TiViMate Premium: what it is, what it costs, and how to activate it

Searching “TiViMate Premium” online returns at least three different things. There is the free TiViMate player app. There is the paid upgrade for that app. And there are dozens of IPTV providers who have put “TiViMate” in their product name to capture search traffic. If you landed on a Shopify page selling monthly streaming plans, that is not the app upgrade. That is someone’s IPTV service using TiViMate’s name.

This article is about the actual TiViMate Premium unlock: what it does, what it costs, and how to buy and activate it correctly depending on which device you have.

Quick answer: TiViMate Premium costs around $30 lifetime or $10 per year and upgrades the TiViMate player app with multi-view, catch-up, recording, and multiple playlist support. It is separate from your IPTV subscription. On Firestick, you activate it through the TiViMate Companion app on your phone, not through the Firestick itself.

The three things people call “TiViMate Premium”

The free TiViMate app is an IPTV player. It runs on Android TV, Fire TV, Google TV, and most Android devices. It does not include any channels. You download it and connect it to an IPTV subscription you buy separately, the same way VLC needs a file to play.

TiViMate Premium is a paid upgrade to that player. It unlocks features that are locked in the free version. No channels included. You pay once, the player gains new capabilities.

An IPTV subscription is what gives you actual channels. A provider runs servers full of live TV streams and sells you credentials (username, password, server URL) to access them. TiViMate connects to those credentials and plays the content. Without a subscription, TiViMate shows nothing at all.

Several IPTV providers have named their plans “TiViMate subscriptions” or “TiViMate Premium plans” because that phrase gets searched constantly. Their FAQ pages typically clarify that the TiViMate app unlock is not included, but buried in the fine print. If you bought a monthly “TiViMate” plan from a third-party site and are still seeing a prompt to unlock Premium inside the app, that is why.

What the Premium upgrade actually unlocks

The free version of TiViMate handles one playlist at a time and has no advanced options. The main additions in Premium are: multiple playlists, multi-view (up to four live channels at once on a split screen), catch-up TV, recording to local or USB storage, custom channel groups, parental controls, and EPG archive search.

Multi-view and catch-up are the features most users actually cite as reasons to upgrade. Recording is less commonly used because most providers who support catch-up already store content on their servers, making local recording redundant. That said, if your provider does not offer catch-up, local recording is the only way to keep content.

The free version is completely functional for watching live TV on a single screen. If you have one TV and no interest in past programming, the free tier does what you need. Premium makes sense for households with multiple TVs, users who follow live sports across several feeds, or anyone whose provider has catch-up and they want to use it.

What TiViMate Premium costs

Standard pricing is $10 per year or $30 for a lifetime license. One account covers up to five devices. There is no separate five-device plan.

The catch is that the price varies by region. TiViMate uses Google Play’s local pricing system, so the figure in your currency depends on where you are. The $30 lifetime price is for users in the US. Other regions may see different amounts. The only way to find your actual price is to check the purchase page from your own device in your own country.

The developer is a single person who has maintained the app for years. The pricing has been stable over that period.

How to activate on Android TV, Google TV, or Android phones

On any device with Google Play Store, the process is straightforward.

Install TiViMate IPTV Player from the Play Store. Create a free account at tivimate.com. Open the app, navigate to Settings, and select Unlock Premium. Log in with your tivimate.com credentials. Purchase from within the app using Google Play billing, or from the TiViMate website directly if the Unlock Premium button appears in your region.

Premium activates immediately on that device after payment.

How to activate on Firestick or Fire TV

Firestick runs Amazon’s Fire OS. It does not have Google Play Store, and TiViMate on Firestick is sideloaded rather than installed from a native app store. The normal in-app purchase flow that works on Android TV is not available here, so the activation path is different.

First, if you have not installed TiViMate on your Firestick yet: open the Downloader app and enter code 4997296 (or go to aftv.news/4997296). Install the APK. The full TiViMate setup guide walks through adding your IPTV playlist and configuring the app once it is installed.

For Premium activation specifically:

1. Create a free account at tivimate.com on your phone or computer.
2. On an Android phone, install the TiViMate Companion app from Google Play Store.
3. Open the Companion app and log in with your tivimate.com account.
4. Inside the Companion app, purchase Premium using Google Play billing.
5. On your Firestick, open TiViMate, go to Settings, then Unlock Premium.
6. Log in with your tivimate.com username and password. Premium status syncs from your account and activates.

The purchase happens on your phone. Your account carries the Premium license to all your devices, Firestick included.

If the Unlock Premium button is missing on the website

This is a real issue that affects users in a number of countries, and almost no guide mentions it.

TiViMate uses Stripe to process payments on its website. Stripe does not operate in every country. If you are in a region Stripe does not cover, the Unlock Premium button is hidden from the tivimate.com dashboard entirely. No error message, no explanation, just nothing there.

There are two ways around it.

The first is to buy from inside the app using Google Play billing. Open TiViMate on an Android TV or Android phone, go to Settings, then Unlock Premium, and pay through Google Play. Google Play has significantly broader country support than Stripe. This path works for most users who hit the missing-button problem.

The second is to use a VPN connected to a country where Stripe operates, access the TiViMate website, and complete the purchase there. Once payment goes through, the Premium license is on your account permanently. You can disconnect the VPN immediately after. Multiple users in r/TiviMate have confirmed this works when the in-app route is unavailable for whatever reason.

Activating on more than one device

One TiViMate Premium account covers five devices. The activation uses a device naming convention that most guides skip, and getting it wrong is the most common reason second-device activation fails.

When you activate Premium in TiViMate (Settings > Unlock Premium > Account), the app asks for a device name. This is not cosmetic. It is how TiViMate’s server tracks which of your five device slots each installation occupies.

For the first device, enter your tivimate.com username exactly.

For each device after the first:

• Second device: your username followed by -2
• Third device: your username followed by -3
• Fourth: -4, fifth: -5

So if your username is abc123, the five device names should be abc123, abc123-2, abc123-3, abc123-4, abc123-5. Entering the same name on two devices causes one to push the other off the account.

Is it actually worth paying for

The free version handles live TV playback well. If you watch on one screen and your provider does not offer catch-up, you might never notice what Premium locks away.

The lifetime price at $30 spread across five devices works out to $6 per device, paid once. For anyone running TiViMate across two or three TVs, it takes one month of not needing to log out and log back in before that math makes sense. Multiple playlists alone removes a lot of friction when managing a household where different people want different channel sets.

Catch-up is the other genuine reason. If your provider supports it, it is one of the more useful IPTV features: the ability to rewind to last night’s match or a show you missed. Without Premium, you cannot access it at all even if your provider has the content available. Worth checking with your provider whether they support catch-up before deciding.

Multi-view is a niche feature that becomes surprisingly hard to give up once you use it during a weekend of live sport. Watching four feeds simultaneously without switching inputs is one of those things that sounds unnecessary until it is not.

The annual option at $10 is low enough that the decision mostly comes down to whether you plan to keep using TiViMate. Most users who have used it for more than a few weeks do.