Best Movie Tracking Apps in 2026: 8 Tested and Ranked
The best movie tracking apps in 2026, tested and ranked: Letterboxd, Trakt, Simkl, JustWatch, IMDb, and Achriom. Free picks for logging films, finding where to stream, and tracking movies and TV in one place.
Most movie tracking apps get abandoned within a month. The eight that don’t, each solve a different problem: Letterboxd for community and reviews, Trakt for automatic episode tracking, Simkl for movies and TV in one free tracker, JustWatch for finding where something streams, IMDb for reference lookups, MovieLens for recommendation-first discovery, Kino for a minimal iOS diary, and Achriom for a private AI librarian that tracks movies alongside your books, albums, and TV.
If you only watch movies and want a community, use Letterboxd. If you watch a lot of TV and want automatic logging, use Trakt or Simkl (both free). If you want cross-media understanding, use Achriom. Most serious watchers use two for different jobs.
Last reviewed: July 7, 2026.
How we picked: every app here is judged on the same six things: formats covered, platforms, whether you can export your data, AI features, privacy, and price. See the full media tracker comparison for all 17 trackers side by side.
Quick verdict:
- Best for film logging and community: Letterboxd
- Best for automatic tracking: Trakt
- Best free movie tracking app for movies + TV: Simkl
- Best for finding where to stream: JustWatch
- Best for movies alongside your books, albums, and TV: Achriom
Track more than movies? Achriom keeps your films next to your books, TV, music, and anime in one library, with an AI librarian that finds the threads between them. Import from Letterboxd in a couple of clicks. Free to start, no card.
Start free →What to look for in a movie tracking app
A good movie tracker should cover at least three of these five jobs well:
- Logging what you’ve watched: diary, dates, ratings, rewatches
- Building a watchlist: things you want to see, sortable by mood or service
- Finding where to stream: deep links to Netflix, Max, Prime, Apple TV
- Discovering new films: recommendations, lists, or AI-driven suggestions
- Understanding your taste: patterns, themes, and connections over time
No single app does all five perfectly. The table below maps the tradeoffs.
Letterboxd
Best for: Social film discovery, logging watches, reading reviews
Letterboxd is the gold standard for film logging. Beautiful interface, engaged community, excellent discovery through lists and reviews. It has over 14 million members and remains the most-cited film tracking app in critic and enthusiast circles. In December 2025 it launched a built-in Video Store for renting films directly, its first real step beyond tracking.
What it does well:
- The diary feature creates a satisfying ritual
- Lists surface films you’d never find otherwise
- Following friends with good taste actually works
- The community writes genuinely thoughtful reviews
The limitation: Film only. Your books, albums, and TV exist elsewhere, unconnected. If you want to see how your movie taste connects to your reading taste, you’re out of luck. The free tier also shows ads and caps some features behind Pro ($19/year) and Patron ($49/year) plans.
IMDb
Best for: Looking up cast, crew, and trivia
IMDb is primarily a reference tool. You go there to find out who directed something or what else that actor was in.
For years its tracking was an afterthought, but in January 2026 IMDb added a proper “Watched” feature: a mark-as-watched button across title pages, lists, and the Top 250, with progress bars on chart pages. That finally makes it usable for logging what you have actually seen, not just a watchlist. The database is comprehensive and reliable. It is still cluttered with ads and Amazon cross-promotion, and there is no taste or cross-media layer. Free to use, owned by Amazon.
JustWatch
Best for: Finding where to stream something
JustWatch solves one problem with precision: “Which of my streaming services has this movie?” It covers 4,500+ services across 140 countries.
Pure utility. The tracking features are minimal because that’s not what it’s for. If you just need to know whether something’s on Netflix or Hulu, JustWatch is the answer. Free, supported by affiliate links.
Simkl
Best for: Free automatic tracking for movies and TV in one place
Simkl is the most underrated free tracker in this category. It covers movies, TV shows, and anime, and it scrobbles automatically from Netflix, YouTube, and other services via a browser extension. The watchlist and tracking features are solid, and everything is free. No paid tier required for the core experience.
