Kids' TV in Ireland, legally

Children do not care about rights deals. They care that the thing with the dog is on. The good news is that the thing with the dog is on one of about five services, most of them cheap, and one of them free.

Who has it this season

• Free-to-air Highlights Review
  • Free

  RTÉjr and the children's slots on RTÉ2 and TG4 (Cúla4), free with an aerial.

• Paramount+ Some of it Review
  • €5.99/month

  Nickelodeon and PAW Patrol, with adverts.

• Prime Video Some of it Review
  • €6.99/month

  A decent kids' section, smaller than Disney's.

• Disney+ All of it Review
  • €8.99/month

  Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars. The one children ask for by name.

• Netflix Most of it Review
  • €11.99/month

  A big kids' section with its own profiles and controls.

• Sky All of it Review
  • €41/month (12-month contract)

  Sky Kids plus Disney+ with ads and Netflix Basic bundled in, on a 12-month contract.

Rights and prices checked 2026-09-19. Standard prices; intro offers can be lower.

Free first. RTÉ KIDSjr is a whole channel of pre-school and young children’s programmes on Saorview, with children’s slots on RTÉ2 and on TG4 as Cúla4, all of it on RTÉ Player and the TG4 Player as well. For a lot of families with small children that is enough, and it costs nothing beyond the aerial.

Then the paid ones. Disney+ is the one children ask for by name, with Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars in one place and a Standard with Ads plan as the cheap way in. Netflix has a big kids’ section with its own profiles and controls. Prime Video has a decent kids’ section, smaller than Disney’s, and it comes with the Prime delivery you may already have. Paramount+ has Nickelodeon and PAW Patrol, with adverts, and it comes free inside Sky Cinema. Sky Ultimate TV bundles Sky Kids, Disney+ with adverts and Netflix Basic on a 12-month contract.

The cheapest way to watch most of it

Free-to-air plus one service. For most households that service is Disney+ on the adverts plan, which rolls monthly at the standard price; the six-month saver rate for new customers ties you in for those six months. If the children are older and the family already has Netflix, the kids’ profiles on it may be all you need; if the house already has Prime for the deliveries, try its kids’ section before paying for anything else.

Rotate the rest the way you would films and series. Nobody needs Disney+, Netflix and Paramount+ all at once, and the finder will show you what all three add up to over a year, which is a number worth seeing.

Sky Ultimate is the exception: if you want Sky’s channels anyway, its bundle of Sky Kids, Disney+ and Netflix is decent value. Just do not sign 12 months for the sake of cartoons.

What’s free

RTÉ KIDSjr on Saorview and RTÉ Player. The children’s slots on RTÉ2 and Cúla4 on TG4 and the TG4 Player. The BBC channels are among the free satellite channels if you have a dish. Nothing to subscribe to, no adverts for toys either.

The calendar

• There is no season. The finder treats kids’ TV as all-year and assumes one paid service at a time.
• Disney+ saver rates run for the first six months; Paramount+ has a seven-day trial; Prime has a 30-day trial.
• School holidays are when the free channels and the aerial earn their keep; the rest of the year one service is plenty.

One free channel, one paid service, and the remote back in your hand by nine. Sort me out with the finder, and if the telly in the playroom is old, a cheap streaming stick runs every app above. Everything else is on the watch index.