IPTV Providers in Germany 2026: 8 Licensed Services Compared, with Prices and the Legal Position

Anyone searching for an IPTV provider in Germany lands first on pages that nobody edited. Press-release portals push out the same text in dozens of variants, hand out scores like 9.8 out of 10, and claim to have assessed "45+ providers". None of these pages offers any evidence for it.

This comparison takes the opposite route. It takes eight services licensed in Germany for television over the internet, discloses the weighting of every sub-score, and sets alongside them a legal chapter grounded in the wording of § 106 and § 108 UrhG, the European Court of Justice's Filmspeler ruling, and a press release from the Bamberg Attorney General's Office (Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Bamberg).

One thing up front, because nobody else says it: we did not test these services ourselves. What we evaluated was documented material, mostly the providers' own price and tariff pages. Where sources contradict one another, the table shows the contradiction rather than the more convenient figure.

For the technical background behind all this, see what is IPTV.

⚡ In short: which provider to pick in 2026

Among the eight licensed IPTV providers in Germany, waipu.tv comes out on top (overall score 8.2), on the strength of 300+ channels in Perfect Plus. Zattoo is the most flexible, with every plan cancellable monthly (8.1). To start for free, begin with MagentaTV Freemium. Documented UHD is available only from HD+.

📅 As of July 2026. Prices change frequently, so please double-check with the provider before you sign up.

🧭 What this comparison covers

• 📊 IPTV providers compared: all eight at a glance
• 🧮 How we score: five criteria, open weighting
• The eight providers in detail: waipu.tv · Zattoo · MagentaTV · HD+ · o2 TV · 1&1 TV · Vodafone GigaTV · freenet TV
• 🆓 Watching TV free and legally
• ⚽ Sport 2026/27: who holds which rights
• ⚖️ Is IPTV legal in Germany?
• 🚩 How to spot an illegal IPTV provider
• 💡 Your rights when prices go up
• 🛒 Buying advice: which provider suits which household
• 🔬 Methodology: what we could verify and what we could not
• ❓ Frequently asked questions
• 🏁 Conclusion

📊 IPTV providers compared: all eight at a glance

The table shows the cheapest entry tariff and, beside it, each provider's largest tariff, because the two ends of the price list tell different stories. Contested figures appear as a range with a footnote.

All prices as of July 2026.

⚠️ What the HD column does not tell you. The HD label in each case comes from the provider. It says nothing about the actual resolution in the cheapest tariff. For waipu.tv Comfort this point is disputed; more on that in the provider section.

How to read the table

• A dash does not mean "does not exist", but "we had no reliable source for this point". For the trials, that is strikingly often the case.
• The score is a weighted sum of five disclosed criteria. You will find the full calculation in the next chapter.
• The order follows the score, descending.

Footnotes

¹ Zattoo channel count. Zattoo itself states 247 channels and 231 in HD. rtv.de lists 241 channels with 50 in Full HD and 176 in HD; inside-digital states 245. We use the provider's figure and flag the discrepancy. ² Zattoo streams. Premium 2, Ultimate 4. According to the provider, Smart HD allows unlimited streams on smart TVs. ³ Recordings are not hours. In Ultimate, Zattoo counts 100 recordings, i.e. a number of items. The widespread figure "100 hours" is a transcription error from third-party sources. ⁴ HD+ channel base. The 25 private HD channels are the core of the package. HD PLUS's press release additionally cites "over 90 channels in HD" for the overall offering, while the homepage marketing says "100+". We use the lower, officially documented figure throughout and base all comparisons on the 25 private HD channels. ⁵ Contradictions at 1&1. Provider: over 175 channels, 120+ to 150+ in HD, 100 h recording. dslweb: 115 channels, 60 to 88 in HD, 10 h recording. On recording capacity there is a factor of ten between them. Unresolved, and it feeds into the transparency score. ⁶ Contradictions at Vodafone. €9.99 applies for six months, then €14.99, plus €49.99 activation. Four figures circulate for the channel count, two of them from Vodafone itself. On the contract term, vodafone.de says 24 months, iptv-anbieter.info says 12 months. ⁷ waipu.tv free month. The free month is documented for Perfect Plus. For Comfort we have no trial on record. ⁸ MagentaTV. No conventional trial documented. MagentaTV Smart costs €0 for the first six months on a 24-month commitment; that is an introductory discount, not a trial period. ⁹ Tied to an existing contract. o2 TV can be booked only with an o2 contract. The €4.99 tariff from 1&1 requires a 1&1 DSL line. ¹⁰ freenet TV. The price page could not be accessed at the close of research. The monthly price rose from €7.99 to €9.49 on 1 January 2026. The annual price circulates as €69, €99 and €104.60. There are no parallel streams; reception runs over DVB-T2 to the receiver.

For how these services' prices compare with what the market otherwise charges, our piece on realistic IPTV prices provides context. Which providers run on which TV, stick or tablet is set out on the device overview.

🛠️ Editorial implementation note. Below 768 px this table needs a card layout per provider, or a reduction to four core columns (Provider / Score / Price from / Channels) with expandable details. Plain overflow-x: auto is not enough. In the scrolling table, the footnote numerals need a back-reference anchor.

🧮 How we score: five criteria, open weighting

Before we get to the individual services, it has to be clear how the numbers in the score column came about. Anyone who can recheck them does not have to take our word for it.

Each provider is scored from 0 to 10 in five categories. The overall score is their weighted sum.

