Simkl and Jellyfin: How to Connect Them, and Whether Trakt Fits Better
Simkl scrobbles from Jellyfin through an official plugin. Setup takes ten minutes. Here is how, how it compares with the Trakt plugin, and where the history should live.
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Simkl scrobbles from Jellyfin through an official plugin, and it takes about ten minutes to set up. Install the plugin from Jellyfin’s built-in catalog, restart, link each user with a PIN, and every film or episode you finish gets marked watched on Simkl. If your server carries a lot of anime, this is the plugin to use. If it is mostly film and Western TV, the Trakt plugin is the more mature option and it syncs in both directions. If you are still deciding between the two trackers as trackers, Simkl vs Trakt covers that on its own.
Last reviewed: September 8, 2026.
Quick verdict:
- Simkl plugin: official, free, scrobbles films and episodes, treats anime as its own category with correct episode numbering
- Trakt plugin: in the default Jellyfin catalog, syncs watched status both ways, largest third-party ecosystem
- Jellyfin alone: records watched status per user, keeps nothing outside the server
- Achriom: does not scrobble from Jellyfin, but takes the history a scrobbler collects and puts it beside your books and albums
What to look for in a Jellyfin scrobbler
A scrobbler watches your playback and reports each finished title to a tracking service. The setup is simple. The choice of where those reports land follows you around for years.
Matching quality. Jellyfin identifies your files with TMDB and TVDB ids. A good plugin sends those ids rather than guessing from filenames, so a folder called S02E03 lands on the right episode. Both Simkl and Trakt do this well for mainstream titles. Anime is where they diverge, because TVDB often numbers seasons differently from how the shows were released.
Direction of sync. Some plugins only push plays out of Jellyfin. Others also pull watched status back in, so a show you finished on a streaming service shows as watched on your server. Only one of the two plugins here does both.
Per-user accounts. A household Jellyfin server has several users. The plugin should let each of them link a separate tracker account so a partner’s true crime binge does not land in your history.
A way out. Whatever collects the history should export it. Ten years of scrobbles is the record of what you actually watched, and it should not be trapped in one service’s database.
Simkl: the plugin to use if your server has anime
Simkl is a free tracker for films, TV, and anime, and anime is a category of its own rather than a genre tag on a TV show. The Jellyfin plugin is official, maintained by Simkl, and published from the Simkl GitHub account.
Setup. Simkl’s plugin ships in Jellyfin’s built-in catalog, so there is no repository to add.
- Open the Jellyfin dashboard, then Plugins, then Catalog.
- Under General, find Simkl.
- Install it.
- Restart the Jellyfin server. Plugins do not load until you do.
- Open Plugins, Simkl, and pick a Jellyfin user. The plugin shows a short code. Enter it at Simkl’s PIN page while signed in to the Simkl account that user should scrobble to.
- Repeat step 5 for each household member who wants their own history.
The settings page has a completion threshold. Anything played past that percentage is reported as watched, so a film you abandon at the half-hour mark stays unwatched on Simkl. Leave the default unless you have a reason.
What it does well. Anime scrobbles land in the right place. A file of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End episode 14 hits Simkl as episode 14 of one continuous show, which is how it aired, rather than season 2 episode 2 by TVDB’s arrangement. Simkl’s free tier has no meaningful limits on tracking. The paid tier removes ads and adds deeper statistics.
What it does not do. The plugin scrobbles one way, from Jellyfin to Simkl. It does not mark Jellyfin items watched from your Simkl history, so a show you finished on Netflix stays unwatched on your server. The third-party ecosystem is thinner than Trakt’s, with fewer apps and scripts built around the Simkl API.
Trakt: the default choice for film and Western TV
Trakt has had a Jellyfin plugin for years, and it sits in the default plugin catalog, so installation is three clicks and a restart. Linking a user works the same way as Simkl: the plugin shows a code, and you enter it on Trakt’s activate page.
What it does well. Two-way sync. The plugin imports watched status from Trakt into Jellyfin and exports Jellyfin plays to Trakt, so a Severance rewatch you started on Apple TV and finished on your server ends up consistent in both places. Trakt also has the largest ecosystem of any tracker, from mobile apps to Kodi and Plex integrations to spreadsheet exporters, so the history you build there is easy to use elsewhere.
What it does not do. Anime is filed under TV with a genre tag, and its episode numbering follows TVDB, which is where long-running shows go wrong. Trakt’s free tier carries ads and limits some features, and VIP runs about $6 a month.
The VIP caveat. Since late July 2026, a free Trakt account can have only one community app connected, and the Jellyfin plugin counts as one. On its own it keeps scrobbling for free, because it ships its own API credentials. Connect a second app such as Kodi, Stremio, or PlexTraktSync and the plugin needs VIP. A separate change on 30 July 2026 made VIP a requirement for creating new API applications, which Trakt has called a temporary anti-abuse measure. That one only matters if you planned to write your own tooling.
