MyAnimeList vs AniList vs Kitsu: Honest 2026 Verdict
MAL was sold to a Web3 company in 2025. Kitsu's apps are effectively gone. AniList keeps shipping. Here's who should use what in 2026.
The landscape shifted in 2025. MyAnimeList was sold to Gaudiy Inc., a Web3 and AI company, with the acquisition completing May 7, 2025. Kitsu’s Android app disappeared from Google Play in April 2024 and web development has effectively stalled. AniList, meanwhile, remains independent, free, and actively shipping.
The comparison that made sense in 2024 is different now. Here is where things actually stand.
Last reviewed: June 27, 2026.
The quick verdict
AniList is the right daily tracker for most people. Modern interface, flexible list organization, active development, excellent GraphQL API, fully free.
MyAnimeList is worth keeping alongside AniList for database depth and community scale. It remains the cultural reference point for anime scores and has deeper forum history on older titles. The Gaudiy ownership is a real concern but has not changed the product yet.
Kitsu is not a realistic recommendation for new users. The apps are effectively gone and the platform is in maintenance mode.
The MAL acquisition: what happened and why it matters
On May 7, 2025, Gaudiy Inc. completed its acquisition of MyAnimeList for approximately 531 million yen (about $3.5 million USD). Gaudiy is a Tokyo-based company focused on blockchain infrastructure and AI, with investors including Sony Group and Bandai Namco.
The community reaction was immediate and significant. The MAL admin team published a post acknowledging the backlash, summarizing user fears as: “NFTs are scams, generative AI is killing artists’ livelihoods, blockchain is killing the planet, web3 is a pipe dream.” Gaudiy’s CEO promised not to do anything that would “upset or disappoint fans.”
As of mid-2026, no blockchain features or NFT integrations have been deployed to MAL. The site functions the same way it did before the acquisition.
The concern is forward-looking. You now have 15 years of detailed watching history held by a company whose core business is Web3 and AI. Whether that becomes a problem depends on what Gaudiy builds next. If you are starting fresh, there is no reason to start on MAL. If you have deep MAL history, the import to AniList is clean and takes a few minutes.
Russia also permanently blocked MAL in October 2025, citing LGBTQ+ content. MAL has not indicated it will remove content to lift the ban.
MyAnimeList
Best for: Database completeness, community depth on older titles, being the cultural reference point
MAL has been the default anime tracker since 2004. The database covers approximately 28,000 anime and 77,000 manga entries as of mid-2025, the largest of the three platforms. For pre-2000 anime, regional releases, and obscure OVAs, MAL’s catalog coverage is stronger than AniList’s.
The forum activity is real. MAL has discussion threads on series that finished airing twenty years ago. The recommendation engine, built on years of user similarity data at scale, surfaces things AniList cannot match. When someone in a YouTube comment or Reddit thread references an anime’s score, they almost always mean the MAL score. It carries cultural weight that AniList has not yet earned.
What MAL does well:
- Largest anime and manga database of the three
- Active community forums on older and niche titles
- Recommendation engine built at scale
- Seasonal airing schedules and release tracking
- Bayesian-weighted scores that resist outlier manipulation
The limitations:
- UI has not changed meaningfully since the Amazon-era design; widely described as cluttered
- Android app rated 3.02/5 on Google Play with ~18,000 ratings; no in-app review writing, limited manga tracking
- Fixed 10-point scoring scale with no customization
- No custom list organization beyond the five default statuses
- Gaudiy ownership is an unresolved uncertainty
- Frequent downtime during seasonal premiere spikes
Supporter tier: $2.99/month or $29.99/year. Benefits are cosmetic only: display ad removal (streaming partner video ads remain), profile customization, expanded favorites slots. No content is unlocked.
AniList
Best for: Daily tracking, list customization, stats, the developer ecosystem
AniList launched as a cleaner alternative to MAL and has steadily pulled users over. It does not have MAL’s database scale or community depth, but it is a meaningfully better product for day-to-day use.
The customization is the standout. AniList supports multiple scoring scales (100-point, 10-point, 5-star, 3-point smiley, or decimal), up to six weighted sub-scores per entry (Story, Art, Sound, Characters, Enjoyment) that roll up into your final rating, and fully custom list labels beyond the five default statuses. You can build a “watching with someone” tag, a “loved the source material more” list, or anything else that fits how you actually organize your watching.
The activity feed and social following system works. It shows what people you follow are watching in real time, which is genuinely useful for seasonal discovery. The community is smaller than MAL’s but tends toward engaged watchers rather than casual users.
