Why Netflix’s South African library is better than the US (2024)

Netflix is available in South Africa for a lower monthly price than in the United States and also trumps the US when it comes to the quality of the content available.

South Africa ranks amongst the top five countries with the lowest Netflix subscription costs and 16th when it comes to the streaming service’s library size, according to data from Comparitech.

Results from different surveys also show that Netflix is the dominant video streaming service in South Africa.

Netflix has a library consisting of approximately 5,300 titles in South Africa, compared to around 5,500 titles in the US.

The basic subscription cost of R99 ($6.44) in South Africa works out to R0.018 ($0.00121) per title, while the US pricing works out to R0.024 ($0.00162) per title for the basic plan.

Counting the total number of titles and comparing it to the price you pay only tells part of the story, though. The content available on Netflix also differs by region.

According to Netflix, library content differs by country for several reasons, including regional taste, multiple rights owners, and rights not being available for a particular region.

Some Netflix Originals are also not available in every region. The streaming service says this is due to several potential factors.

Netflix explained that some of its originals were released when the service was only available in a small number of countries, and it did not acquire licensing rights for these titles in all regions.

Other companies may have obtained the rights to stream Netflix original content in a particular region due to agreements made before the platform was available in that country.

Conversely, it also happens that Netflix will have the rights to distribute certain titles in South Africa, but not the US.

One example of this is Star Trek Discovery, which Netflix acquired the rest-of-world streaming rights for. In the US it is available on CBS’s own streaming service — CBS All Access.

A recent investigation by Uswitch revealed that South Africa has a better-quality library compared to the US.

The price comparison company used a combination of IMDb scores, award wins, and award nominations for the titles in each country’s library to assess the quality of the content available.

South Africa ranked 28th out of 190 countries assessed, with the US ranking 29th.

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