What it does well:
- Tracks movies and TV shows together (not just one or the other)
- Automatic scrobbling via browser extension across streaming services
- Calendar for upcoming episodes
- Import from Trakt, IMDb, and other trackers
- Free for the core experience, with an optional paid VIP tier
The limitation: Smaller community than Letterboxd or Trakt. Discovery features are thinner. If you want to read reviews and film discourse, this isn’t the place. But as a pure free tracker for what you’ve watched across all formats, it now undercuts Trakt, whose free tier tightened in 2025.
Still comparing? If films are all you track, Letterboxd and Simkl above are great. If you also read and listen, Achriom is the one library for all of it, with an AI that finds the threads between what you watch, read, and hear. Import from Letterboxd directly.
Bring your films to Achriom →Trakt
Best for: Automatic tracking for TV series
Trakt connects to your streaming services and automatically logs what you watch. Great for TV completionists who want every episode tracked without manual effort.
What it does well:
- Automatic scrobbling from streaming services
- Detailed watch history and statistics
- Calendar for upcoming episodes
- Good for binge-tracking
The limitation: Less useful for intentional curation. It tracks consumption, but doesn’t help you understand your taste. Trakt also got more expensive in 2025: VIP doubled to $60/year, and the free tier was capped (two personal lists, 100 items each), so it is no longer the budget pick it once was. If you’re deciding between the two biggest names, see our head-to-head on Letterboxd vs Trakt.
Achriom
Best for: Understanding your taste across all media
Achriom takes a different approach. Your films sit alongside your books, albums, TV shows, and anime. An AI librarian looks across all of them for patterns.
What it does differently:
- Cross-media connections (the themes in your films connect to your reading)
- Conversational discovery (“What should I watch if I want something like that Murakami novel?”)
- Private by default (no social pressure, no followers)
- Pattern recognition across your whole collection
- Free tier with unlimited items and 10 AI messages a month; Pro at $9.99/month for 200 messages a month
Each film page carries a where-to-watch panel, so once the librarian surfaces something from your taste you can see where it is streaming and start it in the same place.
The limitation: Less social than Letterboxd. No automatic streaming scrobbling like Trakt. The value is in depth of understanding, not breadth of social features.
Want all of it in one place? Achriom tracks your movies alongside your books, albums, TV, and anime, and an AI librarian shows you the threads between them. That is the part no single-format tracker can do.
Try Achriom free →Quick comparison
| App | Scope | Social | Streaming sync | AI features | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Letterboxd | Films | Very | No | No | Free / $19 / $49 yr |
| IMDb | Films | No | No | No | Free |
| JustWatch | Films + TV | No | No | No | Free |
| Simkl | Films + TV + anime | Some | Yes (browser ext) | No | Free |
| Trakt | Films + TV | Some | Yes (scrobbling) | No | Free / $60 yr |
| MovieLens | Films | No | No | Recommendations | Free |
| Kino | Films | No | No | No | Free / one-time Pro |
| Achriom | Films, books, albums, TV, anime | Private | No | Yes (AI librarian) | Free / $9.99 mo |
Which should you use?
Use Letterboxd if: Film is your primary medium and you want the social experience. You enjoy logging, rating, and participating in a community of film lovers. If you want the same depth without the public profile, see our guide to private Letterboxd alternatives.
Use IMDb if: You need a reliable reference database for lookups. You want to know who was in what and who made what.
Use JustWatch if: You’re tired of searching every streaming app to find a movie. You want one place to see where things are available.
Use Simkl if: You watch both movies and TV shows and want one free tracker that handles both automatically. It’s the easiest entry point if you just want to log what you watch without paying.
Use Trakt if: You watch a lot of TV and want automatic episode tracking with a larger community and more third-party tools. The free tier is generous; VIP unlocks extras.
Use Achriom if: You consume across media types and want to understand the patterns. You’re curious how your film taste connects to your books and music, and you prefer a private, conversational interface over a social network.
