Where can I watch Hulu in Canada?

Hulu launched in March 2008 as one of the earliest sites still online devoted to offering on-demand streaming television programming on the Internet, with early investments from News Corp and NBCUniversal, later joined by The Walt Disney Company (the latter of which has since taken full control of Hulu).

Although early versions of the Hulu website promised that international expansion was a priority, the brand did not officially launch in this country until October 2025, when Hulu became available in Canada as a content hub (or "tile") for general entertainment content on the Disney+ streaming service, replacing the previous Star hub which essentially served the same purpose.

As of October 2025, the Canadian version of Disney+ starts at $8.99 per month for its ad-supported Standard with Ads plan; ad-free plans start at $15.99 per month. Annual plans are also available, as are various bundled options through Disney and other resellers. Any Disney+ subscription in Canada automatically includes Hulu programming at no extra cost. (All prices listed are in Canadian dollars before applicable sales taxes, and are subject to change without notice after publication. Please confirm current pricing before subscribing.)

To be clear, there are some notable differences between the version of Hulu available in the U.S. and the version available via Disney+ in Canada and elsewhere, as we'll explain over the next few sections.

Is the Hulu programming available in Canada the same as what's available in the U.S.?

Not quite. To be clear, most Hulu original programs currently in production, such as Only Murders in the Building and Solar Opposites, are available via the Hulu hub in Canada, just as those same programs had been available via Disney+'s previous Star hub. And that is likely to continue in the future for future Hulu originals.

Like Star, the Hulu hub also seems destined to be the Canadian streaming home for entertainment programming produced by Disney and its subsidiaries for other American networks, including its own ABC, FX, and Freeform channels, which would include series such as High Potential and Alien: Earth. This applies even if those series are available, at least for a period of time, on Canadian channels like CTV or FX Canada.

But many of the programs available on Hulu in the U.S. were already licensed (i.e., leased) to different broadcasters or streaming services serving Canada prior to Hulu's 2025 international launch, or even before the February 2021 launch of Star. Those deals typically give international rightsholders first right of refusal on any future seasons until the series ends production — even if, say, the service that originally ordered the series launches in other countries.

By way of example, the Hulu-commissioned drama series The Handmaid's Tale – produced by MGM – was licensed to Bell Media in Canada before the series premiered in 2017, and thus has aired on CTV Drama and Crave since it began. Bell later agreed to split the Canadian rights with MGM's sibling streaming service Prime Video, but it has not appeared on Disney+ / Hulu in this country.

A different example: The 2016–2023 Canadian comedy series Letterkenny, and its spinoff Shoresy, were originally ordered by Crave in Canada. Hulu later joined as a co-commissioner, getting the American streaming rights and allowing it to call both series "Hulu originals" in that country. But the launch of the Hulu hub in Canada didn't affect Crave's rights, and neither series has appeared on Disney+ / Hulu in Canada as of this writing.

A previous version of this post included a lengthy listing of Hulu U.S. series available through other streaming or linear TV outlets in Canada. It's become impractical to maintain this list due to the number of series involved, and various changes that have occurred over time. But suffice it to say that if you can't find a particular older Hulu U.S. original on Disney+ in Canada, you may want to check other streaming services, including Crave, Prime Video, StackTV, or even CBC Gem. Please refer to the "Other resources" section of our About page for a few other sites that may be able to point you in the right direction.

Is Hulu available as a standalone service in Canada?

No. Unlike in the United States and its territories, Hulu is still not available as a standalone service in Canada, or for that matter in any other country outside the U.S. (except for the separate, previously-affiliated service still operating under the Hulu name in Japan).

The U.S. Hulu service's help page regarding international availability says (emphasis ours):

A Hulu subscription is intended for use by members of a single U.S. household. Therefore, you will need a U.S.-issued form of payment when you sign up.

In Canada, the Hulu brand is exclusively used as the name of the aforementioned hub on Disney+, meaning you must have a subscription to Disney Plus to access its content. Even if you only want to access Hulu content, and never want to access any of the family-friendly or franchise-based content elsewhere on Disney+, there's no discount available.

