HBO Max Ads Exposed: 77 of 342 Negative Reviews (2026)

HBO built a brand on the absence of commercials. That is the whole reason the premium cable tier existed, and enough of its subscribers remember it that the word "still" does a lot of work in these reviews: still ads, still on the plan I pay extra for, still louder than the show. Almost a quarter of every real complaint about the app is about advertising, and a surprising share of it is not about the ads themselves but about what happens to the video when one ends.

HBO Max holds 4.78 stars from 5,715,537 Google Play ratings on more than 100 million installs, and 4,851,868 of those ratings, 84.9% of them, are five stars. On the App Store it holds 4.87 from 5,631,829 ratings. Underneath those numbers, 77 people in ten weeks sat down to write about the commercials.

Quick Answer: What Are HBO Max Users Saying About the Ads?

Four different things, and only two of them are about ad volume in the ordinary sense. We pulled the 3,000 most recent US Google Play reviews on 1 September 2026, filtered to 342 substantial 1-3 star complaints, and hand-verified 77 about advertising: 22.5% of every real complaint in the window, and 62.3% of those are one-star. Of the 77, 17 are about how often the ads come, 17 are about the ad break breaking playback rather than the ads themselves, 16 are from people who say they bought an ad-free or premium plan and are still shown ads, 9 object to ads existing on a paid service at all, 8 are about ads being much louder than the show, 5 are about the same ad running back to back, 3 are about what the ads are for, and 2 are about the on-screen ad counter being wrong. The same complaint appears at almost exactly the same rate in fifteen other countries.

How We Read These Reviews

We pulled the 3,000 most recent US Google Play reviews for HBO Max on 1 September 2026, along with the live store metadata. The developer is WarnerMedia Global Digital Services, LLC, the listed version is "Varies with device", the listing was updated 20 August 2026, and it declares both advertising and in-app purchases.

Those 3,000 reviews cover 22 June to 31 August 2026, seventy days. Of them, 888 were 1-3 stars. We kept the ones long enough to describe something, 120 characters or more, which left 342 substantial negative reviews.

From that pool we pulled every review mentioning ads, commercials or advertising. That produced 83 candidates, and only 6 were about something else: reviewers whose real complaint was subtitles, remote control behaviour, download quality or a declined credit card, with advertising mentioned in passing. A 7.2% false positive rate is unusually low for this kind of search, and the reason is that nobody writes the word "commercials" in a streaming review by accident. What is left is 77 confirmed reviews, each assigned to exactly one category.

The Eight Shapes of an HBO Max Ad Complaint

Before the sections, one number worth holding onto. Twelve of the 77 say they have cancelled, are cancelling, or have started pirating, which is a high rate for a complaint category that is fundamentally about a business model rather than a bug.

The Reported Ad Load

This is the part of the corpus nobody publishes, because it takes reading rather than counting. Thirteen of the 77 US reviews name an actual number: how many breaks, how many ads per break, how long, or how far apart. We pulled every one of them into a table rather than summarising, because the summary is less useful than the spread.

Three caveats belong with that table, and they matter more than the numbers do.

These are the ad loads people chose to write down. Anyone who found the load acceptable did not sit down to count it, so this is a table of the worst experiences reported, not an average.

Almost nobody says which plan they were on. Exactly one of these thirteen reviewers states elsewhere in the same review that they pay extra to avoid ads. The other twelve do not specify a tier, so the table mixes plans and cannot be read as the ad load of any particular subscription.

Where a reviewer gave a range we kept the range. We did not take midpoints, because a midpoint invents a precision the review does not have.

this appp is a scam. its bloatware to scsm you into paying for the premiere tier ad skipping option. all others are punishment systems. 7 ad breaks in one old movie timing 90 seconds each. Lying publicly about the 6 minute limit.

adds are a bit ridiculous. 6 commercial breaks in 1 movie, 3 commercials per break and all the commercials were for the same product.

4, 15-30 second commercials is ludicrous I actually stopped watching an episode because I am unwilling to sit through that many commercials ever 10 min. adjust that or im unsubbing as soon as im done with sopranos

I pay for this service already, why the hell are there so many advertisements? in one episode of GOT, there are five sets of advertisements. ridiculous for a paid service. neither netflix nor Disney do this, you should follow their example.

