Pros
- Expansive access to sports games of all types
- Immersive experience for sports fans, with sports, stats and analysis
- Many ways to personalize feed
- Unlimited DVR
Cons
- Difficult accessibility features
- User experience inconsistent across devices
- Limited access to primetime shows
- No original content
Fox One, Fox Corporation’s first-ever direct-to-consumer streaming service, launched on Aug. 21 — the same day ESPN launched its own. Fox’s entire channel portfolio, which includes Fox News Channel, Fox Nation, Fox Sports, B1G, FS1, FS2, local Fox stations and the Fox Network, can be found here for $20 a month.
What makes Fox One appealing, or at least of interest, is its focus on live sports and news programming. This is an attractive feature for customers, and, if you look around, you’ll notice a growing number of streamers vying for a piece of the live TV pie. Outside of live TV, news and sports, Fox One’s library includes an array of on-demand programming and a selection of Fox’s primetime hit shows like The Simpsons and Hell’s Kitchen.
Though the platform combines the functionality of an on-demand streamer with a cable-like experience, there are some limitations. Is this enough to make Fox One a viable option in a streaming landscape crowded with premium platforms, competitively priced bundles and FAST services and channels?
Fox One feels like a good fit if you’re a fan of Fox and want anytime access to its live programming library. To that point, though, there are other streaming services offering much more content (and value) that make it difficult to justify the streamer’s $20 price tag.
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What is Fox One and how much does it cost?
After the demise of Venu, the joint sports streaming venture from ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox, the media companies involved pivoted to their own alternative streaming projects. This past May, Fox announced the name of its app, Fox One, and launched the platform in August, with an emphasis on live programming. Targeted toward cord-cutters and Fox’s news and sports audience, the streaming app features niche content.
Fox One has two main subscription tiers, depending on the type of programming you’re interested in watching. It’s available to pay TV customers (eg. cable and satellite) at no extra cost, and next month, the streaming service will be part of a bundle with Disney’s ESPN. The company plans to partner up and offer additional bundling options in the future.
The basic Fox One plan costs $20 a month, or $200 annually, and provides a mix of live sports, news and entertainment content from across the Fox portfolio. The Fox One-Fox Nation tier costs $5 more at $25 a month and features everything the basic Fox One plan has, along with full access to Fox News and Fox Nation. Both plans offer a seven-day free trial and an unlimited DVR, and if you get Fox through a cable or satellite TV subscription, you can access Fox One for free.
When you visit the site, you can choose to sign up for one of Fox’s standalone streaming subscriptions to Fox Nation or B1G Plus. Each of these platforms has been around for a few years now, with Fox Nation priced at $9 a month or $71 annually (also, with a seven-day free trial), and B1G Plus costing $13 a month or $90 annually. Bear in mind these services are separate from Fox One, but customers can conveniently sign up in one place.
What’s it like like to use?
The Fox One homepage on my smart TV shows the menu options on the left side of the screen.
For over a week, I tested the Fox One app on multiple devices. The design and user experience are pretty standard, and navigating through the app is simple enough. The home menus will appear in different positions, depending on the device you are using. On the web, you’ll find the main buttons at the top of the screen for Home, Live, Sports, News, Shows and My Stuff. There are also network hub buttons on the home page to help you easily navigate to content for Fox, FS1, FS2, Fox News, Fox Weather, Fox Deportes, Fox Business and B1G Network.
The menu headers appear on the left side of the screen when the app is used on a Roku Stick and my Samsung Smart TV. When using the app on my Samsung Galaxy S25, I found the menu at the bottom of the screen, which also included a selection for Shorts — a section featuring short-form vertical TikTok-style video clips highlighting moments from news programming and sports.
The live programming options were the first tiles I saw when scrolling through the home page, followed by a row dedicated to upcoming news and sports-themed shows. There are also rows for networks, teams, and personalities — listed as Fox Voices — which you can click to follow to further customize your viewing experience.
The viewer experience becomes more personal to you the more you interact with the platform.
During playback, watching live and on-demand programming worked as expected, offering crisp video quality and solid streaming. Clicking on the rewind or fast-forward button on my TV moves the progress of the video in short increments. The same functionality exists on the web, but you can also simply use the mouse to drag the progress bar anywhere in the video, which I found more intuitive.
Recording a program to the DVR is best when using the mobile app, the smart TV app or something like a Roku or Amazon Fire TV. Any show I clicked on had an Add to My Stuff button, which does exactly that. I attempted to do the same thing when logged into the website but was only able to record future programming through the live guide.
The service allows users to watch a sporting event or news show live in the moment, with the option to start from the beginning. If you’re looking to catch up on the latest game and don’t have the time to sit through multiple hours, the service offers rows where you can view condensed games, shorter recaps, clips and analysis.
Fox One’s multiview feature, as seen on my Roku device.
The multiview function has its own dedicated row for watching multiple live programs at once. Fox News and Fox Business are grouped together, as are Fox News, Fox Business and Fox Weather, FS1 and BTN and FS1 and Fox News. This function works as expected and plays the feeds side-by-side in real time with the audio from whatever program you highlight.
This is one of the features I was really looking forward to using. However I discovered that it can only be found using TV OS, Amazon Fire TV or Roku, the last of which I do have. Fox told CNET that more devices will support the feature in the future.
Selecting the guide pulls up a live programming schedule that features limited channels. You cannot remove them entirely or customize the order in which they appear. That said, you can browse upcoming scheduled shows by date up to 14 days ahead of time.
