2025 Streaming Unwrapped
Ranked by Nielsen Data
Nielsen is celebrating the top streaming shows and movies of 2025 with its second annual ARTEY Awards. Named after our founder, Arthur C. Nielsen, the ARTEY Awards (Audience Rated Television Entertainment of the Year) are a testament to the stories and fan favorites that audiences couldn’t stop watching. This recognition—powered by Nielsen’s media intelligence—is reserved for the streaming titles that achieved the highest levels of viewership across the year, commemorating the content that truly defines the cultural conversation.
This past year, audiences spent a whopping 16.7 trillion minutes streaming—that’s about 11.6 billion days, or 31.7 million years’ worth. This is a 19% increase compared to 2024, when audiences spent 14 trillion minutes streaming, equivalent to 9.7 billion days or 26.6 million years.
Categories
Top New Streaming Original of 2025
Top Overall Streaming of 2025
Most-Binged Streaming Title
Streaming Icon of the Year
2025 Top Overall Streaming Programs
Top New Streaming Original Series of 2025
Most-Binged Title
For this category, we examined streaming titles with extensive libraries (50+ episodes) and limited the calculations to viewers who had spent at least one episode’s worth of time with the show (20 min. or longer). While half-hour programs tend to be more binge-able, the level of dedication from audiences in viewing to programs across the board was astonishing.
Gunsmoke
241
episodes per viewer on
Paramount +, Pluto and Peacock
Last year, Gunsmoke competed for our Legacy Award, coming in just behind Little House on the Prairie. This year, it solidified itself as a streaming staple, more than doubling its total minutes from 10.2 billion in 2024 to 22.5 billion in 2025. This year it’s been crowned the most-binged streaming title of the year, averaging a whopping 241 episodes per viewer out of the 404 total episodes available to stream. A big contributor to its growth story is accessibility, as its availability on ad-supported platforms like Pluto enabled fans of the show to stream for free. Unsurprisingly for a show that premiered in 1955, Gunsmoke’s audience tends to skew older. It is also a favorite among Black viewers, who contributed 29% of watch-time across the year.
Runner up
American Dad!
143
episodes per viewer on Hulu
Adult animation is another very popular genre in streaming, and American Dad! finds itself in the same position it was last year: runner-up in the Most-Binged category. While it didn’t reach the same minute total as fellow Fuzzy Door production Family Guy, it seems viewers who watched at least one episode of American Dad! also tended to watch a lot more. That being said, both adult animation series were among the top five most-streamed shows by adults 18-34 in 2025.
Streaming Icon of the Year
Seth MacFarlane is Nielsen’s inaugural Streaming Icon of the Year. This is the first time Nielsen has bestowed this specific honor, designed to recognize a creator, actor, producer or writer whose vast body of work drives significant, sustained viewership across platforms.
2025 Top 10 Streaming Programs and Movies
Source: Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings (Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Starz, Pluto TV). Nielsen National TV Panel (USA). Viewing on television.
NOTE: Streaming platforms featured in Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 are limited to distributors with program-level data in Nielsen reporting systems. However, viewing totals are inclusive of streaming viewership to all platforms beyond the listed distributors.
Time Period: 12/30/24 – 12/28/25.
Kids Movies = Features with a kids 2-11 audience composition of 30% or greater.
General Audience Movies = Features with a kids 2-11 audience under 30%.