What AniList does well:
- Modern interface that holds up on mobile (web-first)
- Flexible scoring: six scale options plus per-entry sub-scores
- Custom list labels with no limit on categories
- Detailed analytics: genre breakdowns, score distributions, time-watched graphs
- Open GraphQL API, well-documented, actively maintained, free for read access
- Airing countdown dashboard and seasonal charts built in
- Active development: roadmap includes anime song data, dubbed language filtering, mass edit tools, groups
The limitations:
- No official mobile app. AniHyou is the strongest third-party Android client (4.0/5, 100,000+ installs), but you are relying on a community developer
- Community thinner than MAL on older and niche titles
- The 100-point scoring scale clusters everything in the 70-90 range; scores do not translate directly to MAL scores
- AniList scores tend to run slightly higher than MAL for the same title due to a more engaged enthusiast user base
- Long lists require continuous scrolling, no pagination
Cost: Entirely free. Supporter tiers via Patreon ($1-$20/month) add cosmetic features and stats update frequency but the full tracking experience is free.
Monthly traffic: Approximately 15.3 million visits as of March 2026 (Semrush). Global rank has improved significantly in 2025-2026 as MAL’s acquisition triggered departures.
Kitsu
Status: Effectively inactive
Kitsu is worth explaining because it appears in every comparison article, but the 2026 reality is that it is no longer a practical recommendation.
The Android app was removed from Google Play in April 2024. iOS availability is unclear. The main web repository was last meaningfully updated in February 2025. Recent commits to the backend are infrastructure cleanup, including the removal of Stripe integration code, suggesting the paid Pro tier may no longer be active.
Kitsu still functions as a web tracker. You can log anime, manga, light novels, and drama in one place, which was its original value proposition. But development appears to have stopped, the mobile apps are gone, and there is no indication of a roadmap for future features.
For new users: do not start on Kitsu. For existing Kitsu users who want to stay: it works for now, but plan a migration.
Achriom
Best for: Anime alongside your full media life
Achriom tracks anime alongside books, movies, albums, and TV in one library. The angle is different from MAL and AniList: not a dedicated anime database, but a cross-media tracker with an AI librarian that reasons across everything you watch, read, and listen to.
Your Attack on Titan rating sits next to your book ratings and album history. The AI librarian can find patterns across all of it and answer questions like “what should I watch if I want something that feels like Ursula K. Le Guin wrote it” by reasoning across your full library, not just your anime list.
What it does differently:
- Anime alongside books, films, TV, and albums in one library
- AI librarian that finds cross-media patterns and makes recommendations across formats
- Conversational discovery rather than browse menus
- Private by default with no public social feed
The limitation: The anime database is smaller than MAL or AniList. No episode-level tracking, no seasonal calendar, no community forums. Achriom works best as a complement to a dedicated anime tracker, adding cross-media context that anime-only trackers cannot provide.
Want anime in context with everything else? Achriom tracks your anime alongside books, films, music, and shows, with an AI librarian that connects them. That is the part no anime-only tracker can do.
Try Achriom free →The scoring systems are not equivalent
One thing the comparison articles rarely explain clearly: AniList and MAL scores for the same show are not directly comparable.
MAL uses a 10-point integer scale (1-10) with a Bayesian-weighted average that factors in vote count to resist manipulation on low-review-count titles. AniList defaults to a 100-point scale where user activity clusters scores in the 70-90 range. AniList also separates Average Score (straight mean) from Mean Score (weighted to reduce outlier impact).
The result: an AniList score of 78/100 and a MAL score of 7.8/10 do not represent the same community assessment, because the user bases are different sizes, skew differently, and use the scale differently. AniList’s enthusiast-skewed user base tends to rate titles they choose to watch more generously than MAL’s broader population.
When someone says “it has an 8.7 on MAL,” that carries more cultural weight than an equivalent AniList score, simply because MAL is larger and the score is the community consensus across a bigger population.
