Key Takeaways

• Hulu has introduced new terms banning account sharing outside your household, mirroring other streaming services.
• Hulu’s Subscriber Agreement defines a household as devices used by individuals at their primary residence.
• Non-compliance with the new rules may result in access to your Hulu account being limited, or even terminated.

Hulu is joining the password-sharing crackdown, with the platform informing its subscribers of new terms that ban sharing an account outside your household. Here’s what you should know about the terms, and how Hulu plans to deal with those who don’t comply with them.

Hulu Joins Other Streamers in Account-Sharing Crackdown

At the start of February 2024, Hulu subscribers started receiving emails that notified them of changes to the Subscriber Agreement.

The terms are retroactive for new subscribers, applying from January 25, 2024. For existing subscribers, the terms will apply from March 14, 2024. So what do these new terms say?

In Hulu’s Subscriber Agreement, which was updated on January 25, Hulu includes a section on account sharing:

“Unless otherwise permitted by your Service Tier, you may not share your subscription outside of your household.”

It goes on to define a household as the “collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein”.

These terms make the password-sharing ban official. Hulu joins streaming services like Netflix and Disney+, which have both introduced ad-supported tiers and a ban on account sharing.

However, Netflix allows you to add extra members to your account on certain plans. Hulu has yet to announce a similar feature, but the wording in its subscriber agreement leaves room for this feature to arrive in the future.

What Happens if You Share Your Hulu Account?

While sharing your account within your household is still allowed, sharing it with people in other households could attract the platform’s ire.

According to the Subscriber Agreement, Hulu may track your account’s usage to determine if you are sticking to the terms. If it determines that you’ve violated the agreement, it may limit or “terminate access” to your account.

So that means not complying with the new rules can get you removed from the service.

The password-sharing crackdown among streaming services shows no signs of slowing down. The requirement to share your account with only those in your household is one of the ways streaming is becoming more like cable TV.

And since services like Netflix have reported a growth in user numbers since the crackdown, you can expect most other services to follow suit.