Also worth considering
MovieLens: free, ad-free movie tracking app from the University of Minnesota that has been running since 1997. The recommendation engine is genuinely research-grade and predates everything on this list. No social features, no streaming links, just a clean watch history and unusually good recommendations. Fully free.
Kino: a minimal, iOS-native movie diary with a clean design. No social features, no community. Just log what you watched, rate it, and move on. If you find Letterboxd too noisy and want something that gets out of your way, this is the closest iOS option. For a private Letterboxd alternative that also covers books, music, and anime, Achriom fits that gap on web. Free with a one-time Pro unlock.
The part no movie-only tracker can do
Letterboxd and Trakt are excellent at films. None of the movie-only trackers can connect what you watch to what you read and listen to, because none of them hold the rest of your taste. Achriom does. Trace the novels hiding inside Denis Villeneuve’s films, spot the books that quietly became the movies you already know, or finish a great novel and let the librarian tell you what to watch next. That is the whole reason Achriom exists.
The honest answer
The right choice depends on what you’re actually trying to do.
- Community and logging: Letterboxd
- Automatic TV tracking: Trakt
- Streaming availability: JustWatch
- Reference lookups: IMDb
- Research-grade recommendations: MovieLens
- Minimal iOS diary: Kino
- Cross-media understanding: Achriom
Many people use two apps. Letterboxd plus Achriom is a common combination. Letterboxd for the social film ritual, Achriom for deeper exploration across all media. They solve different problems and don’t compete directly.
If you want the full Achriom pitch scoped just to film, see the Achriom movie tracker page. If you want a direct head-to-head, read Letterboxd vs Achriom. For finding new things to watch rather than logging what you already have, see Best Movie Discovery Apps 2026.
More on tracking movies: To follow what you watch across services, read how to track movies across streaming services and the Netflix tracking tools vs JustWatch comparison. If privacy is the priority, see an app like Letterboxd but private. For the Letterboxd vs Trakt head-to-head, see Trakt vs Letterboxd. If you are switching apps, see the best Letterboxd alternatives, the best Trakt alternatives, and how to export your Letterboxd diary.
Common questions
What is the best free movie tracking app?
Letterboxd, JustWatch, and Trakt all have genuinely usable free tiers. Letterboxd is best for free social film logging. Achriom’s free tier (unlimited items and 10 AI messages a month) is the only one that tracks movies alongside books, music, TV, and anime in a single library.
Is there a movie tracking app with AI?
Achriom is the movie tracking app built around an AI librarian. You can ask it “what should I watch tonight if I liked Past Lives,” and it reasons across your entire collection (not just movies) to answer. Most other trackers like Letterboxd, Trakt, and IMDb do not have built-in AI features as of 2026.
What is the best Letterboxd alternative?
If you want Letterboxd’s social experience with more sophistication, there isn’t a true replacement yet. If you want a private, cross-media alternative that focuses on understanding your taste rather than performing it, Achriom is the closest fit.
Can I import my Letterboxd diary into another app?
Yes. Letterboxd exports your diary and lists as CSV from account settings. Achriom accepts Letterboxd CSV imports directly. Trakt also supports Letterboxd imports via third-party tools.
Is there a single app that tracks movies, TV, and books?
Achriom tracks all five major media types (movies, TV, books, albums, anime) in one library with a single AI librarian. Most other apps are single-medium (Letterboxd for film, Goodreads for books, Last.fm for music), which leaves your taste fragmented across tools.
Is there an app to track both movies and TV shows?
Yes. Simkl and Trakt both track movies and TV shows together. Simkl is completely free and scrobbles automatically via a browser extension. Trakt has a larger community and more third-party tools, with a free tier and a VIP upgrade. Achriom tracks both alongside books, albums, and anime in one library, though it doesn’t auto-scrobble.
How do I choose between Letterboxd and Achriom?
Pick Letterboxd if public logging and reviewing films with a community is the point. Pick Achriom if you want a private, cross-media library with an AI that finds patterns across what you watch, read, and listen to. They are not direct competitors; many people use both.