Quick comparison
| MyAnimeList | AniList | Kitsu | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime database | ~28,000 entries (largest) | ~20,000+ | Smaller, gaps |
| Interface | Dated | Modern | Clean but unmaintained |
| Scoring scale | 10-point integer | 100-point (+ custom) | 20-point |
| Custom lists | No | Yes, unlimited labels | Basic |
| Stats | Basic | Detailed charts | Basic |
| Mobile app | Official, 3.0/5 Android | Third-party only (AniHyou: 4.0/5) | Apps removed / unavailable |
| Social | Active forums | Feed + direct messages | Stalled |
| API | REST v2 (limited) | GraphQL (excellent) | Unknown |
| Manga tracking | Yes | Yes (larger than MAL) | Yes |
| Ownership | Gaudiy Inc. (Web3, since May 2025) | Independent | Unclear / inactive |
| Cost | Free / $2.99 mo supporter | Free / Patreon optional | Free (Pro tier status unclear) |
| Development | Active but corporate | Actively shipping | Effectively stalled |
Who should use what
Use AniList if you are starting fresh. It is the better product for daily tracking and the safer long-term choice given MAL’s ownership situation. Import your library from MAL at any point; the tool handles it cleanly.
Keep MAL alongside AniList if you watch a lot of older or obscure anime, rely on community forums for discussion, or care about MAL scores as the cultural reference point. Many dedicated anime fans run both: AniList as the daily tracker, MAL as the database and community layer.
Do not start on Kitsu. If you’re already there and it’s working for you, fine. But the apps are gone and there is no sign of new development.
Use Achriom alongside any of the above if anime is one part of a larger media life and you want a private AI that connects what you watch to what you read and listen to.
The honest answer
AniList wins on product. The interface, the list customization, the scoring flexibility, the API, and the active development roadmap all point the same direction.
MAL wins on scale and culture. The database is larger, the forums go deeper on older titles, and when anime discourse happens anywhere on the internet, it references MAL scores. That community gravity does not disappear quickly.
The 2025 Gaudiy acquisition adds something new to the comparison: a concrete reason to think about where your watch history lives, not just a preference reason to switch. Whether that matters depends on how you feel about a Web3 company holding your data. No blockchain features have appeared on MAL yet, but the ownership is no longer the anonymous legacy situation it was before.
If you are starting fresh: AniList. If you are migrating from MAL: AniList, and it will import your history. If you want community depth on older anime: keep MAL open. If you are already using Kitsu and it works: start planning your exit.
More on anime tracking: Best Anime Tracking Apps covers the full field. AniList vs MyAnimeList is the focused two-way head-to-head. Best MyAnimeList Alternatives covers the options if you are actively leaving MAL. Kitsu vs MAL has the direct Kitsu comparison if you need it.
Common questions
Is AniList better than MyAnimeList in 2026?
For most users, yes. AniList has a better interface, more flexible list organization, stronger stats, and active development. MAL still has the larger database and deeper community on older titles. The Gaudiy acquisition gives MAL a concrete ownership concern that did not exist before 2025. Start with AniList; use MAL as a reference for community and database coverage.
Should I switch from MAL to AniList because of the Gaudiy acquisition?
The acquisition completed in May 2025 and no blockchain or AI features have appeared on MAL as of mid-2026. The concern is about where your data sits long-term, not an immediate product change. If you are starting fresh, AniList is the cleaner choice. If you have years of MAL history, the migration is easy and worth doing at your own pace.
Can I import my MyAnimeList library to AniList?
Yes. Export your list as XML from MAL account settings, then use AniList’s import page. Scores, statuses, and watch counts transfer over. The process takes a few minutes.
Does AniList have a mobile app?
No official app. AniList is web-first. The leading third-party Android client is AniHyou (4.0/5 stars, 100,000+ installs on Google Play, updated May 2026). Multiple iOS clients exist. The absence of an official app is a real gap for mobile-first users.
Is Kitsu still active in 2026?
Kitsu is in maintenance mode. The Android app was removed from Google Play in April 2024, iOS availability is unclear, and meaningful web development stopped in early 2025. The removal of the Stripe integration code from the codebase in 2026 suggests the paid tier may no longer be active. It still works as a web tracker but is not being developed. New users should use AniList or MAL.
What is the difference between MAL and AniList scores?
MAL uses a 10-point integer scale with a Bayesian average that weights for vote count. AniList defaults to a 100-point scale where scores cluster between 70 and 90. AniList’s user base skews toward more engaged enthusiast watchers who rate more generously than MAL’s larger general population. An AniList score of 78 and a MAL score of 7.8 do not represent the same community assessment. When anime discourse references a score, it almost always means the MAL score.
What is MAL Supporter and is it worth it?
MAL Supporter is $2.99/month or $29.99/year. It removes display ads (streaming partner video ads remain), allows profile customization, and expands some slot limits. No additional content or features are unlocked. Worth it if ads bother you enough to pay to remove them, not worth it otherwise.