HBO Max UX Teardown: The R$22.90 Headline Is an Annual Price

The series page and the movie page on HBO Max's Brazilian site carry the same line under the headline: "Planos a partir de R$22,90/mês", plans from R$22.90 a month. R$22.90 is one of twelve installments on an annual plan. The cheapest plan you can pay month to month is R$29.90, and you find that out on the ninth screen of this flow, in a plan section that sits below a film's production credits.

We went from the series catalog to one series and its episodes, then to the film catalog, one film and its plan comparison. Nothing past that: no plan chosen, no sign-up, no playback, so this piece can't say where any subscribe button leads. The screens were captured signed out on 1 October 2026 (Chrome, 1440×900, Brazilian Portuguese, reais); a visitor in another country gets other plans and other prices.

Browsing works without an account

The catalog side of the flow is good. The top bar lists Filmes, Séries de TV, Crianças e Família, Marcas and Futebol. The two we opened, Filmes and Séries de TV, both load in full for a signed-out visitor. Under each hero, a strip of logos (HBO, Max Original, Discovery, Cartoon Network, Harry Potter, DC, adult swim and the Champions League among them) tells you whose catalog this is before you see a single poster. The "Novo e popular" shelf then gives four titles each for series and for films, with names printed under the art.

The series page for O Cavaleiro dos Sete Reinos (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) has three in-page links under the hero: Episódios, Você também pode gostar and Tendências. Episódios jumps to the full first season.

All six episodes fit in one 1440×900 frame, each with a still, a number, a title and a two- or three-line summary. You can judge whether the show is for you without starting playback or making an account.

A subscribe button in every frame

Every one of the nine screens has an "Assine agora" (subscribe now) button somewhere in view. While the top bar is showing, there's one in its right corner. The catalog heroes add a second under the price line, the Novo e popular shelves end in a third, and the title pages put one first in their row of three buttons. On the episode grid, where the top bar has scrolled away, a light Assine agora floats at the bottom of the viewport, level with the next heading.

The button is light grey on a black page. On the title pages its neighbours, "ver planos" (see plans) and "Assistir trailer", are dark grey, so the row ranks subscribing above finding out the price and above watching the trailer.

The plans sit under the film credits

"ver planos" doesn't open a plans page. On the Pecadores (Sinners) title page it scrolls down to an anchor, #plan, below the film's credits. The top of the monthly view still shows the last line of the credits, "Produtores: Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler…".

The section is headed "Escolha o melhor plano para você" (choose the best plan for you) and has a two-way toggle, MENSAL (monthly) and ANUAL PARCELADO (annual, in installments), with "Economize até 20%" (save up to 20%) printed over the annual side. Per the capture notes, the annual side was already selected when the section opened.

Both views of the three plans:

Plan	Annual view	Annual total	Monthly view
Básico com Anúncios	12x R$22,90/mês	R$274,80	R$29,90/mês
Standard	12x R$34,90/mês	R$418,80	R$44,90/mês
Platinum	12x R$44,90/mês	R$538,80	R$55,90/mês

The annual cards print the yearly total. The catalog hero line doesn't say "annual" or "12x", and its R$22.90 is the first cell of the annual column. A visitor who wants to try the service for a month meets R$29.90 only after flipping the toggle.

R$44,90/mês appears on both views: as the Standard monthly price and as the Platinum annual installment. Glance at the cards without checking the toggle and you can read the wrong plan's price. And the savings label undersells the deal. Twelve monthly payments against the annual total come to roughly 23% off for Básico, 22% for Standard and 20% for Platinum (our arithmetic from the printed prices).

The footnote says the saving is "calculated against the regular monthly subscription over 12 months", and that sentence disappears from the footnote when you switch to monthly.

The plan buttons are the weakest on the page

Each plan card ends in a small slate-blue button, "Escolha seu plano" (choose your plan), in small uppercase type. Below the cards, the generic Assine agora is back, in the same light grey it wears everywhere else, and it is more prominent than any "Escolha seu plano" above it. We didn't click either, so we can't tell whether they lead to the same place.

Two copy slips

The series hero headline reads "Veja grande séries de sucesso"; the plural needs "grandes", which the film hero gets right ("Veja grandes filmes de sucesso"). The series metadata line says "1 Temporadas", plural with a count of one.

Suggested fixes

The cheapest fix is copy: "a partir de R$22,90/mês no plano anual" (from R$22.90 a month on the annual plan) on both catalog heroes, or the monthly R$29.90 printed beside it. After that, we'd move the plans to a page of their own, linked from the top bar, so "ver planos" no longer depends on the credits of whichever title a visitor opened. Inside the plan section, "Escolha seu plano" should be the primary button and the generic Assine agora below the cards can go. The savings footnote belongs on both sides of the toggle, with the actual percentage printed on each plan.

Take it further

The question we put to this flow was whether a visitor can find the monthly price before the site asks them to subscribe. It comes from the UX Clarity framework, which a Full UX Audit runs across a whole product; what a real UX audit looks like shows the output.

If your pricing line and your plan table quote different numbers, apply for a Full UX Audit →