The Apple One bundle offers all-in-one access to Apple’s subscription services. The full Premier tier that incorporates Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, and 2TB of iCloud+ storage – all for a monthly price of $30/£32.85.
There’s also a cheaper Individual tier that lops off Apple Fitness+ and Apple News+ and gives you 50GB of iCloud storage for $15/£16.95 a month.
But just how good an offer is Apple One? Would you be better off with ‘Apple None’, instead compiling your own bundle from third-party alternatives? Let’s break it down.
Apple Music
The most obvious alternative to Apple Music is the behemoth that is Spotify, which offers the unlimited ad-free streaming of more than 100 million tracks (just like Apple Music) for $9.99/£9.99 per month.
That’s about a third of the price of the Apple One Premier tier, and two thirds of the price of the Individual tier.
One notable advantage for Apple Music over Spotify, if you’re an audiophile with appropriately high-quality headphones or speakers, is that it supports high quality lossless audio. Spotify doesn’t.
Apple TV+
Apple TV+ has even more high-profile competitors than Apple Music, most notably Netflix and Disney+.
The equivalent tier of Netflix (which means full 4K output) costs $19.99/£15.99 per month, which is half the price of an Apple One Premier subscription. Of course, Netflix also has cheaper tiers, unlike Apple TV+, but we’re going for like for like here.
Disney+, meanwhile, costs $10.99/£7.99 for unlimited ad-free viewing – a third of the price of Apple One Premier in the US, and a quarter of the price in the UK.
Apple Arcade
Apple’s subscription mobile gaming service grants you unlimited access to more than 200 mobile games. It only really has a direct analogue over on Android and its Google Play Pass, which of course is not available to iPhone users.
There are a couple of very loosely comparable third party services. One is Netflix Games, which is available as part of any Netflix subscription. Technically that starts at just $6.99/£4.99 per month for the Basic with Ads tier.
Then there’s the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service, which lets you play full-blown console games on your iPhone – albeit streamed through a web page, thus requiring a very good Wi-Fi connection to work properly. That costs $14.99/£10.99 per month.
Apple News+
Apple News+ effectively offers you unlimited access to a bunch of high profile magazines. There are a few services that offer something similar, but if we were to pick out one it would be Readly.
For $11.99/£9.99 per month, you’re getting unlimited access to more than 6,000 popular magazines and newspapers, compared to Apple’s several hundred.
The advantage to Apple News+ is that many of those few hundred magazines are bespoke productions tailored to touchscreen devices.
iCloud+
There are a number of high profile cloud storage alternatives out there from some major players. The most direct rival these days probably has to be Google Drive.
Pricing starts from $1.99/£1.59 per month for 100GB of storage, which is the closest equivalent to the Apple One Individual tier’s 50GB. The 2TB tier, which matches the Apple One Premier tier, costs $9.99/£7.99 per month.
Apple Fitness+
There are a number of subscription fitness services that serve as direct alternatives to Apple Fitness+. One of those is iFit, which offers an interactive personal training program for $14.99/£9.99 a month.
iFit is a more hardcore offering than Apple Fitness+, and can tie in with heavy duty fitness equipment like rowers, treadmills, and ellipticals. Apple Fitness is more geared to lighter workout types, and a closer alternative might be found in Nike Training Club, which is now completely free.
Conclusion
Clearly, if you’re in the market for all of these services, Apple One’s $30/month Premier package offers the best value for money. Individual memberships to an example collection of Spotify, Netflix (for both TV & games), Readly, Google Drive, and Nike Training Club would set you back $52/month in the US. But everyone’s needs are different, and if you only require a few of those services, the pick and mix approach could still work out best for you.