1. Paying for Ad-Free and Still Seeing Ads (16 Reviews)

This is the group with the sharpest claim in the corpus, because it is not an opinion about pricing. It is an assertion that a specific paid product did not do the thing it was bought for.

Pay for no ads and still get ads before every episode. Absolutely crazy business policy to literally have a "no ads option" to buy and then still give ads. Glad I only signed up Monthly to see and didn't do the year in one hit like I was thinking about. Cancelled subscription.

You want to tell me why nobody has sued you for putting commercials in your commercial free package? Just because it's a HBO commercial doesn't give you the right to run an ad in an ad-free package.

Even paying the higher amount for NO ADS as they say, HBO MAX still throws skippable ads at you! Thats not okay and breaks consumer rights since you are advertising one thing while providing the customer a different product.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS! 1. Paying a higher premium for no advertising and there's advertising at the start of shows! 2. The shows that HBO have that are worth watching isn't worth the advertising! 3. The advertising for something we are already paying for is no need at the start of each show! 4.

The important detail is what these reviewers are actually seeing, because it changes what the complaint means. Seven of the 16 identify the ads as HBO Max's own promotions and trailers rather than third party commercials, and three of those note that they are skippable. In other words, a large part of this cluster is not a billing failure. It is a disagreement about whether a trailer for another Warner show counts as an ad.

how is that i pay for no ads and yet i have a promo before every movie or ep? yes i can skip it but how about i get none of that isnt that the point of paying the highest tier

if I pay for premium no ads I expect NO ADS. PROMOTIONAL SHOWS COUNT. yes you can skip them but you have to be constantly using the remote. no sitting back and relaxing here.

are you seriously advertising to me on a service i pay extra to not have ads? your marketing team needs to be fired.

I pay for ad free yet for some reason they think its okay to advertise their new apps and shows to me. False advertisement which is ironic.

The reviewers are unambiguous about which side of that disagreement they are on. One of them had it explained to them and did not accept the explanation.

can't even watch HBO original shows on HBO's own app. also paid for no ads and still have ads at the beginning of every show. also no way to block certain shows I don't want to see.

overall pretty good but I signed up to the ad free plan and I'm still getting ads inserted at the start of some episodes

We cannot verify from a review which plan anyone actually holds, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What the corpus supports is that sixteen people in seventy days believed they had bought an ad-free product and wrote a one or two star review because they were shown advertising anyway.

2. The Ad Break Breaks the Video (17 Reviews)

This is the finding we did not expect, and it is tied for the largest group. These seventeen reviewers are not primarily arguing about how many ads there should be. They are describing the ad transition itself as the point where the app fails: the video comes back at the wrong timestamp, at the wrong resolution, or not at all.

The most concrete version is a resolution drop, which two reviewers describe with numbers.

after every ad break the resolution drops to 144p. sometimes it skips backwards and forwards to random spots of the movie/show after an ad. been like this for over a year.

have this app on my projector.. the ads i swear to god play on 1080P BUT THE SHOE PLAYS ON 360P NOW I HAVE NO ISSUE WITH THE app ON MOBILE BUT WHOEVER IS WORKING ON THE PROJECTOR APP I BETTER NOT FIND YOU YOU BUM.

The most expensive version, in minutes of a person's evening, is losing your place and paying for it in ads a second time.

get to an ad stop, watch 2 ads, app brings me back half an hour to the previous ad stop, watch 2 ads, I go back forward to where I was, watch 2 ads. 10/10 best ad streaming app.

I have the app on my Vizio TV and after commercials it goes back to what I just watched and I have to fast forward to the part of the show that should have started after the ads and I'm forced to watch even more ads again before I can watch the rest of my show and it keeps

agree with others that the ads are out of control. multiple 3-5 minute ad breaks in very short windows. as if that weren't enough, the ad breaks don't pick up in the same spot and end up cutting out entire scenes.

One of the worst predatory streaming services out there, one missclick on something you watch means rewatching all the ads you had just watched through the show and have way too many ads there are great shows but the amount of ads is ridiculous.

