Pluto TV

Is Pluto TV safe?

For adults, mostly yes. Pluto TV is a free, ad-supported service with hundreds of live channels and an on-demand library, owned by the same company as Paramount+. You can watch without an account or a card, and there is no way for strangers to contact you. We score it 55/100, the same as Peacock.

The price of free is advertising. Every viewer sees ads, Apple's label lists five kinds of data used to track you, and Pluto TV is now a weaker choice for young children than it was a year ago.

What Pluto TV tracks

Pluto TV's App Store label has a "Data Used to Track You" section covering coarse location, email address, name, search history, user and device IDs, product interaction and advertising data. The same data, plus crash and performance logs, is collected for analytics, personalisation and Pluto's own marketing.

Google Play's data safety section lists device IDs and approximate location as shared with other companies for analytics and advertising. It also lists name and email as shared, for account management.

The App Store links to the Paramount Skydance privacy policy, last changed on 12 May 2026, which covers Pluto TV with the group's other brands. It names "data licensors and aggregators, advertising networks, data analytics providers" as partners that help "track your activity across the Paramount Services, as well as Third-Party Services" to build ad profiles. Paramount treats a Global Privacy Control signal as an opt-out of sale, sharing and targeted advertising for device data. It says its websites and apps do not respond to Do Not Track, and that it has no actual knowledge of selling or sharing data of people under 16.

No account needed

Pluto TV's strongest privacy point is that you do not have to sign up. Its help centre says the Watch List is saved on the device and needs no account. Registering for free only adds resume across devices and newsletters. If you never register, Pluto TV still sees your device ID, rough location and what you watch, but not your name or email.

Children and Kid Mode

This is where Pluto TV has slipped. Paramount removed Pluto TV's Kid Mode, a separate area with only children's programming, from its apps in September 2026, according to The Desk. That was around the time of the redesigned app, version 15, which reached the App Store from August 2026. It is not clear whether the removal was linked to the lawsuit below.

The App Store still lists parental controls and age assurance among the app's in-app controls. But a search of Pluto TV's help centre for "parental controls" and for "kids" returns no article on either. We found no PIN, profile lock or rating filter described anywhere official. Live channels run around the clock, including true crime and other programmes made for adults, and a child can browse to any of them.

The children's privacy lawsuit

On 4 November 2025 five parents filed a proposed class action against Paramount Skydance and Pluto Inc. in the federal court for the Central District of California (Diaz v. Paramount Skydance Corporation). They allege that Pluto TV collected what their children watched in its kids section and shared it with Alphabet and Microsoft without parental consent, and that the children were shown adult-oriented ads. Judge Kenly Kiya Kato dismissed the first complaint in April 2026 for lack of standing under the Video Privacy Protection Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, with leave to amend. On the amended complaint, filed in May 2026, she let seven claims proceed, including invasion of privacy, negligence and unjust enrichment, The Desk reported on 1 October 2026.

The claims are not proven, and a private lawsuit is not a regulator's finding, so it does not lower the regulatory score. We found no fine or order from the FTC, a state attorney general or a data protection authority that names Pluto TV.

How to use Pluto TV safely

1. Watch without an account if you do not need resume across devices.
2. Refuse the tracking prompt on iPhone, and on Android reset or delete your advertising ID.
3. Turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser, or use the Your Privacy Choices link, to opt out of targeted ads.
4. For young children, use the parental controls of your phone or TV, or a dedicated kids' app such as YouTube Kids, rather than leaving Pluto TV running.
5. Ignore sites or apps that ask you to pay for Pluto TV; the real service is free.

How we scored it

The regulatory record (85) is Pluto TV's strongest factor, since no regulator has fined or ordered it. Privacy (40) is the weakest, because every viewer is profiled for ads with data that the policy says can come from aggregators. Scams and harmful content (60) is held back by the loss of Kid Mode and the lack of any documented parental control, and security (58) by no two-step login, offset by how little most viewers hand over.