India’s Streaming Map: The Most-Searched OTT Platform in Every State (2026)

Original TechnoFlix research. Data pulled from Google Trends on October 16, 2026. Updated Oct 16, 2026.

Which streaming service does India actually go looking for? We pulled Google Trends data for the five biggest Indian OTT platforms (Netflix, JioHotstar, Prime Video, ZEE5 and SonyLIV) for every state and union territory, over the past 12 months and the past five years, and mapped the winner and runner-up in each one. The short answer: JioHotstar wins most of India, Netflix owns the Northeast, and cricket decides almost everything in between.

Key findings at a glance

• JioHotstar leads in 28 of 36 regions over the past 12 months; Netflix leads in the other 8. In every single region, the runner-up is the other one of these two.
• Nationally, JioHotstar averaged 53.3 on the Trends index over 52 complete weeks, vs 30.0 for Netflix, 11.6 for Prime Video, 4.1 for ZEE5 and 3.0 for SonyLIV.
• Bihar is JioHotstar country: a 71 vs 20 split over Netflix, the widest lead anywhere (51 points). Andhra Pradesh (60 vs 25) and Jharkhand (60 vs 26) follow.
• Netflix's stronghold is the Northeast: it leads in Arunachal Pradesh (49), Manipur (48), Nagaland (44), Mizoram (43), Sikkim (42) and Meghalaya (39), plus Goa (40 vs 38, the tightest race in India).
• ZEE5 beats Prime Video in four Northeastern states (Mizoram 19 vs 9, Nagaland 18 vs 9, Manipur 16 vs 10, Meghalaya 13 vs 10). Everywhere else with data, Prime Video is a clear third.
• Cricket is the swing factor: JioHotstar hit its 12-month peak of 100 in the week of April 12, 2026, mid-IPL, and dropped to a low of 20 in the week of September 20, when it briefly fell below Netflix.
• Over five years, the map has shifted towards JioHotstar: Andaman & Nicobar, Chandigarh and Punjab were Netflix-led on the five-year view but are JioHotstar-led over the last 12 months; Karnataka moved from a dead heat (33 vs 33) to JioHotstar +17.
• 4-week momentum: comparing the latest four complete weeks with the four before, JioHotstar rose from 29.8 to 35.0, SonyLIV from 3.8 to 5.5, while Netflix slipped from 28.2 to 24.2.

The map: most-searched OTT platform in every state

Two Indias show up immediately. Across the Hindi belt, the east, the south and the west, JioHotstar is the default streaming search. Its widest leads are in Bihar (+51 points), Andhra Pradesh (+35), Jharkhand (+34), Odisha (+32), Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Dadra & Nagar Haveli (+31 each). The metros are much closer: Delhi is JioHotstar 46 vs Netflix 35, Haryana 45 vs 36 and Chandigarh 46 vs 38. Big-city audiences split their attention far more evenly.

The other India is the Northeast, plus Goa. Here Netflix is ahead, and in Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland JioHotstar's share falls to the low 20s. That pattern held across both timeframes we tested, so it is not a one-off spike.

Leader and runner-up: full state table

Values are each platform's share of search interest within that state when the five platforms are compared together over the past 12 months (they add up to roughly 100). "Lead" is the gap between first and second place.

* Lakshadweep has very low search volume; Google returns 100 for Netflix and 0 for the rest, which should not be read as meaningful. Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu are reported separately by Google Trends. Ladakh is not reported separately.

Download the data: technoflix-ott-search-map-india-2026.csv (12-month, 30-day and 5-year state values, leader and runner-up for all 36 regions).

Cricket decides the race

Netflix's line is remarkably flat: between 23 and 43 all year, peaking at 43 in the week of December 28, 2025. JioHotstar's line is a seismograph. It climbed through February into the ICC Men's T20 World Cup (final on March 8, 2026, streamed on JioHotstar), hit 99 to 100 across the first weeks of IPL 2026 (March 28 to May 31), and then fell back towards Netflix once the season ended. JioHotstar was ahead of Netflix in 42 of 52 complete weeks. The 10 weeks where it trailed or tied all fell between tournaments: late December to early January, the week of March 15 between the T20 World Cup final and the IPL, and late July to September, when it bottomed out at 20 in the week of September 20.

SonyLIV shows the same effect at a smaller scale. Its 12-month high of 12 came in the week of September 27, 2026, the week England vs Sri Lanka ODIs finished and India's Asian Games cricket campaign began on September 28, both streamed on SonyLIV. On the five-year view, SonyLIV's biggest month was September 2025 (17.5), the month of the 2025 Asia Cup, also on Sony.