The calculation, using waipu.tv as the example:

9.0 × 0.30 = 2.70
8.0 × 0.25 = 2.00
8.5 × 0.20 = 1.70
7.5 × 0.15 = 1.13
7.0 × 0.10 = 0.70
Total      = 8.23  →  rounded 8.2

The full sub-score matrix, so that you can reconstruct every overall score by the same route:

If sport matters more to you than flexibility, plug in your own weights and you will arrive at a different order. That is by design.

What we could verify, what remained open, and why the order comes out as it does is set out at length in the methodology chapter after the provider reviews. In short: we did not test these services ourselves; what we evaluated was the providers' primary sources, official sources and specialist press.

1️⃣ waipu.tv: the largest channel selection, with small print

Best for households that want as many channels in HD as possible and are willing to renegotiate the tariff regularly. Overall score: 8.2 / 10

Behind waipu.tv stands Exaring AG. Of all eight services in the comparison, the evidence is best here. Prices, channel counts and stream figures are on the official offers page and did not have to be pieced together from third-party sources. That is not a quality verdict on the product, but it explains why waipu.tv does not collapse in the transparency scoring as others do.

The user Marvolo describes the channel breadth on the ComputerBase forum like this: "All the channels plus a ton more … are on there." The ComputerBase threads quoted here are from 2021 and are good for the impression, not for current specifications.

✅ Pros

• Broadest documented channel base, 300+ channels and 300+ in HD in Perfect Plus
• 150 hours of cloud recording on the large tariff
• One of the broadest documented device lists among the eight providers
• Every tariff can also be booked with no minimum term

❌ Cons

• The number of pay-TV channels in Perfect Plus is given as 44 (pay-tv-angebote.de) and as over 70 (inside-digital). The sources contradict each other, so we give no figure.
• RTL and ProSieben channels on the move cost an extra €3 per month
• waipu.tv does not disclose the resolution per tariff. The user belegdol reports 720x540 for Comfort and calls it "of course pretty weak". kachiri sums up the marketing practice like this: "For Waipu, HD is also FHD."
• writerx describes grainy HD and unusable SD on the glasfaserforum on 25 May 2025. Plus a point on accessibility: according to the report, Bluetooth headphones cannot be run in parallel with the TV speakers.

💶 Prices (as of July 2026)

🪤 Trap correction: Numerous German pieces circulate a "price rise January 2026" at waipu.tv. It did not happen that way. Exaring raised Perfect Plus from €12.99 to €14.99, and it did so on 15 January 2025. The 2026 date comes from a reseller passing on costs it had previously absorbed.

Anyone who pays the list price at waipu.tv is often paying too much. On the ComputerBase forum, redjack1000 and puri describe the same tactic: "Let it lapse, wait a day, book a new cheap package" and "there's a good WaiPu offer roughly every 3 months, it feels like". That is a user observation from an older thread, not a promise from the provider.

🖥️ Devices

Android TV and Google TV, Samsung, LG, waipu Stick and waipu Box, Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, iOS, Android, Chromecast, AirPlay, browser. Which app makes sense on which platform, we assess in our app comparison 2026.

The bottom line. First place comes from channel count and device variety. On picture quality an open flank remains: for Comfort, users report a resolution well below what the word HD leads you to expect. Perfect Plus costs twice as much and is, on this point, the more honest tariff.

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2️⃣ Zattoo: the most flexible contract

Best for anyone who does not want to be tied in and would like to test in peace before booking. Overall score: 8.1 / 10

Zattoo sells access to a broad channel package, and the offering is built consistently around non-commitment. All packages are cancellable monthly, and every paid package comes, according to the offers page, with a 30-day trial. That is the longest period expressly designated as a trial among the eight providers. Longer free phases exist at HD+ and MagentaTV, but there as an introductory discount with a contract commitment.

On app quality there is an often-quoted user comment from VinylUndKoffein (ComputerBase, 6 August 2021): "I still like Zattoo better, though. Their apps work noticeably more stably." The post is five years old and describes an impression from back then.

✅ Pros

• Best in class for flexibility: no minimum term in any package
• 30-day trial on all paid packages
• Unlimited parallel streams on smart TVs in the entry package Smart HD
• Free tier with over 170 channels in SD

❌ Cons

• The channel counts diverge: provider 247/231 HD, rtv.de 241 with 50 Full HD and 176 HD, inside-digital 245 with 229 to 230 HD
• Recordings only from Ultimate at €13.99
• Fast-forward/rewind restrictions on individual channel groups. M4ttX writes on ComputerBase: "Fast-forwarding and rewinding ProSiebenSat1 stuff is restricted and unusable on Zattoo too." Such channel-side restrictions appear in barely any comparison table, yet they are noticeably felt day to day.

⚠️ Recordings are not hours. In Ultimate, Zattoo counts 100 recordings, i.e. a number of items. The widespread figure "100 hours" traces back to an error in a secondary source. How many hours 100 recordings amount to depends entirely on what you record.

💶 Prices (as of July 2026)

🪤 Trap correction: The "Zattoo price rise April 2026" circulating online concerns Switzerland only. There, Ultimate rose from CHF 20 to CHF 22. For Germany, Ultimate stays at €13.99.

🖥️ Devices

Samsung from 2015, LG from 2016, Panasonic from 2017, Hisense from 2020, Loewe from 2021, Android TV, Fire TV, Apple TV from 4.0, Nvidia Shield, Xbox One, One S and One X, Chromecast, browser.

Who it adds up for. On channels Zattoo sits just behind waipu.tv, on contract terms clearly ahead. For a first, risk-free attempt it is the lowest barrier to entry among the eight services. One caveat remains: recording is possible only for those who book Ultimate at €13.99.

