Which companies still sell dial-up in the United States?
Three providers were taking dial-up sign-ups in the United States in 2026, and two of them are the brands that handed out free hours in the late 1990s.
NetZero and Juno both still run national dial-up networks. Microsoft still sells MSN Dial-Up Internet Access through its own online store, a product that never came off the price list.
PCWorld lined the survivors up after AOL announced its exit in 2025 and found the same three names. NetZero and Juno are run by the same company, United Online, which means two of the three storefronts sit on one network.
The free tier survived too. NetZero and Juno each advertise an ad-supported plan capped at 10 hours a month, the same offer both companies built their names on. Ten hours works out to about 20 minutes a day, which felt generous in 1999 and will not load a modern news page.
The practical catch is geography. Dial-up access numbers are local, so the real question is not whether the service exists but whether a provider has a number in your area code that will not bill as a long-distance call. That is the thing to check before paying for a month.
What does a dial-up account cost in 2026?
MSN Dial-Up Internet Access is the cheapest paid option. Microsoft charges $21.95 a month, or $179.95 paid a year at a time.
NetZero charges $29.95 a month for its accelerated dial-up plan, the tier aimed at people who use the connection for more than email, and Juno sells the same plan at the same price. NetZero's own description of that plan says it is not a broadband service and does not move data faster than standard dial-up, which is an unusually honest piece of marketing copy.
So the paid range in 2026 runs from $21.95 to $29.95 a month for a connection with a hard ceiling of 56 kilobits per second, a number that looks absurd next to a 2026 broadband plan.
Nobody buying dial-up in 2026 is buying it for value. The free 10-hour plans are the entry point for most of what is left of the market, and the paid plans exist for households where the telephone line is the only line that works.
What actually ended on September 30, 2025
AOL stopped selling and supporting dial-up internet on September 30, 2025. The notice went up in August of that year, and the wording was as unsentimental as a discontinued printer driver.
"AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet," the company wrote in a support notice quoted by CNN on August 11, 2025.
Two pieces of software went with it. The AOL Dialer, which stored the access numbers and placed the call, and AOL Shield, a browser built for old operating systems and slow links, were retired the same day.
What did not end was dial-up as a technology. AOL was one seller among several, and the modems, the copper telephone lines and the local access numbers that make a dial-up call work were never AOL property. When the company switched off its dialer, nothing changed for a NetZero subscriber in a rural county.
The confusion is understandable. AOL was dial-up to most Americans for a decade, so its exit read in headlines like a funeral for the whole category rather than the retirement of one product. Anyone curious about the mechanics can still hear what each part of the handshake screech meant.
Who owns NetZero and Juno today?
Both brands belong to United Online, and United Online belongs to the company that used to trade as B. Riley Financial. That firm agreed to buy United Online in 2016 at $11.00 a share, a deal valued at about $170 million, and closed it on July 1, 2016.
The buyer was blunt about why it wanted a business in decline. The purchase was "consistent with our plan of making financially prudent acquisitions that provide outsized risk-adjusted returns," chairman and chief executive Bryant Riley said in the announcement of the completed deal in July 2016.
The owner's name changed on January 1, 2026. B. Riley Financial became BRC Group Holdings and kept its Nasdaq ticker, RILY. The rename reflected "our evolution over the last three decades from a financial services platform to a portfolio of diverse, distinct companies," Riley said when the change was announced on November 11, 2025.
So the answer to who owns NetZero in 2026 is BRC Group Holdings, through United Online, and dial-up is one line in a portfolio that also holds financial services and retail. Nobody is winning new dial-up customers. The networks are already built, the billing runs itself, and a subscriber base that renews quietly is worth more to an owner like this than a growth story would be.
The same arithmetic keeps other survivors of the dial-up era breathing, which is how EarthLink ended up with a new owner too.
How many Americans still connect by modem?
The Census Bureau counted 163,401 American households whose only internet subscription was dial-up in 2023, a figure Smithsonian Magazine cited when AOL announced its shutdown in 2025.
Nationally that is a rounding error. Locally it is a lifeline. Dial-up households cluster where cable and fiber never arrived, where terrain blocks a clear view of the sky for satellite service, or where the monthly cost of anything faster does not fit the budget.
For those homes the modem is not a nostalgia purchase. It runs over equipment that is already in the house, on a telephone line that was paid for decades ago, and it still delivers email, a bank balance and a weather forecast.
The count has been shrinking for twenty years and it will keep shrinking, because the copper telephone network underneath it is being retired. Carriers have been filing to end legacy copper phone service region by region, and when a copper exchange goes dark, dial-up in that area goes with it whether or not anyone was still selling the service.
That is the end date worth watching. Dial-up in 2026 is not waiting for a provider to lose interest. It is waiting on the telephone line.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you still get dial-up internet in 2026?
Yes. Dial-up internet was still sold in the United States in 2026 by NetZero and Juno, both operated by United Online, and by Microsoft as MSN Dial-Up Internet Access. AOL left the business on September 30, 2025, but it was one seller among several and its exit did not shut down dial-up itself.
Does AOL still have dial-up?
No. AOL discontinued its dial-up internet service on September 30, 2025, after posting the notice in August of that year, and retired the AOL Dialer and the AOL Shield browser on the same day. AOL still sells other monthly subscription benefits, but dial-up internet access is no longer one of them.
How much does dial-up internet cost now?
MSN Dial-Up Internet Access cost $21.95 a month or $179.95 a year in 2026, and the accelerated dial-up plans from NetZero and Juno cost $29.95 a month. NetZero and Juno also advertise ad-supported free plans capped at 10 hours a month, which is where most remaining dial-up users start.