The 90s sitcoms aren't on one streamer. That would be too easy. They're scattered across Max, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, and a couple of stragglers that only live on rental services or surprising free platforms.
Here's where the ten essential 90s sitcoms actually stream as of May 2026, in rough order of importance to the era.
At a Glance
| # | Show | Where to stream |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Friends | Max |
| 2 | Seinfeld | Netflix |
| 3 | Frasier | Paramount+ |
| 4 | Cheers | Peacock |
| 5 | The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air | Peacock, Max |
| 6 | Will & Grace | Peacock |
| 7 | Living Single | Max |
| 8 | The Larry Sanders Show | Max |
| 9 | Martin | Max |
| 10 | 3rd Rock from the Sun | Peacock, Pluto TV |
01
Friends (1994–2004)
Where: Max (subscription)
The biggest sitcom of the 90s, a permanent comfort rewatch for three generations of viewers, and the show that defined what mainstream NBC sitcoms were going to be for the next 25 years. All ten seasons are on Max, which has held the rights since 2020 after Netflix lost them. There is no current sign of Friends moving again.
If you're new to the show or coming back after Matthew Perry's death in 2023 — fair warning that the rewatch hits differently now. We have a longer take on what holds up and what doesn't in our retrospective.
02
Seinfeld (1989–1998)
Where: Netflix (subscription)
The greatest sitcom of all time by most professional measures, in a streaming home it took $500 million to negotiate. Netflix acquired all 180 episodes in October 2021 and they've stayed put since. Episodes can also be purchased individually on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home for the completists.
This is the show every other modern comedy is structurally indebted to. We made the case in our retrospective.
03
Frasier (1993–2004)
Where: Paramount+ (subscription)
The sequel that became its own legend. Frasier spun off from Cheers (where Frasier Crane had been a supporting character for nine seasons) and ran for eleven seasons of its own, winning 37 Primetime Emmys including five consecutive Best Comedy wins from 1994 to 1998. That five-year streak is still a record nobody else has matched.
The show is a master class in the country-club farce — Frasier and Niles, the dueling Crane brothers, layered over the working-class father and the live-in physical therapist. Watch with subtitles on. The verbal comedy is dense.
The 2023 reboot exists on Paramount+ as well. It's not as good as the original. The original holds up perfectly.
04
Cheers (1982–1993)
Where: Peacock (subscription)
Cheers technically started in 1982, but its biggest decade was the early 90s — the show ran through 1993 and finished as the highest-rated American sitcom of its era. All eleven seasons are on Peacock, where they've lived since the streamer launched.
If you've never watched Cheers and only know it as "the bar where everyone knows your name," you're missing one of the great American character ensembles ever assembled. Sam, Diane, Cliff, Norm, Frasier, Lilith, Carla, Coach, Woody. The bar argument structure is something every workplace sitcom since has copied. Start at season one and let it cook.
05
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990–1996)
Where: Peacock and Max (subscription)
Will Smith's path from Philadelphia rapper to global movie star runs directly through this show. Six seasons of comedy that pulled real emotional moments out of nowhere — the absent-father episode, James Avery's slow-burn fatherhood as Uncle Phil, the family's defense of Will when he gets pulled over for driving while Black.
Fresh Prince is unusually well-served by streaming — it's on both Peacock and Max — which means most subscribers can find it without paying extra. The show is also one of the era's best entry points for younger viewers who want to see how 90s sitcoms could engage with race, class, and family without losing their comedic timing.
06
Will & Grace (1998–2006)
Where: Peacock (subscription)
The first major American sitcom to lead with two openly gay characters as primary leads. Will & Grace premiered in 1998 in a TV landscape that was still treating gay characters as supporting figures or punchlines, and it ran for eight seasons before a two-season revival in 2017. All eleven seasons are on Peacock.
Some of the show's humor has aged. A lot of it hasn't. Sean Hayes's Jack and Megan Mullally's Karen are doing comedic work that's still influencing how supporting characters get written in network sitcoms today.