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3️⃣ MagentaTV: the strongest free entry point

Best for newcomers who initially want to pay nothing, and for households without a Telekom line. Overall score: 7.2 / 10

MagentaTV belongs to Telekom, but expressly runs over any internet connection. A Telekom line is not required.

The real lever is the free tier. MagentaTV Freemium is, according to telekom.de, permanently free, with no registration and no time limit, offering around 20 ad-financed FAST channels and even matches from the 2026 World Cup. Of all the free offerings in this comparison, it has the best evidence behind it.

✅ Pros

• 100 hours of recording already in the cheapest tariff
• Freemium with no registration and no expiry date
• Independent of the internet-line provider
• Second place at CHIP with a score of 1.2, though from a test dated 18 January 2025 whose price data are now out of date

❌ Cons

• The app rating in the same CHIP test is only 2.1, well below the overall score. That test is dated 18 January 2025 and is therefore around 18 months old, so we weight it with corresponding restraint.
• On the Telekom forum there are more than seven separate threads on the subject of stuttering. The thread titles are documentable, but the posts themselves could not be accessed. We draw no technical conclusion from it.
• On the tariffs SmartStream (around €17) and MegaStream (around €30) we have only secondary sources
• On payment methods and the number of 4K channels, no reliable information could be found

💶 Prices (as of July 2026)

Flex and Smart rose in April 2026 from €10 to €11. The primary report on this sits behind a paywall; the figure relies on teltarif. What such an increase can trigger in contract-law terms is covered in the chapter on § 57 TKG.

🖥️ Devices: no reliable list

Telekom does not provide a closed device list in the form we checked. What is documented is independence from the line, not a complete platform list. We therefore deliberately give no enumeration here.

What remains. MagentaTV is the best-documented way to try legal streaming TV at zero euros, and the only platform in this comparison with 100 hours of recording across all tariffs. Against a higher placement stand the weak app rating and the fact that central details are only documentable via third parties.

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4️⃣ HD+: the only provider with documented UHD

Best for households with a satellite dish that want private channels in HD and three UHD channels. Overall score: 7.0 / 10

Behind HD+ stands HD PLUS GmbH, a subsidiary of the satellite operator SES-Astra. The service is therefore closer to the distribution infrastructure than the other providers in the comparison, which pass on third-party signals. Distribution is via Astra 19.2° East, or alternatively over the internet.

Since 21 May 2026 there has also been HD+ Free, according to the official press release permanently free, with around 80,000 media-library titles plus restart and pause.

As of July 2026.

✅ Pros

• Three UHD channels, the only documented 4K evidence among the eight providers
• Six months of HD+ Classic free for new customers
• Satellite and IP cost the same; the reception path is freely selectable
• Permanently free tier since 21 May 2026

❌ Cons

• The package is tailored to 25 private HD channels and does not replace a full line-up. Anyone who does not already receive ARD, ZDF and the regional channels free needs a second route.
• One-off hardware costs: module €89 for satellite, stick €69 for IP
• The channel count is given in the press release as "over 90 channels in HD", in the homepage marketing as "100+". We use the lower, documented figure.
• A separately advertised package "HD+ Stream" for €9.99 from October 2025 no longer appears on the current price list. Whether it was folded into Premium could not be clarified.

💶 Do the maths on the annual plan. €85 a year works out at €7.08 per month. The monthly price is €6.99, so twelve monthly instalments cost €83.88. The annual plan is here the more expensive route. As of July 2026.

🖥️ Devices and reception

Over satellite you need an Astra dish and a module for €89; alternatively HD+ runs over the internet with a stick for €69. For the UHD channels the line should be dimensioned accordingly. Which bandwidth realistically carries which quality tier we broke down in a separate piece: internet speed for 4K IPTV.

Who it adds up for. For households with a satellite dish, HD+ Classic at €6.99 is the obvious complement to the free-to-air line-up, and the only documented UHD access in this comparison. Anyone expecting 250 channels is in the right place at waipu.tv or Zattoo.

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5️⃣ o2 TV: cheap, but only for o2 customers

Best for existing o2 mobile or fixed-line customers on a small budget. Overall score: 6.4 / 10

First, a widespread misconception. o2 TV is no longer based on waipu.tv. Telefónica has run its own platform since 25 September 2024. Comparison pieces that still describe o2 TV as a waipu offshoot are out of date.

The switch had consequences for existing customers. On 12 January 2026 the remaining legacy customers were force-migrated, and in the process all recordings were deleted. For a service that touts recording capacity as a selling point, that is a serious blow to trust, and it feeds into our technology score.

✅ Pros

• At €4.99, together with 1&1 TV the cheapest entry point among the eight providers
• Premium at €14.99 includes Netflix and Disney+ in their ad-financed variants
• Up to four devices
• Premium Pro is ad-free
• 200 hours of recording in Premium, jointly with Vodafone GigaTV the highest documented figure

❌ Cons

• Not bookable at all without an o2 contract, which rules the service out for the majority of households
• The forced migration on 12 January 2026 deleted all recordings
• Users on the o2 forum report, after the migration, stuttering on the public-service channels, sluggish channel-switching, a soft picture, and that the home network can only be changed every 30 days. These are forum reports, not measurements, and we treat them as such.
• No evidence of 4K

💶 Prices (as of July 2026)

🖥️ Devices and network

o2 cites up to four devices usable at the same time. Whether the platform or the home network is the cause of the reported stuttering cannot be settled from a distance. For such dropouts, our piece on Ethernet or Wi-Fi for IPTV shows the usual sources of fault on your own network.