For the two services side by side, Simkl vs Trakt goes deeper. If you already hold years of Trakt history and want it out, how to export your Trakt data walks through it.
Jellyfin on its own: fine until you leave the house
Jellyfin already records what each user has watched, where they stopped, and how many times they played it. The Playback Reporting plugin turns that into charts. For a single household that never watches anything outside the server, this is enough.
It stops being enough the moment your viewing spreads out. A film watched in a cinema, a season finished on a streaming service, an album, a book: none of it has anywhere to go. There are no ratings in the sense a tracker means them, no watchlist you can pull up on your phone in a bookshop, and if the server dies without a database backup the history goes with it.
A scrobbler fixes this, and it costs nothing. The open question is which service should hold the record.
Achriom: where the history goes once it exists
Achriom does not scrobble from Jellyfin, and it is not trying to. It is one library for shows, films, anime, books, and albums, with an AI librarian that reads across all of it. It is also in ChatGPT.
In a Jellyfin setup it is the destination for the history a scrobbler collects. Achriom takes a Trakt username directly and pulls the watched history from there, or it takes a pasted list of titles, which is enough to rebuild a Simkl export. Once the history is in, the librarian can answer questions a scrobbler never could: why the last six shows you finished on your server share a mood with the two novels you rated highest this year, or which unwatched films on your shelf match what you have been reading.
Everything exports back out as CSV, and the free tier has no card attached. It works alongside Simkl or Trakt, with the scrobbler doing the automatic logging and Achriom holding the wider library.
Whichever plugin you install tonight, the history it collects will be screen-only, and next year you will be running this same comparison for your books and your music. Achriom is one library for shows, films, books, albums, and anime. Your AI librarian connects them, and everything exports back out any time. Free to start, no card.
Consolidate once →Comparison table
| Simkl | Trakt | Jellyfin alone | Achriom | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scrobbles from Jellyfin | Yes, official plugin | Yes, official plugin | Built in (server only) | No |
| In default plugin catalog | Yes | Yes | n/a | n/a |
| Sync direction | Jellyfin to Simkl | Both ways | n/a | Import from Trakt or pasted titles |
| Anime as own category | Yes | No, TV with genre tag | No | Yes |
| Books and albums | No | No | No | Yes |
| Per-user accounts | Yes | Yes | Yes | One library per person |
| Export | Backup file from settings | CSV and JSON from settings | Database or API only | CSV, any time |
| Price | Free, paid tier optional | Free with ads, VIP about $6/month | Free | Free to start |
Which should you use?
Your server is mostly anime, or a serious share of it is: Simkl. The plugin puts each episode where the show actually released it, and the anime category means your stats mean something.
Your server is film and Western TV, and you also watch on streaming services: Trakt. Two-way sync keeps your server and your external viewing consistent, and the ecosystem gives you the most options for using the history later.
You already have years on one service: stay there. Both plugins take ten minutes to set up, and migrating a history is where dates and ratings get lost. Best Trakt alternatives is for people who have a reason to move, not a default.
You want the history beside your books and albums: let Simkl or Trakt scrobble, then bring the record into Achriom. The scrobbler does the sensing and Achriom keeps the library.
Neither choice is a mistake. Simkl’s plugin is official and free, and it installs from Jellyfin’s built-in catalog like any other. Trakt’s is older and syncs both ways, a real convenience if you also watch outside your server. Both give you a watch history that outlives the server, which is the reason to install one at all.
The bigger decision is what that history is for. If the answer is “a list of what I watched,” either tracker is the end of the road. If the answer includes what you read and listened to, the tracker is one input among several, and the record should live somewhere that sees all of them.
Common questions
Does the Simkl plugin scrobble live TV or music in Jellyfin? No. It reports films and TV episodes, including anime. Jellyfin’s music library is out of scope for Simkl, and live TV is not matched to a catalog entry the plugin can send.
Can I run the Simkl and Trakt plugins at the same time? Yes. They report independently, and many people run both during a trial period before settling on one. You are building two histories, though, and one of them will eventually be abandoned.
Why did an episode land on the wrong season in Simkl or Trakt? Almost always a metadata mismatch on the Jellyfin side. Open the item in Jellyfin, check the identified TMDB or TVDB id, and refresh metadata if it is wrong. The plugin sends whatever id Jellyfin holds.
Will a scrobbler pick up things I watched before installing it? Simkl’s plugin reports plays from the moment it is linked. Trakt’s plugin can push existing Jellyfin watched status to Trakt as a one-time sync, so it does backfill. For Simkl, the fastest route to a backfill is Jellyfin’s API or a pasted list of the titles you already know you finished.
How do I get the history from Simkl into a library with my books? Export the backup file from Simkl’s settings, then paste the titles into Achriom, or connect a Trakt username if the same history lives there. How to track movies across streaming services covers the broader consolidation question for people whose viewing is spread across a server and several apps.