Nearly one in five movies on Peacock is horror. That’s the highest share of any major US streamer. But most of Peacock’s horror also streams somewhere else.

HBO Max, meanwhile, holds more of the most popular horror that no other major streamer carries.

So which service is “scariest”? It depends on whether you count share, exclusivity or what people are actually looking for.

We pulled every movie and show carrying Reelgood’s Horror genre on the eight largest US subscription (SVOD) services as of Oct 28, 2026. Then we compared what each service carries with what’s popular, based on activity in the Reelgood app.

The genre has momentum. Horror has taken in $1.36 billion at the US box office this year through Oct 25, within about $62 million of 2025’s all-time record, according to Comscore’s Paul Dergarabedian (Dergarabedian Box Office).

Key takeaways

• 22 of the 100 most popular horror titles are on HBO Max and none of the other seven services. That’s twice as many as any other service holds alone, from a horror library of just 239 titles.
• 19.6% of Peacock’s movies are horror (232 of 1,184), the highest share of the eight. But 59% of Peacock’s horror titles also stream on at least one of the other seven. At Prime Video it’s 4%, at Netflix 9% and at HBO Max 13%.
• Paranormal titles are 17.7% of streaming horror but 12.6% of the 500 most popular. Serial-killer and slasher titles show up in the top 500 about twice as often as their share of the catalog. The pattern held in each of the last three Octobers.
• Horror released before 2000 is 17% of the catalog but 30 of the 100 most popular titles. Releases from 2020 to 2023 are 28% of the catalog but only 11 of the top 100. New series Crystal Lake and Carrie rank #1 and #2.

Peacock has the most horror-heavy movie catalog, and most of it streams elsewhere too

Of the 1,184 movies in Peacock’s US catalog, 232 carry the Horror genre, or 19.6%. Prime Video follows at 15.1%, then Hulu at 14.2% and Paramount+ at 11.2%.

Part of that is subtraction. Peacock’s catalog is far smaller than two years ago, and its horror shrank more slowly than everything else. We’ll track that trend, and which services are getting scarier, in a follow-up post later this week. The bigger catch is overlap.

Counting TV shows too, Peacock carries 265 horror titles, the base we use from here on. Of those, 59% also stream on at least one of the other seven services. At Prime Video that figure is 4%, at Netflix 9% and at HBO Max 13%.

HBO Max carries the most exclusive popular horror

A big horror library doesn’t guarantee the titles people are looking for, or the titles no competitor has.

We ranked every horror title on the eight services by popularity. Then we counted how many of the top 100 each service carries, and how many of those are exclusive to it among the eight.

Service	Horror titles	In the top 100	Of those, exclusive among the 8
HBO Max	239	27	22
Prime Video	4,827	27	10
Peacock	265	26	10
Netflix	489	19	11
Paramount+	145	19	10
Hulu	271	13	8

Disney+ (1 of 42) and Apple TV (2 of 9) are left out for small bases.

HBO Max matches Prime Video’s 27 top-100 titles with about one-twentieth of the horror library. And 22 of its 27 aren’t on any of the other seven.

For a competitor’s acquisition team, that’s the short list of horror they can’t simply match by licensing.

Our Streaming Service Popularity Index tracks this kind of breadth of popular content across all genres every month.

Streamers stock up on paranormal horror. Slashers and serial killers draw more interest.

Some of the sub-genres streamers carry most aren’t the ones drawing the most interest. Tags, the sub-genre labels in Reelgood’s 250+ tag taxonomy, make the gap visible.

Paranormal titles are 17.7% of horror on the eight services but only 12.6% of the 500 most popular. Serial-killer titles are 6.8% of the catalog and 13.4% of the top 500.

All three snapshots fall in Halloween week, when slasher franchises are in season, so this is a seasonal read.

But it’s a consistent one. In the Oct 28 snapshots from 2024 and 2025 too, slasher and serial-killer titles ran at roughly 1.8 to 2 times their catalog share, and paranormal at 0.7 to 0.8 times.

Peacock leans hardest into the sub-genres drawing that outsized interest.

Of its horror content, 18% is tagged slasher, more than double the share at HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix or Prime Video.

“We need more horror” is a budget line. “We’re long on paranormal, and the interest is in slashers” is a brief an acquisition team can act on. Such insight only shows up at the tag level.

Horror’s audience skips the middle: classics and new series beat 2020 to 2023 releases

Of the 100 most popular horror titles on these services, 30 were released before 2000.

Yet pre-2000 titles are only 17% of the horror catalog. Titles from 2020 to 2023 go the other way: 28% of the catalog, 11 of the top 100. The top 500 shows the same split, with 130 pre-2000 titles and 63 from 2020 to 2023.

For licensing teams, that points to two things.

Decades-old horror still earns its place. And titles a few years past release are where interest drops off.

New releases dominate the very top.

Eight of the 10 most popular horror titles were released in 2026. Crystal Lake, Peacock’s prequel to the Friday the 13th franchise, released all eight episodes on Oct 15 (Dread Central) and ranks #1. Mike Flanagan’s Carrie, an eight-episode adaptation of Stephen King’s first novel, premiered on Prime Video on Oct 7 (/Film) and ranks #2.

Library titles take over just below that, holding eight of the next 10 spots. The result is an even split, with 10 new releases and 10 library titles in the top 20.

When a remake lands, programming and licensing teams need to know where the originals stream.

Here, the 1976 Carrie is on HBO Max and Prime Video, and the 2002 and 2013 versions are on Prime Video alone. All three ranking in the top 20 alongside the new series shows the library lift a remake can bring.

The scariest service depends on the question you ask

Prime Video wins on volume, Peacock on share, and HBO Max on exclusive popular horror.

The more useful answers sit underneath:

Which sub-genres are over-supplied, which decades still draw, and which titles a service holds alone.

Each is a different cut of the same catalog, popularity and availability data. The same cuts work for any genre, service or market.

If your team is benchmarking a genre against competitors, Reelgood can help. We can show how catalogs compare by genre and importantly, tag, or sub-genre, which titles are drawing interest, and where those titles have streamed over time. Email data@reelgood.com to talk with our data team.

Data: Reelgood Movie & TV Metadata & Streaming Availability Database, US, Oct 28, 2026 (supply-vs-interest comparison also checked against Oct 28, 2024 and 2025). Services: the eight largest US general-entertainment SVODs: Prime Video (including titles available free with ads), Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+ (Essential and Premium combined) and Peacock. Specialist services such as Shudder aren’t included. Horror includes all titles carrying Reelgood’s Horror genre; tag shares are calculated within those titles. “Exclusive” means not available on any of the other seven on the snapshot date. Popularity rankings are based on activity in the Reelgood app.