A test of o2 TV exists at connect.de. We did not access it and therefore quote no verdict from it.

The bottom line. o2 TV Premium costs €14.99 and includes Netflix and Disney+ in their ad-financed variants. On paper that is the strongest package in the whole comparison. Only o2 customers can book it, and the handling of existing customers' recordings costs the service more points than the price wins it.

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6️⃣ 1&1 TV: four streams, contradictory figures

Best for existing customers with a 1&1 DSL line who need four simultaneous streams at a low price and can live with an unclear evidence base. Overall score: 5.7 / 10

1&1 TV is an add-on to the internet line, not a stand-alone streaming service. The entry tariff at €4.99 requires a 1&1 DSL contract. Alongside it there are HD TV and HD TV plus, the latter additionally allowing mobile use.

Notable is the number of parallel streams. Four simultaneous streams are otherwise offered only by waipu.tv Perfect Plus and Zattoo Ultimate, both in their respective most expensive packages.

⚠️ A contradiction by a factor of ten. 1&1 itself gives the recording capacity as 100 hours; the specialist portal dslweb says 10 hours. We could not resolve the difference. On the channel counts the pattern repeats: "over 175 channels, 120+ to 150+ in HD" according to the provider versus 115 channels with 60 to 88 in HD according to dslweb. Anyone wanting to sign up here should have the recording capacity confirmed in writing before signing the contract.

✅ Pros

• Four parallel streams, otherwise only in the top tariffs of waipu.tv and Zattoo
• Cheap entry from €4.99 for existing 1&1 customers
• Mobile use included in HD TV plus

❌ Cons

• Channel and recording figures contradict one another markedly between provider and specialist press
• The €4.99 tariff is tied to a 1&1 DSL contract
• No evidence of 4K
• On smart TVs, LG and Panasonic are missing

🖥️ Devices

Supported are smart TVs from Samsung, Sony, Sharp and Philips. LG and Panasonic are missing. Check your device before you book.

What stayed open. Whether 1&1 TV records 100 or 10 hours, we could not clarify. As long as this question is open, the tariff is hard to recommend, even though the four-stream advantage is real and unusual for the price. The transparency category reflects this state with 4.5 points.

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7️⃣ Vodafone GigaTV: 200 hours of recording, unclear channel count

Best for Vodafone customers who above all want to record and are willing to remain in the dark about the channel count. Overall score: 5.6 / 10

GigaTV comes in two variants. GigaTV Net runs over any internet connection; GigaTV Cable requires a Vodafone cable connection. In both cases the package costs €9.99 for the first six months and €14.99 thereafter. On top of that comes a €49.99 activation fee. Anyone already taking Vodafone internet pays €5 less.

The technical trump card is in the recording line: 200 hours with 90 days' retention. Together with o2 TV Premium, that is the highest documented figure in this comparison, above the 150 hours of waipu.tv Perfect Plus and the 100 hours of MagentaTV.

🚩 Four channel counts, two of them from Vodafone itself.

Figure	Source
74 channels, 65 in HD	vodafone.de
97 channels, 57 in HD	vodafone.de, elsewhere
60 channels	iptv-anbieter.info
113 channels	dslweb

We therefore publish only the range 60 to 113 and no single figure. That is the reason for the worst transparency score in the comparison, 3.5 out of 10.

✅ Pros

• 200 hours of recording with 90 days' retention
• GigaTV Net works on any internet connection, not just Vodafone lines
• Six-month introductory price of €9.99

❌ Cons

• The channel count cannot be reliably determined, see above
• The contract term too is stated inconsistently as 24 and as 12 months
• €49.99 activation applies on top
• Only 2 parallel streams
• GigaTV was absent from both the CHIP test and inside-digital, so there is noticeably less independent third-party testing

🖥️ Devices and payment

GigaTV Cable needs a Vodafone cable connection; GigaTV Net runs independently of the line. On payment methods we found only a forum hint at SEPA direct debit, no primary source. On a free trial, contradictory figures circulate with no reliable evidence, so we deliberately give none.

The bottom line. The recording capacity justifies the 7.5 in the technology category. Everything else stands under reservation. As long as Vodafone carries two channel counts on its own website and the industry two contract terms, you do not know exactly what you are buying before you sign.

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8️⃣ freenet TV: aerial television with a price rise

Best for households without a usable internet connection and without a satellite dish, for which DVB-T2 is the only reception path. Overall score: 4.0 / 10

freenet TV from Media Broadcast is the odd one out in this comparison, because it is not a streaming product. The private channels come over the aerial, via DVB-T2. For that you need a suitable receiver or a CI+ module for around €60 and an aerial. Coverage is regional and was never nationwide, which directly affects the channel count.

On 1 January 2026 the monthly price rose from €7.99 to €9.49, a surcharge of around 19 percent. Whether such a unilateral increase triggers a special right of termination under § 57 TKG depends on how the service is classified in contract-law terms. More on that in the chapter on price rises.

✅ Pros

• Works without an internet connection and without a satellite dish
• freenet TV connect delivers 29 additional channels over the internet, at no surcharge

❌ Cons

• Smallest channel selection, around 40 to 46 depending on region. With connect, sources cite up to 69, depending on where you live.
• The annual price circulates in three variants: €69, €99 and €104.60 for the annual module. Which one applies could not be clarified.
• One-off hardware costs from around €60, plus a suitable aerial
• DVB-T2 coverage is regionally limited
• The official price page could not be accessed at the close of research

⚠️ Check directly before signing up. freenet.tv/preise could not be loaded for this research. All the price figures in this section come from secondary sources and contradict one another on the annual price. Check the monthly and annual price as well as the channel list for your region directly with the provider. As of July 2026.