Others describe the app freezing or the screen going black at the break rather than the position moving.

Worked great for many months but they pushed an update August 7th and now it freezes on commercials. I have to restart the app to get it to go another 20 minutes and then it freezes again. None of the troubleshooting suggestions make any difference.

Worst streaming app ever. It's full of bugs since they migrated it, and nothing is improving. You added ads for the basic plan, yet when it tries to show the ad, it blocks, and you should exit and enter again. Sometimes that doesn't work either, not to mention that sometimes the movie enters a loop.

every ad watching a movie resets the whole movie on my tablet. ive cleared cache Uninstaller logged in and logged out removed from previously watched nothing fixes this broken trash app Im about to call in to demand a refund or do a charge back and never come back

HBO Max app works wonderful on the phone and tablet, but it is absolutely horrible on the Roku products. You can't get past ads that will kick you out. Not able to use pause, to allow the tech to catch-up to the show, all shows start with a black screen (10-20 sec) before playing but you can hear sound.

Five of the seventeen name a specific device rather than a phone, most often a television or a streaming stick, which is worth noting because a Google Play review is written by someone who has the Android app installed. The failure is being reported from more places than the phone it was rated on.

3. The Ads Are Much Louder Than the Show (8 Reviews)

Eight reviewers describe the same physical experience in almost the same words: the programme is quiet enough that they raise the volume, the advertising is loud enough that they lower it again, and the cycle repeats every break.

The audio is terrible. When a show or movie is playing, the audio is super low and you essentially have to crank the volume all the way up to hear anything. Then when an ad pops up, it's extremely loud and then you have to turn it down. Then after the ad, you have to turn it back up just to hear anything.

Highly disappointed. most streaming services have ads that are louder than the show, but the volume difference in HBO max is absolutely insane. ready to cancel after only one week because this is terrible and makes the shows unwatchable.

The sound quality in app is awful.. I can barely hear my show when it's on 100% volume and then the ads are blasting at normal volume, it's super alarming and wicked annoying.

Advertisements are double the sound level as movies and have to keep adjusting the phone volume up and down constantly, even when using headphones. Need to have an app option or make it automatically balance out the audio output.

Two put a multiplier on it. We are quoting these as reported perception rather than as measurements, because nobody in a review corpus has a sound meter.

lower the volume of the ads!! it ear deafening when the ads pop up it goes 200% more volume. that is absolutely ridiculous it makes the volume way too dang loud, there is no need to blast ads at enhanced volumes!!!!

4. The Same Ad, Again and Again (5 Reviews)

A small group, but the most specific one. Five reviewers say the problem is not the quantity of advertising but the absence of rotation: the same commercial, sometimes three and sometimes five times, inside a single break.

Just had the most insulting experience of my life. The exact same ad for an AI slop customer agent played three times in a row in the same ad break. Things like this are why we're pirating all your shows now.

this is the only app I have ever used that will play the same ad 5 times in a row! I understand commercials are part of it but can we at least have a different one not the same one 5 times!

HBO...PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE ease off on the GLP-1 ads!!! Just watched a show and ebay single commercial was for RO. I mean, 5 RO commercials in a row? Come on!!!!! so... not sure how long ago but I made a comment about the GLP 1 commercials. Was watching a newer show and in one of th3 breaks AGAIN FIVE GLP 1 ADS.

You do not need to play Acorn ads back to back to back. It's okay to have variety, especially when you're advertising companies that are less corrupt.

5. The Counter Says One and Delivers Four (2 Reviews)

The smallest category and the one we would normally leave out, except that two people independently reported the same very specific thing: the on-screen indicator that tells you how many ads are left does not match how many ads play.

I hate how it says "ad 1 of 1" and then there will be 3 more unskippable ads. Why even lie? It just makes me more annoyed. Just be honest and say "ad 1 of 4".

ive gotten sick of the amount of advertisements. ive gotten. 3 of 2, 5 of 4 ads so many times its ruined the experience of the shows im watching. im fine with ads cause I pay for them. I DONT PAY TO BE LIED TO! This is the worst streaming experience I've ever had. HANDS DOWN!

