HBO is home to many wildly-acclaimed shows like Game of Thrones, True Detective, and Westworld. Unfortunately, you need to pay for an HBO subscription if you want the chance to watch these incredibly popular premium television series.

Most people don’t want to make room in their budgets for additional TV-related expenses, so they never get to experience these great shows. And if there are only one or two series you’re interested in, it might not be worth it.

Thankfully, if you don’t want to pay $15 per month to see why your friends are so glued to these shows, you’re in luck — free HBO is possible! There are plenty of ways to get access to HBO without paying a dime, including alternatives to cable TV you may already subscribe to.

Here’s How To Get Free HBO:

1. Sign Up For Their 7-Day Free Trial On Their Site

HBO offers a 7-day free trial directly on their website. Although that isn’t a long enough time to finish Game of Thrones, you could get pretty far into it or other shows if you have the time.

As soon as you create your account, you’ll have 7 days of unlimited access to all HBO content, so make the most of it.

To avoid being charged for the paid subscription, make sure to cancel your HBO trial before the trial period is up.

2. Sign Up For A Free Trial On Hulu

If you have a Hulu subscription, you could be watching some free HBO right now!

Similar to the free trial directly on the HBO site, Hulu lets you add HBO for the same 7-day free trial.

Don’t have a Hulu subscription? They offer a 1-month free trial to see if you like it; you can add HBO to your account just like if you had a paid Hulu subscription.

As always, cancel the trial by the end of the trial period to avoid subscription charges.

3. Sign Up For A Free Trial On Amazon Prime

Based on Amazon’s stats, there’s a great chance you have a Prime subscription to your name. Did you know you can get HBO for free using your Prime subscription?

It’s a fairly simple process. Just head over to their signup page and enter your Amazon Prime login information. Then you can start your 7-day HBO free trial.

Don’t have a Prime subscription? They let you try it free for 30 days, and the free trial grants you the same privileges that a paid subscription does.

But students get an even better deal: sign up with the email your school provides you, confirm your email, and Amazon will give you 6 whole months of free Prime!

4. Check With Your Phone Provider

Depending on your phone provider and data plan, you might already have free access to streaming services like HBO.

For example, AT&T offers all its unlimited data customers a free HBO account if they have the Unlimited Plus plan whether they have an AT&T video streaming service or not.

Those that don’t have an AT&T video streaming subscription can access their no-cost HBO on DirecTV Now’s or HBO Go’s app, while people with a subscription simply have it tacked on to their plan.

You don’t have to worry about being charged for a paid subscription, as this is a perk of being an unlimited data customer.

Other phone providers may have similar perks, so check with your provider if it isn’t AT&T.

5. Call Your Cable Provider

Cable providers like to hand out freebies in an attempt to both gain new customers and steal customers away from their competitors; many providers offer a free HBO subscription due to HBO’s popularity.

If you still have cable, you can call your cable provider and try to negotiate for a few months of zero-cost HBO whether or not you’re a new customer. Casually let them know your current cable package is too expensive and/or you’re thinking of switching cable providers.

Use this leverage to negotiate a free HBO subscription on the condition that you won’t switch providers. They’ll probably be willing to do so if they use HBO as a “hook” for new customers.

To maximize your chances of success, make sure to be polite and ask instead of demanding HBO. Such politeness will be a breath of fresh air for the customer service rep on the other end, making them more likely to offer you a few months of HBO at no cost.

If for some reason they refuse, you can always try again soon after. Chances are you’ll get another customer service rep who’s feeling more generous than the last.

6. Watch Clips On YouTube

If you put in a little leg work, you could view a ton of HBO content for free on YouTube.

The most accessible content is going to be the HBO talk shows; HBO puts most of the clips from talk shows on YouTube, so you’ll actually be able to catch the best parts without watching an entire episode.

But if you spend some time digging around YouTube, you could piece together a few episodes of other shows as well.

7. Share An Account With Friends/Family

If you’ve exhausted all other options but still want to get in on HBO’s offerings, why not share an account with someone else?

Ask friends or family if you can be added to their HBO account. If not, at the very least ask if you can use their login information when they aren’t using their HBO account.

This is the only way to get HBO for free beyond a limited-time free trial or paying for another service that offers HBO, so you should consider borrowing someone else’s account (with their permission, of course) if you want to save as much money as possible.

How To Maximize Your Free Trials

As you’ve noticed, many subscription services offer the same 7-day HBO free trial.

To maximize the amount of time you can watch HBO for free, first check with your phone provider to see if it’s included in your plan. If it is, then you won’t even need a free trial and can ignore the next few steps.

If HBO isn’t included in your phone plan, try to negotiate as long of a free HBO subscription as you can with your cable provider if you have cable.

Once your free trial is coming to an end, sign up for another free trial through one of your subscription services.

Do this week after week with each subscription service, and you’ll have months of no-cost HBO entertainment.

Just remember to cancel each trial before they hit you with a $14.99 charge!

Some free trials “renew” after a long enough period of time, so check back if it’s been a while since you signed up for an HBO free trial. You might be able to get free HBO again.

Getting Free HBO Isn’t Hard

Now, there’s no way to truly get HBO for free forever without either paying for some other service or splitting an account with someone else. HBO wouldn’t be alive very long if everything was free.

However, if you don’t have cable but you’re an avid TV watcher, you most likely subscribe to at least one subscription service that offers a free trial of HBO. Might as well make the most of your subscription and get HBO for free!

And even if you refuse to subscribe to any of these services, you can always fall back on a generous friend or family member.