Why Trakt Is Still My Home Base for Movies and TV

Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash

I have profiles on Trakt, Letterboxd, Serializd, and Simkl. So this is not one of those posts where I picked a favorite without actually trying the alternatives.

I have used all of them enough to know what each one does well. And to be fair, each one does do something well. But when it comes to the service I actually trust as my main home for what I watch, I still come back to Trakt.

My history lives there

At this point, Trakt is not just another app to me. It is years of watched history, ratings, rewatches, lists, and half-remembered “oh yeah, I did watch that” moments that would have disappeared from my brain otherwise.

That is the first thing people underestimate when they compare tracking services. The value is not just the homepage or the social feed. The value is the archive you build over time. Once you have years of data in one place, switching is not just about trying a different interface. It is about deciding whether you want to fragment your own history. Trakt has spent years building around that idea through its apps, sync options, and broader tracking ecosystem.

For me, that matters more than hype. A media tracker is only useful if I trust it to become my memory.

I want one place for both TV and movies

This is probably the biggest practical reason I keep choosing Trakt.

I do not want one service for movies and another for TV. I know some people are totally fine with that setup, but I am not. I want one timeline, one history, one watchlist ecosystem, and one place to check what I watched, what I dropped, what I finished, and what is coming up next.

That is where Trakt still feels like the best fit for me. Even the way Trakt describes itself is basically the pitch I want: track everything you watch, wherever you stream it, with movies and shows living in one place instead of being split across multiple platforms.

Why the others do not quite replace it for me

Letterboxd is the easiest one to praise. It is polished, fun, and culturally huge. I get why so many people love it. Its whole identity as a social platform for film is a big part of the appeal. But that is also why it does not replace Trakt for me. If your media life is mostly movies, Letterboxd makes a ton of sense. Mine is not mostly movies. TV is too big a part of what I watch.

Serializd has the opposite problem. I actually think the concept is strong. It is very upfront about being a TV-focused tracking platform, and I think it does that job pretty well. But again, it only solves half the problem for me. If I need one app for TV and another for movies, I am back to splitting my media life across multiple places, and I have never loved that setup.

Simkl is probably the closest competitor on paper because it covers TV, movies, and anime in one service. Its whole pitch is built around automatic tracking, missed-episode alerts, and recommendations. That is compelling. But software is not adopted on paper. It is adopted in real life. And in real life, Simkl’s UI has just never clicked for me. I know some people love it. I am just not one of them. For me, it feels harder to settle into, and if a tracker feels awkward, I am less likely to use it consistently.

Trakt feels more like infrastructure than a social app

This is another reason I stick with it.

A lot of media apps feel like communities first and trackers second. Trakt, at its best, feels like infrastructure. Its official apps page reads less like a single-app pitch and more like a platform: native apps, media-center support, Plex sync, streaming sync, and an API that powers a much bigger ecosystem around it. That kind of flexibility matters to me more than social buzz.

That is also why outside coverage of Trakt tends to focus on utility. PCWorld highlighted how it helps keep up with what you are watching across services, while What Hi-Fi? zeroed in on scrobbling as the feature that makes it stand out. That lines up with my experience. Trakt is not always the loudest service, but it often feels like the most structurally useful one.

The part that really frustrated me

That said, my loyalty to Trakt is not blind.

I was a VIP subscriber for more than four years, and I was not happy when Trakt moved legacy and grandfathered renewals to standardized pricing in 2025. Its current VIP pricing is $60 yearly, $6 monthly, or $96 every two years, and the official pricing-change announcement made clear that older renewal pricing would not continue after June 12, 2025. I understood the business reasoning. I just did not like it. A price jump feels very different when you are the one who has been paying the older rate for years.

To Trakt’s credit, they have been direct about why they push VIP so hard. On the VIP page, they say those memberships keep the service ad free, fund the servers, and support an independent platform that does not sell user data. I can respect that argument and still be annoyed by the outcome. Both of those things can be true at the same time.

And yet the free account is harder to live with

This is the annoying part.

Even after canceling VIP, I did not really want to leave Trakt. The problem is that the free tier has gotten tougher to live with. Trakt still says basic tracking remains free, but its more recent 2026 limits update and fair-use draft also make it clear that the experience now has tighter boundaries than it used to. That is where a lot of my frustration lives now. I still like the service, but I feel the edges of the free account more than I used to.

So I have ended up in this weird middle ground where I am frustrated with the paid changes, frustrated with the tighter free experience, and still not fully convinced that another service actually fits me better.

So why do I still use it?

Because even with all of that baggage, it still fits how I actually watch things better than the alternatives.

Letterboxd has more movie-world gravity. Serializd is a good TV-first service. Simkl is packed with features. None of those are bad options. I have accounts on all of them for a reason.

But Trakt is still the one that feels the most complete for my habits.

It is where my history is. It is where movies and TV live together. It is the interface I know best. It is the service that feels the most like a tracking backbone instead of a niche social layer. And once a tool becomes part archive, part utility, and part habit, replacing it gets a lot harder than a feature comparison chart makes it seem.

So yes, I canceled VIP.

Yes, I am still annoyed about the pricing and the tighter limits.

And yes, Trakt is still the one I use.

Not because it is perfect.

Because it still feels the most like home.