The Best Platforms to Track Movies, TV Shows, Anime, and Manga in 2026

If you watch a film a week, a TV show or two between releases, follow three seasonal anime, and have eight ongoing manga in your reader — keeping it all straight in your head stops working pretty fast. You need a tracker.

The catch: almost no platform actually covers all four well. The internet is full of "all-in-one" tracker recommendations that quietly drop manga, treat anime like generic TV, or cap your free watchlist at a number that doesn't fit a real backlog. This guide is the result of fanning out research across the four media types separately, then reconciling what each platform truly delivers in 2026.

The short version up top, then a per-platform breakdown, then a comparison table and four pragmatic "what should I actually use" recipes.

TL;DR — what to use

Pure cinephile (movies only): Letterboxd. Nothing else comes close for movie-only tracking, reviews, and community.
TV obsessive: Serializd (free, modern, "Letterboxd for TV") or Trakt (better scrobbling, but the 2026 free-tier paywall stings).
Anime + manga: AniList for new users (modern, free, GraphQL API); MyAnimeList if you need the deepest catalog and forums.
Closest cloud "all-in-one" (movies + TV + anime, no manga): Simkl. Best auto-scrobbling. Just be honest with yourself that manga is missing.
Genuine all-in-one across all four — and books, games, music too: Ryot or Yamtrack, self-hosted in Docker. Only real answer if you want one app for everything.
Reading manga on Android and want the reader to update your tracker for you: Mihon (the maintained fork of Tachiyomi) syncs to MAL, AniList, Kitsu, MangaUpdates, Shikimori, and Bangumi.

If you don't want to think about it: combine Letterboxd + Serializd + AniList. Three free apps, three best-in-class focused experiences, and you'll never lose track of anything again.

The honest "what counts as a tracker" checklist

Before the platform list, here's what actually separates a good tracker from a glorified watchlist:

Episode/chapter-level progress, not just "watched / not watched."
Status states — Watching, Plan to Watch, On Hold, Dropped, Completed.
Auto-scrobbling — does the platform notice you finished an episode on Netflix or a chapter in your reader, or do you manually mark it?
Calendar / next-episode notifications for ongoing shows.
Import/export — can you leave without losing your history?
Open API — can third-party apps and your own scripts read your data?
Honest pricing — what's actually free, and what's behind the paywall that the marketing copy doesn't lead with?

Keep these in mind as you read.

Movies — the cinephile platforms

Letterboxd — the gold standard for movies

URL: letterboxd.com
Covers: Movies only. Not TV, not anime, not manga.
Free tier: Unlimited diary entries, ratings, reviews, lists, social. Ad-supported.
Pro: ~$19/yr — removes ads, all-time stats, streaming-availability filters via JustWatch, watchlist notifications.
Patron: ~$49/yr — Pro plus custom posters/backdrops and beta access.

Letterboxd is the only "social network for X" that genuinely improved the hobby. The diary view, half-star ratings, and the review culture are the reason cinephiles will defend this app to the death. The mobile apps are fast, the iconography is gorgeous, and the JustWatch partnership tells you where to actually watch a film in your country.

The trade-off is that it does one thing. The moment you want to track Severance or Frieren alongside The Zone of Interest, you're out of luck.

In December 2025 Letterboxd quietly launched a Video Store (TVOD rentals at $3.99–$ 19.99 in 23 countries) — its first revenue stream beyond subscriptions. Don't expect the core tracker to change.

MUBI Watchlist — niche, arthouse-curated

If your taste runs to Tarkovsky, Akerman, and the Cannes sidebar, MUBI's watchlist works as a discovery surface for their curated catalog. It's not a general-purpose movie tracker — treat it as a complement to Letterboxd, not a replacement.

IMDb Watchlist, TMDB lists, JustWatch, Reelgood

These are watchlist-shaped, not tracker-shaped. JustWatch and Reelgood are best understood as "where can I actually watch this" search engines that happen to let you save a list. IMDb has the biggest database in cinema history and a watchlist nobody actually enjoys using. TMDB is the open data source most other apps quietly read from — track on a real tracker, browse on TMDB.

