7 Letterboxd alternatives that actually recommend films

Let us be clear about the premise. If you are looking for a Letterboxd alternative because you have fallen out with Letterboxd, you will probably be disappointed — its community is its product and no competitor has one. If you are looking because Letterboxd does not tell you what to watch, that is a different and much more solvable problem, because it was never trying to.

Here is the field, honestly.

1. Trakt — for automatic tracking

What it is: a watch-tracking service with an excellent API, best known for scrobbling. Connect Plex, Jellyfin, Emby or a streaming device and it logs what you watched without you doing anything.

Better than Letterboxd at: not requiring you to remember. If your objection to Letterboxd is the manual logging, Trakt is the answer, and its statistics are strong.

Worse at: feeling nice. It is utilitarian and developer-flavoured, and the community is small and quiet by comparison. Pricing has also been a sore point — VIP moved to a flat $60 a year in 2025, and legacy subscribers on $15 and $30 plans were moved onto it, which did not go down well. The free tier has real limits.

Verdict: the right answer if automation is the thing you want.

2. JustWatch — for where to watch it

What it is: a streaming search engine. Type a title, see which services carry it in your country, at what price.

Better than Letterboxd at: answering the availability question instantly, free, without a Pro tier. It also has a watchlist with new-episode notifications, and it does have a recommendation feature driven by thumbs up and down.

Worse at: everything Letterboxd is for. There is no diary culture, no reviews worth reading, and the interface is a database rather than a place you would linger. Its recommendations are a feature bolted onto a directory, not the point of the product.

Verdict: essential utility, not a Letterboxd replacement.

3. Reelgood — for a cross-service catalogue

What it is: a universal streaming guide across 100-plus services, with curated collections, IMDb and Reelgood scores, alerts for new episodes, and — unusually — a remote control for Roku and LG TVs.

Better than Letterboxd at: seeing the whole streaming landscape at once, and finding what is free to stream.

Worse at: taste. Like JustWatch it has recommendations, and like JustWatch they are a directory feature. Coverage is strongest in the US.

Verdict: the best directory, if a directory is what you need.

4. TasteDive — for quick similarity

What it is: a similarity lookup. Type films you like, get things that resemble them. It covers music, books and authors too.

Better than Letterboxd at: answering “something like Arrival” in one step.

Worse at: depth and personalisation. There is no model of you, only of the thing you typed, so it does not improve with use. It also feels its age.

Verdict: useful for a single question, not somewhere you live.

5. IMDb Watchlist — for the database

What it is: the watchlist and ratings inside the largest film database in existence.

Better than Letterboxd at: raw data. Cast, crew, trivia, release details, alternate titles — nothing else is close.

Worse at: almost everything about the experience. The interface is decades of accumulated compromise, recommendations barely register, and it is an Amazon property with the commercial priorities that implies.

Verdict: keep it as a reference, not as a way of choosing.

6. Simkl — for TV and anime breadth

What it is: a tracker covering films, TV and anime, with automatic tracking and a generous import story.

Better than Letterboxd at: television and anime, which Letterboxd does not do at all.

Worse at: film culture. Smaller, more technical audience, and the film side is not where its attention is.

Verdict: the right answer if your watching is not mostly films.

7. Filmatic — for deciding

What it is: ours, so treat this with appropriate suspicion. You swipe through films — liked, seen, save, skip — and each swipe updates a taste model. Open it and you get a short ranked list rather than a catalogue. Streaming availability by country is included free.

Better than Letterboxd at: the forward direction. It is built for the moment when you want to watch something and do not know what, and it is the whole product rather than a feature.

Worse at: everything social. No reviews, no followers, no lists culture, thin statistics, and no Letterboxd import yet — that is on the roadmap and we are not going to pretend otherwise. A brand new account also knows nothing about you until you have swiped a few dozen films.

Verdict: a complement to a diary, not a substitute for one.

So which one

The useful way to choose is by the job, not the brand:

• “I want to log and write.” Stay on Letterboxd. Nothing else comes close.
• “I hate logging manually.” Trakt.
• “Where can I stream this?” JustWatch or Reelgood.
• “Something like this film.” TasteDive.
• “I watch a lot of TV and anime.” Simkl.
• “I don’t know what to watch.” That is the one Letterboxd genuinely does not do, and it is what Filmatic is for.

Most people reading this need two apps, not one — and the second one is usually not a diary.