Two reviews are not a pattern and we will not present them as one. We include them because it is the kind of detail that either gets confirmed quickly or disappears, and it is cheap to check on your own next break.

6. What the Ads Are For (3 Reviews)

Three reviewers complain about the advertising inventory rather than its volume. One is the only review in the corpus with a safeguarding angle, and it is specific enough to quote in full context: the reviewer is describing ads inside a profile the app itself designates as a child's.

Are you out of you damn minds? I got the subscription through my carrier, so I have to put up with commercial breaks, so far so good, it's "free". But inserting ads for horror movies in a child's (my 3 y.o.) profile, defined as a child's profile as per you app is despicable and irresponsible!

great selections just that price for ads idk 😐 not just h.b.o. all the apps do it now we use to not have ads u just bought a subscription and that was that plus the ads are scam ads about coin slot machines keep popping up that shouldn't be allowed

This Is Not a Bad Update

It would be tidy to blame a release. The data does not allow it. The 77 confirmed reviews carry 14 different version labels, plus eleven with no label at all, and the largest, 7.5.0.72, accounts for 22 of them, which is simply the version most people were running during the middle of our window.

The month by month picture is equally unhelpful for anyone hoping for a trend, and we would rather say so than draw a line through three points.

June is a partial month here, since the corpus starts on 22 June, so its denominator covers nine days and its share is the least reliable of the three. What the table actually shows is a complaint sitting between a fifth and a quarter of everything for as long as we can see, which is what a structural feature looks like rather than a regression.

The Same Complaint in Fifteen Other Countries

We scanned 40 Google Play storefronts. Seventeen returned no reviews we had not already collected, and we checked why rather than assuming. Every other English store returns the US set: Britain, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, India and the Philippines each returned 200 reviews, and all 200 of each were already in our US corpus. The Portuguese and Spanish American stores duplicate their counterparts the same way, and that also checks out exactly: Portugal returns Brazil's 200, Mexico returns Spain's 200. The remaining 23 storefronts produced 680 substantial negative reviews we had not seen.

163 of those 680, 24.0%, mention advertising. That is the finding: the US share of hand verified ad complaints was 22.5%, and a keyword sweep of the storefronts that returned new reviews lands within two points of it. One caveat belongs with that number and we will not bury it: the international figure is a keyword match, not a hand verified count like the US one, so treat 24.0% as an upper bound rather than a like for like comparison.

The distribution is uneven in a way that is worth recording: Italy 37, Romania 28, Germany 26, Norway 15, Sweden 14, Poland 10, Denmark 9, Turkey 7, Finland 6, Czechia 4, Spain 2, Russia 2, France 1, Netherlands 1, Greece 1.

The ad-free tier complaint travels intact. These reviewers are describing the same product disagreement in four languages.

Danish

jeg har det dyreste abonnement for at slippe for reklamer og for at have 4k. Auto preview er slået fra. alligevel viser den automatisk trailers for andre film og serier. både ved start af valgt serie og mellem afsnit.

Finnish

Miksi piti laittaa sovellukseen mainoksia,vaikka maksoin,että ei sisälly mainoksia.Joten peruin tilaukset.Mainoket pilaavat minun urheilun katsomista. Näkemiin HBO MAX!!

Czech

Dobrý den už jděte někam aktualizoval jsem a už tam zase mám ty debilní upoutávky! platím abych nemusel koukat na reklamy a upoutávky něčeho co je stejně na hlavní stránce!!!!🤬🤬🤬 HBO fakt hodně kleslo každou chvíli se mi něco seká tak musím restartovat přehrávání.

Polish

Szczyt bezczelności żeby kazać użytkownikom płacić abonament a mimo to wrzucać reklamy w trakcie seriali i filmów. I oferować brak ich wyświetlania za dodatkową opłatą.

So does the volume complaint, and so does the ad break playback failure. The German and Swedish reviewers below are describing exactly the cluster in section 2: the app hanging at the ad rather than the ad being unwelcome.

