Roku continues to solidify itself in a very busy streaming landscape. As of April, over 100 million households are streaming with Roku devices, including its streaming sticks and boxes and Roku TVs.
Roku originally spun out of Netflix in 2008, where it was conceived as an in-house streaming device. It’s not just Roku that has exploded in popularity since then, as streaming services have come to dominate the entertainment world. Netflix had less than 10 million subscribers in 2008, but now has over 325 million; Hulu, which also launched to the public in 2008, had 64.1 million subscribers in the US by late 2025; and Disney Plus had over 131 million subscribers by the end of last year, just six years after launching in 2019.
Roku got into the streaming device market early, appealing to users who were looking to ditch their cable box and go all in on streaming. I’ve been using a Roku streaming stick for five years now, but have never subscribed to cable, like many others who have opted for a streaming device instead of a cable box over the past 18 years. Roku claims that as of this month’s milestone, its streaming devices are currently “used by more than half of all US broadband households.” As of late last year, Roku also has the most popular streaming OS in the US, used in 28 percent of households.