TV shows — the episode-tracker platforms

Serializd — "Letterboxd for TV", free, modern

URL: serializd.com
Covers: TV shows only. Some Asian dramas and anime appear, but the metadata isn't anime-optimized.
Pricing: Free, no premium tier. Patreon-supported.

Serializd is the platform Letterboxd users keep asking for. Episode-level tracking, season reviews (a genuinely useful angle vs. only episode reviews), a clean activity feed, and free forever. It's still maturing — the catalog of reviews is smaller than Trakt or TV Time — but it's the right pick for TV-first viewers in 2026.

Trakt — best scrobbling, worst recent paywall change

URL: trakt.tv
Covers: Movies + TV + basic anime support (treated as generic TV, no filler lists, episode numbering can be off).
Free tier: 2026 change — watchlist and collection capped at 100 items. Down from previously unlimited.
VIP: ~ $30–$ 50/yr — unlimited lists, advanced filtering, no ads, year-in-review, iCal feeds, list cloning.

Trakt is still unmatched if your TV and movies live on Plex, Kodi, Jellyfin, Emby, or Infuse — the scrobbling integrations there are industry-leading, with 15 years of community data backing them up. It also auto-scrobbles from Netflix, Prime, Max, Hulu, Apple TV, Disney+, and others.

But the May 2026 V3 migration moved a lot of formerly-free features behind VIP, including the 100-item watchlist cap. Many long-time users have migrated to Simkl as a result. If you're new and starting fresh, evaluate both.

TV Time — episode reminders for casual viewers

Free with ads, ~$3.99/mo Premium. The notification system for new episodes is genuinely well-designed and the app is friendly to non-technical users. Less powerful than Trakt or Serializd, but if your reason to track is "don't forget what airs Wednesday," it's the right level of tool.

Plex Discover / Watchlist

If you already run Plex (or Jellyfin) for personal media, Plex's Discover and cross-server watchlist are a sensible default — they sit alongside your library. As a primary tracker they're thinner than Trakt or Serializd. Pair them with one of those instead of replacing.

Anime — the otaku platforms

AniList — the modern default

URL: anilist.co
Covers: Anime + manga. Not movies or live-action TV.
Pricing: Free. No ads. Community-supported.

AniList is what new anime watchers should pick in 2026. Modern UI, customizable scoring (10-point, 100-point, stars, smileys), custom list statuses, beautiful stats with graphs, and a public GraphQL API that the third-party app ecosystem is built on top of. Manga support is full parity with anime and the database is catching up to MAL fast.

There's no auto-scrobbling built in, but the MAL-Sync browser extension fills that gap by detecting what you watch on Crunchyroll, HiDive, and other streaming sites and updating AniList for you.

MyAnimeList — the legacy default

URL: myanimelist.net
Covers: Anime + manga.
Pricing: Free with aggressive ads. MAL Supporter ~$2.99/mo for ad-free.

The largest anime/manga database on the public web, the most active forums for older or obscure titles, and the de facto reference for community scoring. The interface, however, is the same one it had a decade ago, and mindshare is steadily flowing to AniList.

If you're choosing between MAL and AniList for the first time today: pick AniList. If you've been on MAL for years, you've got nothing forcing you to move — but consider mirroring to AniList with MAL-Sync so your modern apps work nicely.

Kitsu — open-source, multi-format

URL: kitsu.app — Apache-2.0 licensed.
Covers: Anime + manga + light novels + Asian dramas.
Pricing: Free, with optional Pro tier.

The community-driven option. Kitsu is what you pick if you specifically want open-source values, light-novel tracking alongside anime/manga, or a slightly more social/welcoming community than MAL. The catalog is smaller than the big two but the UX is friendly.

Annict, Anime-Planet, Shikimori, AniDB — the niches

Annict — Japanese-focused, per-episode notes with spoiler masking and current-season-tuned. The best pick if you take notes after every episode, especially for current cours.
Anime-Planet — uniquely combines a free, ad-supported legal streaming library with a tracker. Aging interface, no mobile app.
Shikimori — Russian-focused community. Note: blocked by Roskomnadzor in Russia since January 2026 (alternative domains may work). Strong social features for the CIS region.
AniDB — the file-hash, collector-grade database. Not a casual tracker — pick this if you maintain a large local anime library and want exact release-group, source, and audio-track metadata. Patreon migrating to a subscription model mid-2026.