Even in the U.S., Disney seems to be moving towards combining the services, or at least providing strong motivation for households to subscribe to both instead of just one or the other. As of late October 2025, the monthly price of the Disney+/Hulu bundle in the U.S. will be exactly one dollar more than the individual prices of each service (for the same service type, i.e., ad-supported or ad-free). And Disney has said it will discontinue the standalone Hulu app in the U.S. at some point in 2026, meaning that all American subscribers will have to use the Disney+ app to access Hulu content, instead of it being merely an option.

As a result, it is in our view extremely unlikely that Hulu will ever be offered as a standalone service in Canada, outside of a Disney+ subscription.

Are there any workarounds I could use to access the U.S. version of Hulu from Canada?

The U.S. Hulu service says that it only supports video streaming within the United States and its territories, and that it does not support the use of anonymous proxies (e.g. virtual private networks) in order to access its content, as it needs to be able to determine a person’s accurate geographical location. As noted above, it also requires a U.S.-based form of payment (as in a payment card issued by a bank located in America, not just U.S. currency; we don't expect that a subsidiary bank like Capital One Canada would work either).

We're aware that some VPN services have explicitly advertised themselves as ways for Canadians to access Hulu and other U.S. services. However, this does not mean that they have permission, approval, or other involvement from the streaming services themselves, and as noted above the streaming companies usually cut off access to such proxies if/when they are identified. In our view, any such use is strictly "at your own risk", and we at WCIW do not endorse it.

If you are an American Hulu subscriber visiting Canada, your best bet is to download programming to your devices in advance of your travels; this requires a Premium (ad-free) plan. Otherwise, it's our understanding you would be limited to the programs available on the Canadian version of the Hulu hub; you would need to use the Disney+ app and also be a Disney+ subscriber to avail of this access.

Is Hulu + Live TV available in Canada?

Not currently. There is a small possibility of that changing in the future, but even if it does, it is unlikely to resemble what's available stateside.

For those unfamiliar, Hulu offers a "Live TV" package which is a sort of streaming cable TV service — sometimes referred to as a "vMVPD" or "DMVPD" service in industry parlance – available in the United States as an alternative to a traditional cable or satellite TV provider. Other similar providers include YouTube TV, Sling, and Fubo.

That last company name, Fubo, might be a bit more familiar to some Canadian viewers, as it operates in Canada as well (the only directly comparable Canadian service as of this writing is Quebecor's RiverTV). Fubo's Canadian service has focused on international soccer content, but it has attempted to offer general-interest content as well, most prominently including a version of Corus Entertainment's StackTV with some packages.

So what does Hulu have to do with Fubo's Canadian service? Hulu is actually in the process of merging its Live TV service with Fubo, with Disney set to control the combined company.

Post-merger, we're not sure what the resulting company will want to do with its Canadian operations, particularly given Disney's longstanding ties to other domestic telecom companies like Bell and Rogers. But there is at least the possibility that the Canadian version of Fubo could evolve to become something similar to the U.S. Hulu + Live TV package — or whatever becomes of it.

Why wasn't Hulu available in Canada before 2025?

Bear with us, this is a bit of a lengthy explanation.

Up until about 2020, the main issue preventing Hulu from launching in Canada was that most of Hulu's programming rights (its permissions to stream shows) only covered the United States, not Canada or other parts of the world. The producers of most of Hulu's shows, both originals and "library" (reruns), had sold the Canadian streaming rights to other companies.

It's worth recalling that when Hulu first launched, it was primarily a free-to-watch, ad-supported portal to catch up on programming from its partner American networks including Fox, NBC and ABC.

However, the international broadcast rights to most of those networks' programs were already sold to other companies, and in Canada this meant networks such as CTV, Global and Citytv, none of which were interested in participating in the same way (though they typically made episodes available on their own websites).

In the absence of a level of participation from Canadian networks similar to that of ABC, Fox and NBC, a Canadian version of Hulu would have had very little content available. On top of that, as noted in this 2016 Toronto Star article, the smaller population size and smaller online advertising market would have made it more difficult for Hulu to operate sustainably here.