Who it adds up for. Where neither internet nor satellite is available, freenet TV remains a sensible solution. At every other address you get considerably more programming for €9.49, and the evidence base for this service is the weakest in the whole comparison.

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🆓 Watching TV free and legally: what the free tiers can really do

Between a paid subscription and unlicensed offerings lies a layer that the German web hardly ever presents in full: free, ad-financed tiers from licensed providers. They do not replace a full subscription, but they are legal, they cost nothing, and with some of them registration is not even required.

As of July 2026.

The best-documented free access is provided by MagentaTV Freemium. Alongside it, two points are worth placing in context.

Pluto TV from Paramount Global is permanently free and likewise requires no registration. On the channel count, sources range between 100 and 250; there is no reliable figure. The ads are not skippable, and live there is neither ARD and ZDF nor RTL or ProSieben. In sport there are German channels for darts, handball and the Icon League, plus club channels for BVB, Real Madrid and Union Berlin.

waipu.tv Free is the most restrictive variant: around 50 channels, exclusively on smartphone and in the browser, without the Waiputhek and without a recording function. On the TV, the free tier does not run.

🟡 Joyn+: deliberately not in the ranking

We took Joyn+ from ProSiebenSat.1 out of the scoring, for a substantive reason: without RTL channels and without a cloud recorder, the service is not a replacement for a TV subscription, but a supplement to it. Placing it in a ranking with waipu.tv and MagentaTV would misrepresent both products.

As of July 2026.

In April 2026 "Joyn Plus+" simply became "Joyn+", and the price rose from €6.99 to €8.99. That is 29 percent in one go. Existing customers keep their €6.99 according to the provider, and the annual subscription too stays at €6.99 per month in effect. In the specialist press, the increase drew express criticism that Joyn+ is not fully ad-free despite the subscription.

In return, downloads are new, ten titles for 30 days offline, plus an instant restart. Four parallel streams are decent for the price. The gap remains nonetheless: no RTL channels, whereas waipu.tv, Zattoo and MagentaTV carry them.

💡 In context. Free tiers are not a compromise between legal and illegal, but the small step up in legal services. For ARD, ZDF and the private channels live in HD there is no way around a paid subscription. For news, documentary loops and catalogue content on the side, MagentaTV Freemium and Pluto TV are enough, without a single cent. How IPTV differs technically from classic streaming, we explain in IPTV vs classic streaming.

⚽ Sport 2026/27: who actually holds which rights

For none of the eight providers in the ranking could any notable sports rights be documented. For the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal or Formula 1, a second subscription is needed, and it is precisely at this point that most is written wrongly online.

Under "streaming the Bundesliga", the search results to this day carry pieces that swap Sky and DAZN or describe a package boundary that has not existed for over a year. Anyone who books on that basis ends up with the wrong subscription.

The following details come from the rights awards by the DFL, the DFB and the providers themselves. The prices are as of July 2026 and change frequently.

🚨 Two errors that appear almost everywhere 1. DAZN does not have the Friday and Sunday matches. DAZN has the Saturday conference and the Sunday matches; Sky the Friday matches and the Saturday individual matches. 2. The smallest DAZN package Super Sports contains the Bundesliga conference. Since 2 June 2025 it has, according to the DAZN press room, been in all packages. Affiliate sites claim the opposite to this day.

Bundesliga: the split from 2025/26 to 2028/29

The DFL awarded the rights on 5 December 2024 for four seasons. The split is fixed up to and including the 2028/29 season.

For the viewer this means: seeing every match of a season live is only possible with both services. For the conference alone, DAZN Super Sports is enough. The 2. Bundesliga sits entirely with Sky.

One restriction that regularly surprises WOW customers: the Sunday matches sit with DAZN; WOW shows them only as a re-live. A Live-Sport subscription at WOW therefore does not replace DAZN.

DFB-Pokal and Premier League

On 9 May 2025 the DFB awarded all 63 men's DFB-Pokal matches for the 2026/27 to 2029/30 seasons pay-TV-exclusive to Sky. For the Premier League, Sky holds all 380 season matches exclusively until 2030/31.

These two packages are the reason Sky is hard to replace in the sport segment, and they run considerably longer than the current Bundesliga period.

Champions League: the break comes in 2027/28

Here it is worth not booking several years ahead. The rights situation breaks open after the 2026/27 season.

Documented for the period up to 2026/27 are the Tuesday top match at Amazon and the Champions League overall at DAZN. The assignment of the Wednesday match follows from that, but is not separately stated.

DAZN loses the Champions League entirely from the summer of 2027 and receives in return the Europa League and the Conference League. For viewers who subscribed to DAZN solely for the premier competition, that is a reason to switch, announced in advance.

Formula 1

Sky holds Formula 1 exclusively until the end of 2027. For 2026 there is an RTL sub-licence for five races, which run on free TV. The complete season is available only on Sky or WOW; five races a year, by contrast, cost nothing.

NFL: reshuffled since March 2026

The NFL cancelled its contract with DAZN in March 2026. DAZN retains only the Game Pass. For the 2026/27 to 2028/29 seasons the DACH distribution looks like this:

Up to nine live matches a week are thereby covered. Notable above all is how much of it stays free to air: the three most prominent prime-time windows run on RTL and NITRO without a subscription.

RTL Group takes over Sky Deutschland

On 1 June 2026 RTL Group (Bertelsmann) fully took over Sky Deutschland. The EU clearance is dated 22 April 2026.

