New Deal Grants Students Hulu & Disney+ for Only $4/month

In college? Then you might get a major discount nobody is talking about.

Apr 16, 2024

Do you go to college? Do you like watching or streaming movies and television shows? Have you ever wanted to sign up for Disney Plus but were afraid to spend too much money?

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, then you may be eligible for a really cool, yet largely under-the-radar student discount for the Hulu and Disney Plus bundle, which reduces the total price of both platforms with ads to $3.99 from $9.99/month.

Read on to learn how to get this special rate, which can’t be signed up for directly.

Table of Contents

Disney Plus as a $2 Add-on
The $1.99 Hulu Student Deal
Limited Time Offer

Disney Plus as a $2 Add-On

**Screencap:** from the Hulu Account menu.

You might be aware that Disney has recently introduced some discounted bundle price options with Hulu, the cheapest of which is the “Duo Bundle”, which gives you “Hulu with ads” and “Disney Plus with ads” for the price of $9.99/month.

One way to get this bundle is to sign up for it directly via either the Disney+ or Hulu interface. But you can also get “Disney Plus with ads” as an ‘add-on’ option to Hulu if you meet the following criteria: you must be billed directly by Hulu, already carry a Hulu subscription, and you must not be already subscribed to Disney Plus or ESPN+.

Meet this criteria, and you can upgrade to get Disney Plus with ads for only an extra two bucks, as visible in your “Manage You Plan” menu on the Hulu interface.

*Eligible subscribers include those who are directly billed by Hulu for a Hulu (With Ads) plan or Hulu (No Ads) plan, and do not have the Disney Bundle, a standalone Disney+ subscription, or the ESPN+ Add-on.
Hulu Disney Plus add-on help article

Basically, you save about $6 per month from the regular “Disney Plus with ads” sub-scription rate. How much you pay in total for both platforms thus depends on how much your original Hulu plan costs.

Traditionally, of course, the cheapest possible Hulu plan is the $7.99 “Hulu with ads” plan, meaning that with the add-on, you’d pay $9.99/month, which is equivalent to the ‘duo bundle’ minimum. But, in fact, there’s actually an even cheaper, yet lesser known plan that gives eligible customers access to Hulu with ads for only $1.99/month.

The $1.99 Hulu Student Deal

Called the ‘Student Discount’ Deal, this plan is available exclusively to college students, be they undergraduates or graduates. When you sign up for it, you’ll have to go through a relatively simple enrollment verification process that will require you to submit evidence that you’re a student at an accredited university.

Once verified, your new rate for Hulu content is locked in until your enrollment ends.

“Student discount offer for Hulu (ad-supported) plan only. $1.99/month so long as student enrollment status remains verified, then $5.99/month or then-current regular price. Offer valid for new and existing Hulu-billed subscribers enrolled at a U.S. Title IV accredited college or university who meet verification qualifications.
Verification performed through SheerID; enrollment information (e.g. first name, last name, college/university name, date of birth) must be shared with SheerID for verification purposes. Automatic re-verification performed annually. Hulu reserves the right to determine eligibility in its sole discretion. Not combinable with any free trial of the Hulu (ad-supported) plan or any other promotional offers or pricing. Any plan switch after redemption of this offer may result in forfeiture of discount pricing.”
Hulu Student Plan Terms

What nobody at Hulu really tells you though is that you can actually combine the Hulu Student Plan with the “Disney Plus with ads” add-on option, assuming you meet eligibility requirements for them both. This translates to just an extra two dollars on top of your Hulu student subscription price. This means that you’ll pay just $3.99 per month for both Hulu and Disney Plus content for the foreseeable future!*

*Note that you can’t access the Disney Plus content via the Hulu Interface, so you’ll have to go Disney Plus and sign in using your existing Hulu login to see the new material. You will however have access to the Hulu content library from within the Disney Plus platform.

As far as I know, you can’t do this via a Disney Plus interface sign up (as D+ does NOT have its own Student Deal), but you definitely CAN do so via a Hulu sign-up.

So, go to Hulu, select the Student Discount Plan: you can find a tiny, tiny link at the bottom of the screen on the front page of the interface itself or use the link below.

Get the Hulu Student Deal

Then go to your ‘Manage Your Plan’ menu in Settings, go to “Partner Add-ons” and select ‘Disney Plus with ads’ option. And voila!

Limited Time Offer

Now, I don’t know how long exactly each individual promotion or the ability to combine them like this will last. In fact, from everything I’ve gathered by browsing Reddit, this was not something Disney actually intended to make available to audiences. Rather, it’s just a side effect of the way the Hulu interface and plans work.

So, I doubt it will last too long, especially as Disney is almost certain to discontinue the standalone Hulu application in the future, meaning you’ll be forced to eventually subscribe only through Disney Plus to Hulu content.

But whatever the case is, it’s a very, very good deal right now if you’re a student, especially one in a film, television, or media studies program.

Hulu has a really good library of television series, especially now that content licensing has come back in a big way, while Disney Plus features a pretty robust movie catalog, not to mention The Simpsons, Star Wars, and MCU properties.

So, my advice is: take advantage of it while you can!

If you found this article helpful, then spread the word! Share the link with or forward this email to other students who can take advantage of the discount!

Also, please check out some of my other posts on the subject of streaming to learn more about the current state of the film and television industries.