07
Living Single (1993–1998)
Where: Max (subscription)
The most underrated 90s sitcom on this list. Living Single, created by Yvette Lee Bowser, premiered in August 1993 — fourteen months before Friends — with a similar premise: six young adults, three women and three men, two in one apartment, hanging out, dating, navigating their late twenties in New York. Queen Latifah, Kim Coles, Erika Alexander, and Kim Fields played the four leads.
The show ran for five seasons on Fox and was a major hit in Black households while remaining mostly invisible to white critics and to Emmy voters. It is genuinely funny, well-constructed, and one of the few 90s sitcoms in the same chemistry tier as Friends — which copied a lot of its DNA whether the writers admit it or not. All five seasons are on Max.
If you've watched Friends and never watched Living Single, you are missing the show that Friends became famous for echoing.
08
The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998)
Where: Max (subscription)
The cult-prestige pick. The Larry Sanders Show aired on HBO from 1992 to 1998 and basically invented the format that would later become 30 Rock, Studio 60, The Comeback, and The Studio: a behind-the-scenes look at TV production with celebrities playing themselves and real industry mechanics rendered as comedy.
Garry Shandling plays Larry Sanders, the host of a fictional late-night talk show. Jeffrey Tambor plays his sidekick. Rip Torn plays the producer. Real celebrities — David Duchovny, Sharon Stone, Sean Penn, hundreds of others — guest as themselves in scenes built around the gap between their public persona and the version of them that exists backstage.
It's the smartest sitcom of the 90s. It doesn't have the audience Friends or Seinfeld have. It deserves one. All six seasons are on Max.
09
Martin (1992–1997)
Where: Max (subscription)
Five seasons of Martin Lawrence playing essentially every member of his own family — Martin Payne the Detroit radio DJ, Sheneneh Jenkins the loud neighborhood gossip, Jerome the dapper old neighborhood player, Mama Payne. The show is a one-man tour de force grafted onto a workplace-and-relationship sitcom, and the character work Lawrence is doing is wildly more inventive than his post-2000s movie career suggests.
Tichina Arnold and Tisha Campbell are also doing some of the best supporting comedy of the decade, and the show's friendships are more textured than its reputation as "the loud one" suggests. All five seasons are on Max.
The show's behind-the-scenes history is messy (Campbell sued Lawrence for harassment in 1997), and that context is worth knowing, but it doesn't dim the comedic achievement on screen.
10
3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001)
Where: Peacock (subscription) and Pluto TV (free with ads)
The weirdest sitcom on this list. John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston, French Stewart, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (in his early teens) play four aliens posing as a family on Earth in order to study human behavior. Lithgow won three Emmys for the lead role. Johnston won one.
The premise — aliens explaining things humans take for granted — gives the show a renewable engine that almost no sitcom from the era had. Six seasons, mostly funny, occasionally surprisingly weird. The fact that it's also free on Pluto TV makes it the easiest show on this list to test-drive.
What About Frasier 2023? And the Mad About You Revival?
Both exist. Both are on Paramount+ (the Frasier reboot) and on Spectrum or via rental for the Mad About You 2019 revival respectively. Neither hits the original's highs. Both are watchable as nostalgic continuations rather than as new shows that justify their own existence. If you only have time for one classic-era show, watch the original Frasier. If you want to see how the cast holds up two decades later, the reboot is there for you.
Are 90s Sitcoms Still Worth Watching in 2026?
The best ones are still better than most current sitcoms, full stop. Seinfeld is funnier than any sitcom currently in production. Frasier has more verbal precision than anything on streaming right now. Living Single has chemistry that Friends's imitators have spent thirty years failing to recreate. The era was a peak — partly because the multi-camera sitcom was still being taken seriously, partly because writers' rooms were being given seven seasons to work, partly because audiences hadn't yet been trained to expect new content monthly.
The catch is that all of these shows are products of their time, and that time had real limitations on diversity, on language, on what kind of comedy was acceptable at someone else's expense. A 2026 viewer who comes to them with patience for the era will have a great time. A viewer who can't bracket the era at all probably won't.
We refresh this list quarterly. Streaming rights for legacy sitcoms shift more often than they used to, especially for properties owned by Warner Bros. Discovery and Sony. If you're reading this more than three months after publication, double-check the streamer before queuing up a marathon — most of the shows above will still be where we listed them, but no streaming guide is permanent.