With that, Sky's Bundesliga rights, RTL and NITRO's NFL free-TV windows, the Sky NFL package and RTL+ sit for the first time under one roof. What consequences that has for package structure, prices or a possible merger of WOW and RTL+ is not currently documented. We deliberately refrain from forecasts here and record only the event itself.

💶 What sport costs

As of July 2026. Sources: wowtv.de, DAZN, RTL+ (prices in force since mid-January 2026), Amazon.

– = no figure available or not applicable.

Two details in the small print. First, without the Premium option WOW delivers only one stream in reduced quality, which puts the advertised entry price into perspective. Second, RTL+ Basic is useless for sport viewers, because sport is simply not included in that tier.

WOW can also be booked as a Prime Video Channel, and that without a Prime membership, with a seven-day trial. For a single competition that is often the cleaner route than an annual contract.

⚠️ Sky prices: not verified. Sky.de could not be accessed for our research (HTTP 403). Figures in circulation for Entertainment Plus, the Bundesliga package and Complete vary widely by source and promotion. We therefore do not publish them. Check the terms directly with Sky before signing up.

⚖️ Is IPTV legal in Germany?

✅ In brief. IPTV is a transmission technology and, as such, legal. What matters is whether the provider has contracts covering the content it broadcasts. All eight services in this comparison are licensed. With unlicensed offerings, § 106 and § 108 UrhG come into play, in practice mostly § 108.

The question "Is IPTV legal?" is therefore actually posed wrongly. IPTV is roughly as illegal as a cable connection. The dispute turns on the rights to the content, and that is also where the reason this article was written at all lies: in the large offering segment that has none.

🔔 Verbatim from press release 15/2025 of the Bamberg Attorney General's Office (Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Bamberg), dated 18 July 2025: "Auch die Kunden des illegalen IPTV-Angebots müssen mit der Einleitung von Ermittlungsverfahren rechnen." ("The customers of the illegal IPTV offering, too, must reckon with the opening of criminal investigations.") Source: justiz.bayern.de, Central Office for Cybercrime Bavaria (Zentralstelle Cybercrime Bayern, ZCB). According to the notice, nine searches took place with around 100 officers, and around €500,000 was secured.

This sentence comes from a public prosecutor's office, not from a comparison portal. It is the clearest official statement available to us on how German prosecutors now treat the customer side of unlicensed IPTV services. In the comparison pages we reviewed, it does not appear.

Legality of IPTV: licensed versus unlicensed

In everyday usage, "illegal IPTV" means exactly the right-hand column, i.e. unlicensed providers. The term says nothing about the technology. All eight providers in this comparison belong in the left-hand column. The following chapter concerns only the right-hand one.

What § 106, § 108 and § 108a UrhG actually say

The wording is worth reading, because it is more precise than most summaries. § 106 (1) UrhG reads (gesetze-im-internet.de, checked on 19 July 2026):

"Anyone who, in cases other than those permitted by law, reproduces, distributes or communicates to the public a work … without the consent of the rights holder shall be punished with imprisonment of up to three years or with a fine."

The three offence verbs are therefore reproduce, distribute and communicate to the public. The mere perceiving of a broadcast is not among them. The legal point of connection for the viewer is instead the transient reproduction in the device's buffer.

• § 108 UrhG transfers the same scheme to related rights, expressly including broadcasts. That is why proceedings against IPTV users run, in practice, mostly under § 108, not § 106.
• § 108a UrhG concerns commercial commission. That is the provision for operators and resellers, not for end customers.
• § 53 (1) UrhG removes the basis for a private copy as soon as the source was "manifestly unlawfully produced or made publicly available". How the "manifestly" element is to be interpreted is debated in law. We did not survey the sources on that for this article.

The European Court of Justice's Filmspeler ruling, and what it does not say

The European Court of Justice ruled on 26 April 2017 in case C-527/15 ("Filmspeler") that the exception for transient reproductions does not apply in the case of a multimedia player such as the one at issue in the main proceedings when streaming from a manifestly unlawful source (curia.europa.eu). This tie to the specific device is stated expressly in both operative paragraphs.

⚠️ Contested, and openly so. iRights.info pointed out on the very day of the decision that the court makes "no statement on streaming itself, only on streaming 'on a multimedia player'". The short form common online, "the ECJ declared streaming illegal", is a simplification. We present both readings and do not resolve the dispute, because it is not resolved.

Abmahnung or criminal investigation: two separate routes

The greatest misunderstanding in this subject area is the conflation of two types of procedure.

Pure streaming produces no upload. Without an upload there is no technical point of connection for a rights holder to capture a viewer's IP address. Germany's mass Abmahnung industry is historically a filesharing industry, as, among others, ZDFheute described on 30 May 2025.

🚩 Unsubstantiated claim. Across German search results, the assertion circulates that IPTV users face "an Abmahnung of €1,000 to €1,500". For IPTV, not a single documented case could be found, neither through a court nor a public prosecutor's office, an established law firm or a reputable media outlet. Treat this figure as what it is: an unsubstantiated commercial claim.

Part of putting the costs into context is also § 97a (3) UrhG. For natural persons it caps the value in dispute for the lawyer's fees at €1,000, from which a fee of around €150 to €215 results. The European Court of Justice held this cap to be compatible with EU law in case C-559/20. It limits only the lawyer's fees, however, not the damages.

The Verbraucherzentrale (consumer advice centre) states in its "Copyright checklist" (as of 29 October 2025) on copyright cease-and-desist warnings: "Such letters must not be ignored." For completeness, this checklist does not mention IPTV anywhere and refers to cease-and-desist warnings, not to public-prosecution proceedings.

