Everything, Everywhere, All at Once: Choosing Between TVOD, SVOD, and AVOD for Your Film

The basics

SVOD stands for Subscription Video On Demand, TVOD stands for Transactional Video On Demand, and AVOD stands for Advertising Video On Demand.

SVOD is basically when customers pay for a monthly or annual subscription for stuff like Netflix or Prime, or Mubi — we can watch any film that's part of the catalog in one go.

TVOD, on the other hand, is the option to rent or purchase a film. This is pretty popular on Prime and YouTube globally, and typically the prices are between — if you’re in the U.S. — from, let’s say, $1.99 all the way up to $10, $12, or $15 per rental. The price for “Buy” could be about 2x to 3x of the rental price. The customer has to watch the film within 30 days of renting it. Once they start watching, they have to finish the film within 48 hours.

AVOD is Advertising Video On Demand, where ads play alongside your film, and whatever revenue is earned by the platform from those ads, a percentage is shared with you as a filmmaker.

In the U.S., I think the most popular TVOD platform for films is Prime, followed by YouTube. For SVOD, the most popular would be Netflix, followed by Prime. For AVOD, obviously, YouTube and Tubi are the most popular platforms.

TVOD Maths Explained

In terms of revenue per hour of your content watched, obviously, TVOD is the most lucrative, followed by SVOD (sometimes AVOD revenue can be more than SVOD revenue).

As a producer, you need to follow a very clear strategy for monetizing your film. Typically, with a film, you usually start with premium TVOD, where you put a high price on the rental - starting at $14 or even $19.99. After about one to two months of premium release, you could switch to regular TVOD pricing, which would be maybe $4.99 or $6.99 or $7.99. After two months of regular TVOD pricing, you could, if you wanted to, shift to basic-level TVOD pricing, which would be maybe $2.99 or $3.99 in the U.S.

On this list price of, say, $9.99, the streaming service keeps about 50% (Prime, Apple TV and YouTube - as of Feb 2026) and they insist on having a distributor between them and the filmmaker/producer. The distributor would typically take 20% of the producer’s take (i.e. 20% of 50% of the producer’s share). Hence, for every $9.99 sale the producer can expect to get $4 per sale. These numbers may vary a little bit, but it is pretty standard across the world.

In addition, the distributor — who helps get your film on platforms like Prime and Apple TV — charges around $300–$500 for “processing your film” per platform. So if you want your film on both Prime and Apple, it might set you back by $800-1000. The platforms rely on these distributors for QC, vetting the films etc. The entire process takes about 2-4 months with multiple back-and-forths between producers and distributors.

The good part - almost all TVOD relationships are non-exclusive (i.e. you can list on multiple platforms at the same time). The bad part - you are left with 40 cents on the dollar, which means you have very little money left for marketing your film (apart from recovering the production cost).

How much will I make on SVOD?

Once the TVOD window for a film is over (this is subjective, but you can assume around 5-6 months), it makes sense to then shift to SVOD. The SVOD window can probably last for about six months to a year (or forever, if you feel that your audience is not on AVOD platforms - which is true for most indie films). In SVOD, you get paid on the basis of per hour of your film watched. Those rates can vary drastically based on each country you are available in.

Here’s a simple way to think about this. Let us say, a subscriber pays Prime $15 a month, and ends up watching an hour every day i.e. 30 hours in a month. That means they end up making $0.50 every month per hour of content watched. If they keep another 50% of that as their revenue share, you will be left with about $0.25 per hour watched. If, instead of 30 hours, you could assume 60 hours watched by an average subscriber, then suddenly you might end up making only 10 cents per hour watched.

Give or take, you might make $0.05 to $0.20 per hour watched in the U.S. for a pay-per-view model where your film is part of the subscription of some of these premium websites. Now, obviously, this sounds — and it is — actually very low for any person who has spent, let’s say, anywhere from $400,000 to $5 million on their film. But that’s what the rates are like, approximately, and you should set your expectations based on that.

"I'm Mad as Hell, and I'm Not Going to Take This Anymore" — The AVOD Play

Next is AVOD. AVOD, the most popular platform for films, is Tubi. There, you can expect anywhere from $15 to $20 CPM. CPM means revenue per thousand streams. There are some platform-specific rules as to what constitutes a watch by the customer, but more or less you should assume that if 1,000 people watch your film, you will make about $15. The challenge, which we have heard from different filmmakers on Tubi, is that over time, after the first few months, the number of streams can change quite drastically. That can mean that your revenue starts dwindling at some point, and it can also fall sharply.

YouTube CPM is about 20% lower than Tubi but you are competing with thousands of content creators.

One quick note about YouTube. While YouTube has really ramped up monetization in the last two years across the world, the challenge with YouTube is that it is not suitable for filmmakers because YouTube requires you to make content constantly, and that’s the only way to win, as per the YouTube algorithm — which is that every month you put out, you put out close to 10 to 15, 20 even pieces of content — and that is not ideal for a filmmaker.

Won’t Netflix just buy my indie film?

So, in a nutshell, you have TVOD, SVOD, and AVOD as the three different ways of monetizing your film. After hearing all this, don’t you just wish Netflix or Prime bought your film for a million dollars and made life simple? Unfortunately, that’s not happening - except to the top 5-10 films produced externally.

So what’s the solution?

Each film is different. Personally, as a filmmaker, I feel TVOD is the way to go. Prime has normalized this in every country (especially with early access to films via TVOD only), and cinephiles are okay to pay for films. But YMMV.