Norwegian

Appen er grei. bra innhold. MEN! Jeg gir den en stjerne fordi jeg betaler for abonnementet og får reklame. Det ødelegger hele opplevelsen. spesielt når lyden på reklamene på en eller annen måte blir høyere enn film/serie.

German

Das Allerletzte ! Man kann nicht eine Folge einer Serie anschauen ohne das die App sich bei jeder Werbung aufhängt. Alles versucht, Cache leeren, Beenden erzwingen und neu installiert. Wenn man bei einer Folge einer Serie 4x den Cache leeren muss, ist es komplett uninteressant.

Swedish

Om man ska ha en reklamtjänst bör ens app inte vara fylld med buggar som gör att man måste starta om en film två gånger och se samma reklam nio gånger om.

Swedish

Utbudet är väl ok, men ska ni ha reklam mitt i filmer och avsnitt så vore det bra om den funkar. Nu hakar det upp sig var och varannan gång det blir reklaminslag, och så måste man starta om appen för att det ska funka. Otroligt drygt.

Three international reviewers put numbers on the load, and they belong beside the US table above. A Polish reviewer counts 25 ads in 35 minutes of a series, most of them 30 seconds. One Turkish reviewer reports the count going from two ads to four over time, and a second reports three at the start of every episode plus more in the middle. The rest of the quotes below are the frequency and repetition complaints in their own languages.

Polish

Ostatnio dałem dwie gwiazdki ze względu na bardzo dobre filmy i seriale. Reklam jednak jeszcze więcej. 35 minut serialu i 25 reklam , w tym większość po 30 sekund. A jeśli zatnie się internet oglądam reklamy ponownie...

Turkish

İlk başlarda 2 adet reklam izletiyordu.. Şuan ise 4 adet reklama çıktı! Git gide daha da kötüye gidiyor Ayriyeten içerik olacak çok kısıtlı ve az tv kanalları da artık yok bulamadım!

Italian

Va bene che ho acquistato un piano con pubblicità, ma cosi tante, ma cosi tante, da rendere la visione uno strazio. Vi ricordo che si tratta comunque di una visione a pagamento e quindi la pubblicità dovrebbe esserci ma non talr da rovinare in maniera cosi importante la visione dei contenuti.

Norwegian

20-30 ganger i løpet av en film vises symbol for buffering og nedre del av skjerm blir mørk hver gang det skjer. Og nei, det er ingenting galt med internettilgangen her. Så den hersens reklamen, samme reklame gjerne 5 ganger på en film.

Spanish

Muy buen catalogo pero ahora te cortan dos o tres veces una pelicula con anuncios cuando ya se está pagando una subscripción 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻y la calidad del funcionamiento de la app tambien deja bastante que desear, muy poco optimo.

One note on how we assigned those language labels. We read the text rather than trusting the storefront, because they do not always agree: one review sitting in the French store is written in Spanish, and several reviews in the Danish, Russian and Greek stores are written in English. Reviews written in English got no language label regardless of which country they came from.

What This Corpus Cannot Tell You

It cannot tell you which plan any individual reviewer holds, and that limitation lands hardest on the most interesting group. Sixteen people say they pay for ad-free and see ads. Seven of them describe those ads as HBO Max's own trailers, which is a different claim from being served third party commercials on a premium tier, and for the other nine we simply do not know.

It cannot tell you the real ad load either. The table above is thirteen accounts from people motivated enough to count, which is the opposite of a random sample.

What it can tell you is what the complaint is made of, and the answer is less obvious than "too many ads". Half of the 77 are about the mechanics: 17 about the video breaking at the transition, 8 about the mix being far louder than the programme, 5 about no rotation, 2 about a counter that does not match. Those are engineering problems, not pricing decisions, and they are the half of this that could be fixed without anyone changing a business model.

Read the Full Breakdown

You can read the full negative review breakdown for HBO Max on Android and HBO Max on iOS, or go straight to the trust check, the cancellation guide and apps like it. For the same argument at a rival service, see what Peacock Premium really costs. For how the eight big streaming apps compare on complaint volume, see Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max Ranked. For a streaming app where the playback failure is about language rather than ads, see Crunchyroll's missing dubs and broken subtitles. For the pattern behind complaints like these, see why users uninstall apps.