Pluto TV reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A free, ad-supported streaming service with live linear channels and on-demand movies, where the sheer volume of ads and the shakiness of playback define its central tension.
What users love
A huge free catalog of classics and live channels
The core reason people forgive everything else: a free library of old movies, series and themed live channels so deep that many call the selection better than paid subscriptions and a full cable replacement.
You have a great selection of choices, even better than some of the subscriptions I actually pay for.
Great TV Shows and Movies bye bye cable. Hello Pluto.
classic Nickelodeon sitcoms including iCarly and Victorious, and the Drake and Josh episodes that aren't on Paramount+ and Netflix.
The channel-surfing feel with no click barrier
What many love is the linear format itself: channels that just keep playing recreate the classic TV experience, remove the agony of picking something, and let you channel-surf the way cable once did.
instead of having to pick something it has channels with things that are constantly playing. It really replicates a classic TV experience well.
Choosing what to watch is the hard part half the time, Pluto makes that way easier with no click barrier, and the ability to channel surf
its like watching cable tv, for free. great!
Free and reachable for those on a tight budget
For viewers on a tight budget the free price is the whole point: Pluto stands in for pricey subscriptions and cable, gets recommended for when "money is tight," and is praised as a way to watch favorites at no cost.
has great selections of movies 🎬 and it's free! can't beat that. go Pluto
it has a lot of good shows and movies i recomend it if money is tight for sure
Good for people with no money to buy a TV
What users hate
More ads than actual content
Viewers repeatedly count it out: a 20-minute show stretches to nearly an hour because of ad blocks stacked several spots deep, turning watching into a test of patience.
Watch more ads than the actual movie or show
Now I watch a 20 minute tv show. 28 adds I had to watch from start to finish.
16 ad spots with 6 ads each.
Freezes, stalls and loses audio
The picture locks up every few minutes, audio drifts out of sync with the lips, and a frozen ad won't even let you change the channel — all of it reportedly worse after updates.
I have it loaded on my TV and every channel freezes. Even worse when it freezes you can't change the channel.
for about a year now, it constantly is freezing every few seconds. It will freeze anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes.
this app had been lagging lately. The lips of the characters move the voice comes later.
Live TV autoplay you can't turn off
The app opens straight into loud live TV and keeps playing while you merely browse — with no pause and no setting to stop it, which is especially maddening with kids around.
As soon as I open the app, its on live TV with the volume up. No way to turn it off or pause it.
There is constantly something playing on auto play and it can't be switched off, so you are always distracted.
it continuously plays videos no matter what you have selected. it doesn't give you a chance to just quietly browse what you want to watch
Doesn't remember where you stopped
It loses your place in a movie or show, then forces ads on you when you try to scrub back to it; next episodes start not at the beginning but around 12 minutes in — right before the first ad break.
the app never remembers where you stopped watching. Then when you try to fast forward to get to where you actually DID stop watching, you have to wait for ads.
next episodes don't start at the beginning, they start nearly 12 minutes into the episode
why does every episode start 5 min in 30 seconds before the first commercial brek
Won't open or connect
For a chunk of users the app simply stopped launching or keeps insisting "check your internet connection" while every other service works fine; reinstalling doesn't help, and it reads like a mass outage on Pluto's end.
i cant even load pluto anymore...wont even open. cleared the cache, restarted and everything. nothing works.
Won't connect. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling the app, It says it's unable to connect, I need to check my internet connection
It won't even open after the latest update.
Forced sign-in for a "free" app
People resent that a free service demands an account, a password and even age verification; sign-in confuses login with sign-up, locks you out for too many attempts, and gates content behind registration.
keeps asking me to sign in when I'm trying to sign up. it's simple put a button that says don't have an account sign up here.
WHY push a sign in for a free application that does NOT require payment? WHY must I have an account? It's ridiculous.
locked out of my account because of too many login attempts. This is a tv streaming app, not a banking app.
Ads that are mistimed and inappropriate
Spots cut in seconds before a scene ends, repeat endlessly, blare louder than the film itself, and drop medication, horror and adult-themed ads into kids' and classic programming.
the ads are so frequent, and also in the absolute worst places, like 10-15 seconds before a scene ends...why?
suddenly there are ads even on kids' programs. You do not put ads on kids' programs.
the incredibly vast volume difference between the actual show and the commercials
Channels and favorites keep disappearing
Pluto pulls channels and favorite shows, resets your chosen favorites every time you switch, hides the search function after an update, and recycles the same content for weeks without refreshing.
When browsing your favorites and you select a channel the guide returns to the default categories when you try to change to another channel.
You've removed the Team Spirit channel and now the TBN channel.
took away the search option after update....way to hard to find something specific now
Casting and device compatibility break down
It runs on the phone, but casting to a TV or Chromecast brings audio desync, a black screen or crashes; on some Android devices and boxes Pluto just refuses to launch at all.
Casting issues prevent me from casting shows to my pixel tablet. This is the only app that I can't cast to it from.
Sound does not sync with video when casting to chromecast. Closed captioning does not work.
my android box uses android14 but apparently this app wont work with that.