Five years: Netflix creeps up, JioHotstar spikes higher

Netflix's yearly average interest rose from 19.9 in 2022 to 21.9 in 2023 and 25.1 in 2024, then held at 23.6 in 2025 and 23.4 so far in 2026. Prime Video went the other way, from 14.2 in 2022 to 9.1 so far in 2026. JioHotstar's two biggest months in five years were March 2025 (78.2), right after the Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema merger launched JioHotstar, and April 2026 (73.0), during IPL 2026.

On the five-year map, Netflix led 11 regions and Karnataka was tied 33 vs 33. Over the last 12 months that shrank to 8: Andaman & Nicobar, Chandigarh and Punjab moved to JioHotstar, and Karnataka swung to JioHotstar by 17 points.

The ZEE5 surprise in the Northeast

Nationally ZEE5 is a small player (4.1 average), but in Mizoram (19), Nagaland (18), Manipur (16) and Meghalaya (13) it outranks Prime Video. Our 30-day pull shows that this was not steady demand, though: in the latest 30 days ZEE5's share there dropped to 2 or 3, which suggests that the 12-month figure was driven by a burst of interest earlier in the year. ZEE5's national weekly peak (16) came in the week of June 7, 2026. We could not confirm what caused it, so we are not guessing.

4-week momentum: who is gaining right now

JioHotstar is climbing again (29.8 to 35.0) after its September low, and SonyLIV is up from 3.8 to 5.5 on the back of cricket. Netflix (28.2 to 24.2), Prime Video (11.5 to 10.8) and ZEE5 (3.0 to 2.8) all eased. At the state level, SonyLIV's share was higher in the last 30 days than its 12-month average in 33 of 36 regions, and JioHotstar's was lower in 26, so SonyLIV's cricket bump is national, not regional.

What this means for viewers and for the platforms

• Live cricket is still the biggest single driver of OTT search in India. A platform's share of attention can double or halve depending on whether it holds the rights to whatever tournament is on.
• Netflix's demand is the most stable. It does not have the spikes, but it does not collapse either, and it keeps the Northeast and Goa.
• Prime Video is a solid but declining third almost everywhere. Its search interest is the flattest of all and has been slipping for three years.
• If you are planning OTT content or ads by region, a national ranking hides a lot. The Northeast behaves like a different market.

Looking for something to stream right now? See our top 10 series to watch on OTT this October and this week's new OTT releases.

Methodology

• Source: Google Trends, pulled on October 16, 2026 through the open-source pytrends library, with location set to India (geo=IN) and the India timezone.
• Topics, not keywords: we used Google's Knowledge Graph topic entities (Netflix /m/017rf_, JioHotstar /m/012vmmv_, Amazon Prime Video /m/0gvlgh, ZEE5 /g/11gg9f8587, SonyLIV /m/010qrmfc). Topics group all spellings, languages and related searches for the entity ("netflix login", "नेटफ्लिक्स" and so on), which is fairer than comparing one typed word against another. The JioHotstar topic carries over Disney+ Hotstar's history, so the five-year line includes the Hotstar era.
• What the index means: on the time charts, 100 is the single highest point for any of the five platforms in that period; all other values are relative to it. On the state table, each state's values show how the five platforms split search interest within that state. They are shares, not volumes, so a high number in a small state does not mean more searches than a big state.
• Timeframes: past 12 months (52 complete weeks, Oct 12, 2025 to Oct 4, 2026; the current partial week is excluded from averages), past 5 years (weekly, Oct 2021 to Oct 2026), and past 30 days for state-level momentum. 4-week momentum compares the latest four complete weeks with the four before them.
• Limitations: Trends measures search interest, not subscribers or watch time. Users who open apps directly are not counted. Google applies privacy thresholds, so very small regions such as Lakshadweep can return extreme values. Google Trends did not return city-level data for this comparison, so this study stops at the state level. Trends data is sampled, and re-pulling can shift values by a point or two.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Google Trends, India, topic comparison of Netflix, JioHotstar, Amazon Prime Video, ZEE5 and SonyLIV (pulled Oct 16, 2026).
• ESPNcricinfo: IPL 2026 dates
• ABP Live: T20 World Cup 2026 final on JioHotstar
• Esquire India: Asian Games 2026 cricket on SonyLIV
• JioStar: JioHotstar plans, Jan 2026
• India state boundaries: public GeoJSON (jbrobst/india_states).

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