, Disney's streamers, and Amazon's Prime Video. Fox, which announced its purchase of Roku on Friday, said the company reaches over 100 million households across its platforms.

And the ceiling keeps rising. YouTube has become by far the most-watched streaming service on US televisions, soaring from a 5.7% viewing share in May 2021 to 15.8% in August, according to Nielsen. Netflix, its closest rival, sits at 7.7%.

What does this change for marketing leaders? The FAST ad inventory that Pluto sells is reaching fewer viewers, while Tubi and the Roku Channel — soon under one owner in Fox — control a growing share of free, ad-supported eyeballs. Media buyers weighing connected-TV budgets now face a free-streaming market where the one-time pioneer is shrinking and its challengers are compounding.