When you click on a show that hasn’t aired yet, you can add it to My Stuff and the app will automatically record it for you. If you choose a game from the guide, you’ll be able to add it to My Stuff, but the service will also give you a list of options that’ll allow you to follow the league and the teams going head-to-head, which will prompt Fox One to record all programming associated with both.
As I stated previously, I used the app for about a week, so I didn’t spend extensive time testing the DVR. It worked as expected, and if you’re concerned about missing any shows, you can record up to 14 days in advance.
Fox One’s vertical live guide on mobile.
Design-wise, I noticed on my TV that the thumbnail art and episode descriptions within a show’s season overlapped, making it impossible to read. This didn’t happen with every title I clicked on, so I am assuming this is an issue that is being ironed out. That said, suggestions for similar programming came up cluttered with a hodgepodge of shows that had no similarities to the show I was watching at all.
Advertisements; you can’t get away from them. They’re here, but the ad load, as I experienced it, was lighter than what I’ve become used to when watching Hulu or even WWE Raw on Netflix. Since we’re still in the early days of the app, I have a feeling this will change.
One more note about the ads: While I did experience ad breaks during the live news shows and live sports I clicked play on, there were no commercials interrupting the recap videos and clips.
Fox One’s accessibility settings are slim, and when I tinkered with closed captioning, I found the feature difficult to access and the experience was inconsistent across devices. On my TV, I was met with a QR code that directed me to a website that gave a support email address to contact. The same thing happened when using my Android mobile device. Fox advised that iPhone users are able to change these settings.
Since I don’t have an iPhone, though, the only way I could edit the style, appearance and placement of the captions was through the Fox One website. Instead of under my Account, I found the small CC icon at the bottom right corner of the video player itself.
The closed captioning settings menu, as it appears on Fox One’s web-based app.
A tiny gear appears next to the CC icon, only when it’s turned on. Clicking that reveals a pop-up menu where changes can be made to font size, font style, font family, font color, font opacity, character edge, character edge color, background color, background opacity, window color and window opacity.
After changing things like size, color and style, the captions still varied in appearance, depending on the programming I was viewing and what device I was using.
What content is and isn’t on Fox One?
Don’t expect a deep library of Fox shows. Fox One’s library isn’t light, but it does feel light on Fox’s primetime TV hits. You’ll find shows like The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, The Masked Singer and Hell’s Kitchen here, but the episode and season count will be limited.
As I sifted through the shows, I began to notice that the newest seasons of shows — which have already completed their initial episode runs — were the only ones available to watch. If you’re looking to catch up on previous seasons of your favorite shows, you won’t find them here. However, you can watch primetime programming live by clicking on your Fox local channel in the live guide.
The app leans heavily into linear territory, instead of creating bespoke, original content. The reason, according to CEO Lachlan Murdoch, is to keep costs low and attract a cord-cutting crowd who wants access to Fox’s content, without subscribing to cable TV.
Fox One has plenty of content for sports fanatics and consumers of Fox News programming. The viewing experience is surprisingly immersive. The lineup of on-demand and live sports games goes quite deep here. For instance, football fans can find a plethora of NFL content on the app. It’s the first league listed in its programming row. Since Fox carries NFL games that are broadcast on Sunday afternoons, you can stream them on Fox One (and be sure to check out CNET’s NFL cord-cutters’ streaming guide).
The leagues row on the Fox One app is packed with sports programming options.
There’s more than NFL games available on Fox One. A lot more. After a quick scroll-through on the Sports menu, I found the Leagues row halfway down the page. You can find nearly everything here, from MLB and college football to NASCAR, LIV Golf, college basketball, women’s college basketball and MLS. Take note: The NBA does not have a presence on Fox One.
There are rows upon rows of sports content dedicated to the leagues I listed above. It’s a bit overwhelming, to be honest. The amount of sport-specific replays and recaps can be dizzying to someone like me (I don’t really follow sports), but for die-hard fans, this is an absolute treasure trove. If you need a break from the games, you can find a plethora of sports analysis programming.
The app’s Top 10 picks are clickable for each menu listing — Sports, Shows and News — so if you want to watch the episodes of popular titles like Gutfeld!, Family Guy, Jesse Watters Primetime, The Joel Klatt Show or Outnumbered, you can stream new seasons (and in some cases, a few older seasons). If you have a favorite host or Fox personality, the Fox Voices row lists popular commentators like Tom Brady, Colin Cowherd and Nick Wright, and you can follow any of them to personalize your viewing experience.
Should you get it?
Only the latest season of The Simpsons is available to watch on the Fox One app.
It really depends on what you’re looking for. Fox One, at least in its current iteration, is an app that’s meant to act as a supplemental means of watching Fox content. The library of Fox’s primetime hits may be lacking, but there’s a strong possibility that you’re already subscribed to Hulu, Disney Plus or another streamer that has these shows.
The app is stacked with content, though. If you’re a big sports fan or can’t get enough of Fox News, Fox One may be of interest. It’s got the desirable features like multiview and the live guide I mentioned earlier. Fox One is available on pretty much every device available on the market, but the user experience varies. And then there are the accessibility difficulties I mentioned above.
If you’re already a cable TV subscriber, I can see the value in using Fox One at no additional cost. But outside of that, Fox One, as a standalone app, doesn’t feel like it’s worth the $20 monthly price tag. Perhaps that’ll change now that the bundle with ESPN is live.