In the end, Hulu only launched in one other country, Japan, in 2011, only to sell those operations to local broadcaster Nippon TV in 2014.

Over time, Hulu has moved to a paid model (though the lowest-priced plan still requires viewers to watch some advertising), and slowly grown its original programming output to an extent that may not quite rival Netflix, but certainly made it a force with series like The Handmaid's Tale.

However, even in these cases, Hulu chose not to (or, perhaps in some cases, was not able to) retain international rights, with the individual production companies behind each show selling rights to Canadian and other international broadcasters.

In other words, at least up until 2020, Hulu was willing to sit on the sidelines in Canada and allow local rights to its original series to be claimed by others.

Shortly after acquiring Hulu in 2019, Disney gave indications that the service would be expanding into other countries beginning in the latter part of 2021, as part of its overall direct-to-consumer strategy alongside Disney+.

However, in August 2020, Disney clarified that – citing limited overseas brand awareness, and perhaps seeking to avoid confusion around Hulu's existing content – it would use the Star brand instead for an international general-interest service. (Star is a broadcasting group based in Asia acquired by Disney in 2019 as part of its acquisition of much of 21st Century Fox.)

Subsequent reporting by other media outlets including Bloomberg suggested that financial complications also drove Disney's decision to launch Star as a new brand rather than investing more money in Hulu, which at that point was still 33% owned by Comcast.

In December 2020, Disney confirmed that Canada would be among the launch countries for Star, an age-restricted section for Disney+ which includes age-restricted content from Disney-owned studios like 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, FX, and ABC Signature, but not other licensed programming that Hulu has hosted to date like The Handmaid's Tale (which remains with CTV Drama / Crave in Canada).

The general-entertainment content seems to have done well, but it's never been clear exactly how much traction the Star brand got in Canada. Within a couple of years, the Star name was downplayed or even omitted entirely in the service's marketing, as viewers seemingly got more comfortable with that content being hosted in a Disney-branded app.

Meanwhile, Disney fully bought out Comcast's stake in Hulu in July 2025, clearing the way for the so-called Mouse House to start using the Hulu brand however it wanted (outside of Japan, at least).

Did the CRTC or the Canadian government have anything to do with Hulu not being available before 2025?

Our view is that they did not have a direct role. Despite the occasional claims that float around social media, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) insists that it does not interfere with Internet programming rights or the availability of foreign-based streaming video services (and, having looked through many CRTC documents in the past, we have seen no evidence indicating anything different).

If Hulu wanted to set up shop in Canada, from a government regulation perspective we believe they would have been free to do so, and neither the CRTC nor any other part of the federal government would interfere, just as they did not interfere with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Disney+ / Star launching in Canada.

But as with Netflix and Prime Video, not all of Hulu's American programming rights would automatically extend to Canada. Moreover, Disney / Hulu can't force the Canadian broadcasters that already purchased Canadian broadcast rights to Hulu's third-party programs – which are typically sold on an exclusive basis – to share or sell them back.

It is, of course, fair to note that some of the other long-standing CRTC and government policies intended to protect Canadian broadcasters – like foreign ownership restrictions, and simultaneous substitution of American advertising – have helped to protect the Canadian networks in other ways. In scenarios where those rules were not in place, Hulu might have had more motivation to come to Canada earlier in its history. But it's hard to know exactly how that would have turned out.

Significant revisions

This is a heavily edited and re-published version of an article originally posted in May 2020. We decided to re-publish it to improve its visibility in light of the Canadian launch of the Hulu hub in fall 2025.

• October 16, 2025 – Re-published following significant edits related to the re-launch of Disney+'s Star hub as Hulu in Canada.
• October 17, 2021 – Various updates to reflect a number of newer series, an increasing number of which (but not all) are on Star in Canada.
• Februry 24, 2021 – Updates following the launch of Star in Canada.
• December 13, 2020 – Further updates on Disney's international streaming plans.
• August 13, 2020 – Updates on Disney's international general-interest streaming service plans.
• May 8, 2020 – Original version of this post.