Sky may still be a very popular way for Brits to watch live TV, but if the bill is beginning to hurt on this paid TV service you might want to consider switching to a cheaper alternative. One of these is Freely, the free to watch TV service, which has just announced a huge boost for viewers with 16 new streamed channels coming to the platform “later this year”.

These include two ITV channels, The Chase and Saturday Night Every Night, plus three from Channel 4, which are 4Reality, 4Homes and 4 Life.

Meanwhile, Channel 5 will provide 11 new live channels to stream: 5 GPs Behind Closed Doors, 5 Bargain Loving Brits, 5 The Yorkshire Vet, 5 History, 5 Crime, Milkshake!, 5 Police Interceptors, 5 Cops, 5 Trucking Hell, 5 A&E and 5 Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly.

"We're excited to bolster Freely’s offering with eleven new live channels, including five that will be exclusive to the platform and 5,” said 5’s VP Distribution Kiaran Saunders.

Akhila Khanna, ITV Director of Distribution said ITV was proud to be part of Freely, while Grace Boswood, Director of Technology & Distribution, Channel 4 said Freely was “the only place to access our new channels at launch.”

“Freely continues to represent brilliant collaboration by public service media,” she said.

A Freely spokesperson could not confirm to Express.co.uk when these channels will be launched on Freely, only that they will go live later in 2025.

Freely is a service built into some modern smart TVs from brands such as Hisense, Bush, Toshiba, Panasonic, Sharp, TCL, Amazon and Metz. All you need to do is purchase one of the televisions and you get full, free access to Freely, which streams content over your home Wi-Fi connection.

While buying a new TV is of course an expense, some screens are available for under £200, which may end up a lot cheaper than the annual Sky TV bill. You can search through a list of Freely TVs here.

Freely is owned by Everyone TV, the firm that also owns Freeview. While Freeview was accessed via traditional wired and aerial TV services, Freely is the modern version that utilities streaming over a wireless network. You get access to all familiar channels such as BBC One, BBC Two, ITV 1, Channel 4, Channel 5, Film4, E4, ITV2, and many others.

There will be 55 live streamed Freely TV channels in total including the 16 new ones announced. As well as this, Freely said customers also have access to more than 70,000 hours of on demand content.

Freely also announced that free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels from the VIDAA platform will be put live on the Freely TV guide on Hisense and Toshiba Freely TVs before the end of April.

This gives those TV owners access to 80 channels such as Sony ONE, CNN and Banijay.