Documented investigations against end customers

Criminal investigations are documented. Abmahnungen are not.

One point from this table deserves its own words. An examination for money laundering under § 261 StGB against the end customers of a streaming subscription is a legally far-reaching construction. A court decision on it is not known to us, and a public prosecutor's expectation of how many proceedings will have to be conducted is not an established fact.

Equally part of putting this in context is what the available sources do not yield: how these proceedings turn out is not documented from them. We have no judgment against an end customer of an IPTV service in Germany. What is documented are the opening and the announcement of proceedings, not their outcome.

Part of the context is also the European operation "KRATOS 2" (Europol, September 2025 to April 2026) with 29 arrests in 13 countries. heise expressly confirms here no German involvement and no seizure of customer data. Anyone citing this operation as evidence of a risk in Germany overstretches the source.

How users are identified in the first place

1. Seized customer databases and admin panels. With IPTV, this is the dominant route. It is not the user who is found, but the operator, and with him the list.
2. The payment trail. A SEPA transfer or a PayPal payment to the provider carries your name, your account details and a reference. It is permanent and held by a third party. In Italy, according to the Guardia di Finanza, it was precisely the transfer reference that was the identifying feature.
3. Disclosure proceedings under § 101 (9) UrhG. Practically relevant only with filesharing, because only there does an IP address arise at all, and only with a prior judicial order by the regional court (Landgericht).
4. IP retention. According to the information available to us, it currently sits in the order of seven days. We could not obtain a primary source on this.

📌 Common error: Data retention with a three-month storage period is often presented as applicable law. It is a draft bill. The cabinet adopted it on 22 April 2026; the first reading took place on 24 June 2026. As of July 2026 it is not in force.

France and Italy are not Germany

German pages like to adopt foreign penalty figures and sell them as the situation here. Types of procedure and orders of magnitude, however, differ markedly.

The French €300 to €400 is a French settlement in a French procedure. In Germany, the documented route is the criminal investigation. How German proceedings turn out is not documented from the available sources, and none of the foreign figures can be transferred to the German legal domain.

ℹ️ This is not legal advice. We reproduce the state of the statutory texts, court decisions and official communications accessible to us, as of July 2026, and expressly do not say how any specific individual case will turn out. Anyone who receives a lawyer's letter or mail from a public prosecutor's office should seek legal advice.

🚩 How to spot an illegal IPTV provider

From the legal chapter arises a practical question: how do you recognise, before clicking "Book now", which kind of page you have landed on?

Unlicensed services rarely disguise themselves. They advertise channel counts that nobody can license at those prices, and they avoid everything that would make them tangible: address, tax number, bank details, support with a name.

The following list describes features that come up again and again in the documented investigations. It is not a legal test scheme, but a guide for the product page you are currently on.

⚠️ On the point of connection: In the proceedings documented in Germany, it was not the IP address that led to the user, but the seized customer database or the provider's admin panel. The payment trail is so far documented as an identifying feature for Italy, not for Germany.

If you want to check more thoroughly, our overview of the pitfalls before buying and the checklist before subscribing help.

💡 Your rights when prices go up: § 57 TKG and the Cologne ruling

2026 has so far been a year of surcharges. Joyn Plus+ has been called Joyn+ since April 2026 and now costs €8.99 a month instead of €6.99, a rise of 29 percent. freenet TV rose on 1 January 2026 from €7.99 to €9.49. MagentaTV Flex and Smart went from €10 to €11 in April 2026, though the primary report sits behind a paywall and was available to us only via teltarif.

Two legal bases are relevant in such cases. We describe them; we do not assess your individual case.

§ 57 TKG: special right of termination after a price rise

If a provider unilaterally raises the charge, § 57 TKG provides for a special right of termination. According to the information available to us, the period is three months and the termination is free of charge.

Whether a particular TV service falls within the scope of the TKG at all depends on how the contract is classified. With telecommunications providers such as Telekom, o2, 1&1 and Vodafone, it is plausible. With pure streaming subscriptions and with freenet TV's DVB-T2 offering, the classification is not settled in the same way. When in doubt, ask at the Verbraucherzentrale before you invoke the provision.

Cologne Regional Court, 6 S 114/23 (15 May 2025)

In these proceedings, the Cologne Regional Court (Landgericht Köln) ruled that a price rise without the customer's express consent is invalid. It drew on § 307 BGB, the review of the content of general terms and conditions.

This is the decision of a regional court in an individual case. A ruling by the highest courts on it is not known to us. Anyone wanting to rely on it should clarify that with an advice centre or a lawyer.

⚖️ Not legal advice. This section reproduces statutory text and a published decision. It does not replace advice in an individual case.

🛒 Buying advice: which provider suits which household

Anyone who wants to buy IPTV decides first about the household and only then about the channel count. The ranking says which service scores best across all five criteria. Which one suits you depends on the household. Four typical cases.

One household, one screen

Two streams are enough; a long contract does not pay off. Zattoo Premium at €9.99 or waipu.tv Comfort at €7.49 cover it, both cancellable monthly. For occasional viewing, MagentaTV Freemium is enough, at no cost and with no registration. As of July 2026.

For waipu Comfort, the reservation on resolution described in the provider section remains. A trial is not documented for Comfort; the free month applies to Perfect Plus. If you have high demands on picture quality, Zattoo, with its 30 days, is the lower-risk entry.

