‘American Horror Story: 13’ Scores the Show’s Best Streaming Premiere Ever

The 13th edition of American Horror Story opened with the best streaming performance for a season premiere in the show’s history.

Based on internal data from FX, AHS: 13 racked up some 4 million views worldwide (calculated as total viewing minutes divided by run time) on Hulu and Disney+ in the four days after its Sept. 24 premiere. The three episodes that debuted that night have a run time of just under two hours, equating to 476 million minutes of watch time.

AHS: 13 averaged about 378,000 same-day viewers for its linear airing on FX on Sept. 24. As is usually the case with shows that run simultaneously on cable and streaming, the bulk of the audience came from streaming.

The 4 million views in four days represent a 50 percent improvement over American Horror Story’s 12th season (subtitled Delicate) in 2024 and a near doubling of the two season premieres before that. The premiere had the biggest launch to date for any of AHS co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy‘s shows on Hulu and Disney+ (not including those that had next-day streaming, i.e. the series he makes for ABC).

American Horror Story is also on track to make Nielsen’s top 10 streaming lists for the week of Sept. 21-27; those tallies are due for release next week. In the two-plus years between the end of Delicate and the premiere of 13, viewers in the United States streamed 7 billion minutes’ worth of American Horror Story’s full library, per Nielsen. That comes out to about 259 million minutes per month.

AHS: 13 features a host of actors who have appeared on the show — among them Angela Bassett, Jessica Lange, Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts and Billie Lourd — reprising roles from previous seasons. The first three episodes suggest they’ll join forces across the show’s disparate timelines to combat a greater evil.

Murphy and Brad Falchuk created American Horror Story. They executive produce AHS: 13 with Ned Martel, Charlie Carver, Eric Kovtun, Nissa Diederich, Scott Robertson, Tanase Popa, Crystle Roberson Dorsey, Jennifer Salt and Tim Minear. 20th Television is the studio.