Netflix has added nearly 200 stand-up comedy movies to its catalog since 2020. Stand-up now accounts for 10.8% of every movie available on the platform, up from 8.0% six years ago.

The Roast of Kevin Hart landed at #9 in Reelgood’s Streaming Top 10 for the week of May 14-20, 2026.

It was the only stand-up special in the rankings, but its presence was a useful reminder: audiences watch comedy specials in large numbers, and the streaming platforms investing in the format have built deeper catalogs than most industry observers realize.

Using Reelgood’s catalog database, we looked at how stand-up comedy movies are distributed across the major SVOD platforms and how Netflix’s investment in the genre has evolved over the past six years.

The picture is clearer than you’d expect, and the divide between platforms that treat stand-up as a strategic asset and those that don’t is significant.

 

Key Takeaways

• Netflix has grown its stand-up movie catalog 67% since 2020, adding nearly 200 titles over six years (290 titles in May 2020 vs. 487 today).
• Stand-up now represents 10.8% of every movie on Netflix, a steady climb from 8.0% in 2020.
• Paramount+ leads by catalog share, with 11.5% of its movie library dedicated to stand-up, a product of its smaller, more curated catalog relative to Netflix’s scale.
• Amazon Prime Video has the most stand-up titles in raw volume (720), but they account for just 3.0% of its 24,000+ title library.
• Disney+ and AppleTV are effectively absent from the format, with a single stand-up title and no stand-up titles, respectively, across their entire movie catalogs (0.1%, 0.0%).
• Audience demand is real and measurable: the Kevin Hart roast special charted in Reelgood’s weekly Top 10, consistent with broader viewership patterns for comedy specials on streaming.

 

Netflix’s Six-Year Stand-Up Build

Netflix’s stand-up catalog didn’t get to 487 titles by accident.

From 290 movies in May 2020 to 487 today, the growth has been consistent: roughly 30 to 35 new stand-up titles per year. As a share of Netflix’s movie catalog, the category climbed from 8.0% to 10.8% over that period, even as the platform’s total movie library grew by more than 900 titles.

 

Netflix’s continued investment in the format is evident in recent deal activity.

In May 2026, Deadline reported that comedian Mike Epps signed a deal for two new specials with the platform, following “Mike Epps: Delusional,” which drew nearly 4 million views in its first week. His Netflix specials have accumulated 12.5 million cumulative views since 2023. Netflix also staged its Is a Joke Festival in 2026 with more than 350 live comedy events, underscoring that the platform treats stand-up as both a catalog asset and a live programming property.

The broader market signal is hard to ignore.

In April 2026, Variety reported that 800 Pound Gorilla, a leading stand-up production and distribution company, launched Gorilla Comedy+, a dedicated stand-up streaming service with more than 250 titles. The service’s existence is itself a market signal: the genre now has enough concentrated demand to support a standalone subscription product.

What drives the format’s economics?

Stand-up requires one headliner, one venue, and a fraction of the budget of a scripted series. The format travels well, with localized specials serving Netflix’s international subscriber base. And stand-up has durable catalog value: fans revisit sets, and new audiences discover specials years after release.

As we noted in our catalog depth analysis, most streaming catalogs are shallower than they look. Stand-up is one of the few movie categories where Netflix has built genuine depth, not just scale.

The Platform Divide

Netflix leads in raw stand-up volume, but Paramount+ edges it by percentage.

That’s partly a function of catalog size:

• Paramount+’s total movie library (877 titles) is roughly one-fifth the size of Netflix’s (4,525), so 101 stand-up titles produces an 11.5% share vs. Netflix’s 10.8%.
• Paramount+ has clearly prioritized the format relative to its overall catalog, making it a meaningful player alongside Netflix.

 

HBO Max sits at 6.5% (136 titles), placing it behind Netflix and Paramount+ but well clear of the rest of the field. Hulu (3.3%, 45 titles) and Amazon Prime Video (3.0%, 720 titles) occupy a middle tier, though for very different reasons. Amazon carries the most stand-up titles in absolute terms, but its catalog is so large (over 24,000 movies) that 720 stand-up titles barely register as a category focus.

Peacock (1.9%, 18 titles) and Disney+ (0.1%, 1 title) are effectively non-participants (as well as AppleTV with no titles).

Disney+’s absence is unsurprising given its family-focused positioning. Peacock’s thin roster reflects a broader catalog strategy built around sports, news, and licensed broadcast content rather than specialty programming.

What This Means for Content Strategy

The Kevin Hart roast charting at #9 is one data point, not a trend in isolation.

But it is consistent with what Reelgood’s catalog data has shown about audience engagement with specialty content categories. As we noted in The Streaming Iceberg, only about 12% of movies in active distribution are available on the top eight SVOD services. Within that narrow slice, stand-up comedy has carved out a disproportionate share of Netflix’s shelf space, and the audience is showing up.

For content acquisition and programming teams at competing services, this is worth tracking.

Stand-up catalogs are relatively easy to build: the economics are favorable, licensing windows tend to be straightforward, and the format has a deep back catalog from established names.

Platforms that haven’t invested meaningfully in the format (Peacock, Hulu) are leaving a comparatively low-cost content category underdeveloped.

Tracking which platforms are building depth in specific content categories, and how that composition shifts over time, is a core use case for real-time catalog intelligence.

Reelgood’s streaming availability data covers 300+ services globally, updated every few minutes, and includes genre and content-type breakdowns that let competitive intelligence teams monitor exactly this kind of category-level movement across the market.

Get the Data

If your content or competitive intelligence team wants to track catalog composition by genre across the major SVOD platforms, Reelgood can provide title-level exports with genre classifications, historical snapshots, and cross-service comparisons. Reach out at data.reelgood.com or contact us at sales@reelgood.com.

Data: Reelgood Movie & TV Metadata & Streaming Availability Database, May 2026. Top 8 SVOD defined as Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, and Apple TV. Stand-up comedy categorized using Reelgood genre taxonomy. Current-state figures from snapshot as of May 22, 2026; YoY Netflix chart sampled at May 15 each year, 2020-2026.