Family with several devices

Here what counts is parallel streams and the recording function. waipu.tv Perfect Plus (4 streams, 150 h) and Zattoo Ultimate (4 streams, 100 recordings) lead the field. Mind the way of counting: Zattoo counts recordings as a number, not as hours.

Check the device list before signing up. 1&1 TV supports smart TVs from Samsung, Sony, Sharp and Philips, but neither LG nor Panasonic. How many connections you realistically need is settled in our piece on multiple screens.

Sport household

No provider from the ranking delivers the Bundesliga or the DFB-Pokal; for that you additionally need Sky or WOW and DAZN. The full rights split with prices is in the sport chapter. For the conference, DAZN Super Sports is enough. There is no way around Sky as soon as the 2. Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal or Formula 1 come into play. If you commit over several years, the Champions League break in the summer of 2027 belongs in the calculation.

Price-sensitive household: never pay the list price

The list prices in our table are starting values, not final prices. That is visible already in the official price lists:

• waipu.tv: Comfort in the annual plan €6.49 instead of €7.49; Perfect Plus €12.99 in the annual plan and €11.99 in the 24-month Vorteilspaket instead of €14.99. Perfect Plus includes a free month.
• Zattoo: 30-day trial on Smart HD, Premium and Ultimate.
• HD+: six months of Classic free for new customers. The annual plan at €85 is, however, more expensive than twelve monthly instalments.
• MagentaTV Smart: six months at €0, then €11 on a 24-month commitment.
• Vodafone GigaTV: €9.99 for six months, then €14.99, plus €49.99 activation. With Vodafone internet, €5 less.

As of July 2026, all figures from the providers' price lists.

Added to that is the user tactic quoted in the waipu section, letting offers lapse and then rebooking. We reproduce that as a user report and not as a verified rule. The threads are from 2021; whether the offer cadence is the same today, we could not verify.

💶 Soberly considered: With an IPTV subscription cancellable monthly, switching providers costs nothing beyond the new setup. That is precisely where the value of short terms lies, and precisely why we weight flexibility at 20 percent.

🔬 Methodology: what we could verify and what we could not

We did not test these services ourselves. There was no hands-on test, no measurements of frame rate, bitrate or switching time, and no long-term trial. Anyone presenting you with measured values for eight providers should be able to explain where the measurement series is.

What we evaluated instead was documented evidence, in this order of priority:

1. The providers' primary sources, i.e. the official tariff and press pages, accessed on 19 July 2026
2. Official sources, specifically gesetze-im-internet.de for the UrhG provisions, curia.europa.eu for the Filmspeler ruling, and justiz.bayern.de for the press releases of the Bamberg Attorney General's Office
3. Established specialist press for events that the providers do not document themselves
4. User reports from forums, expressly marked as such and never as evidence for technical specifications

These sources were not accessible to us and therefore appear nowhere as evidence: sky.de (HTTP 403), freenet.tv/preise, chip.de, computerbild.de, Trustpilot, Reddit and the o2 test at connect.de. Where figures are missing, that is stated in the text. We did not fill a gap with a plausible estimate.

There is no Stiftung Warentest test on IPTV. Pages that cite one are citing something that does not exist. The often-cited CHIP test is from 18 January 2025 and is therefore around eighteen months old. We name it but state its date.

Why the order is what it is

Three decisions shape the result.

First, only what is documented counts. Vodafone GigaTV gets 3.5 points in transparency, because its own figures on the channel count refute one another and the term, depending on the source, is 24 or 12 months. On recording capacity, Vodafone is level with o2 TV Premium at the top with 200 hours and gets 7.5 points for it in technology. Contradictory own figures lower the score; they do not lead to exclusion.

Second, the same yardstick applies to all. At 1&1 TV, a factor of ten gapes between the provider's figure and the specialist press on recording capacity. We do not write down the friendlier figure, but both, and the contradiction shows up in the transparency score.

Third, we assess individual products. Joyn+, Pluto TV, Sky, WOW, DAZN, RTL+ and Amazon Prime Video are deliberately not in the ranking. They provide no full channel coverage and would be judged unfairly by the same five criteria. They appear where they belong, in the chapters on the free tiers and on sport.

Our full approach is set out on the methodology page.

🏁 Conclusion

Among the licensed IPTV providers in Germany, the route for most households leads to waipu.tv or Zattoo. waipu.tv delivers the broadest documented channel base, Zattoo the most flexible contract and the longest stated trial. Between 8.2 and 8.1 points there is so little that the decision hangs on your priorities rather than on the ranking.

Anyone who initially wants to pay nothing starts with MagentaTV Freemium. With a satellite dish and a claim to genuine UHD, only HD+ remains. The cheapest entry at €4.99 is offered by o2 TV and 1&1 TV, both, however, only to existing customers.

With 1&1 TV, Vodafone GigaTV and freenet TV, the problem lies in the evidence base. About the products themselves, little can be said for want of reliable figures, and that shows up in the transparency scores.

Finally, the reservation that stands above everything: prices in this market move quickly. Three of the services named here raised prices in 2026 alone. Check the current tariff against the provider's own page before signing up. As of July 2026.

🔍 Transparency. The publisher of this comparison is IPTV4KSubscriptions. The publisher's own service is not part of this ranking and is not promoted here. Only providers licensed in Germany were assessed.

⚖️ Legal note. This article reproduces statutory texts, court decisions and official communications. It is not legal advice and does not replace advice in an individual case.

📅 As of July 2026. Research as of 19 July 2026. All price figures may have changed since.

✍️ Author: Sami Bouzid, editor for comparisons and responsible use. Our full approach is set out on the methodology page.