Trakt for anime — caveat

Trakt technically handles anime, but treats it like generic TV: episode numbering can be wrong (especially for shows with split cours), there's no filler-list awareness, and metadata is sourced from TMDB/TVDB rather than anime-native databases. Use it for anime only if you're already deep in the Trakt ecosystem and don't want a second app.

Manga — the reader-and-tracker stack

The honest reality of manga in 2026 is that the tracker and the reader are usually different apps, and the reader pushes progress to the tracker. The good news: that integration is solid now.

MangaUpdates — the deepest metadata

URL: mangaupdates.com
Covers: Manga, manhwa, manhua. Web-only. Free.

Twenty-five years of scanlation-community data. If you care about exact publication details, scanlation group history, or release-pace tracking, MangaUpdates is unmatched — and it integrates with Mihon and Komikku so reading progress can sync.

MyAnimeList / AniList / Kitsu — same accounts, same lists

All three of these track manga as a first-class media type alongside anime. Pick the same one you picked for anime, and your manga shelf lives right next to it.

Mihon (the maintained Tachiyomi fork) — the reader

URL: mihon.app — Android only, free, open-source.
Tracker sync: MyAnimeList, AniList, Kitsu, MangaUpdates, Shikimori, Bangumi.

Tachiyomi was the standard for years; after development stopped, Mihon took over. Add a tracker once, read normally, and progress syncs automatically as you finish chapters. This is the closest manga has to the "auto-scrobble" experience movies and TV get from Trakt or Simkl.

Suwayomi (TachiDesk), Komga, Komikku — the rest of the stack

Suwayomi — desktop/web/server version of the Mihon stack. Same extensions, same tracker sync, but in a browser. Self-hosted.
Komga — self-hosted media server for your own CBZ/CBR/PDF/EPUB library. Pair with Mihon's Komga extension to read your library on a phone with reading progress synced server-side.
Komikku — Android-only F-Droid alternative to Mihon, with the same tracker sync surface plus a native Komga login.

A common 2026 self-hosted stack: Suwayomi-Server (downloads) + Komga (library/serving) + Mihon on phone (reading) + AniList or MAL (cloud mirror).

The unicorns — true all-in-one trackers

Here's the bit that surprised me most while researching: only two platforms genuinely cover movies + TV + anime + manga (and books, games, music, podcasts) in one place. Both are self-hosted and open-source.

Ryot — the polished one

URL / GitHub: ryot.io · github.com/IgnisDa/ryot
License: GPL-3.0
Covers: Movies, TV, anime, manga, books, audiobooks, podcasts, music, video games, visual novels, fitness.
Pricing: Free self-hosted. Optional paid Pro tier (cloud-hosted with recommendations and profile sharing).

Written in Rust. Deploys with Docker or Kubernetes. Imports from Goodreads, Trakt, MyAnimeList, Audiobookshelf, MediaTracker, and more. Auto-scrobbles via Jellyfin, Plex, Kodi, and Emby. GraphQL API. OIDC auth. Notifications via Discord, Ntfy, or Apprise. Active development — v10.3 (Feb 2026) cut idle memory ~50% and fixed Komga library sync.

If "I want one URL that knows about everything I consume" is the goal, Ryot is the answer. The price is technical: you need to run Docker somewhere.

Yamtrack — the active alternative

GitHub: github.com/FuzzyGrim/Yamtrack
License: AGPL-3.0
Covers: Movies, TV, anime, manga, video games, books, comics, board games, podcasts, music.
Pricing: Free self-hosted only.

Django-based, Postgres or SQLite, deploys with Docker Compose. Multi-user. OIDC plus 100+ social auth providers. Imports from Trakt, Simkl, MAL, AniList, Kitsu, IMDb, Steam, Goodreads. Webhook integration with Jellyfin, Plex, Kodi, Emby. v0.25.3 (May 2026) added board-game tracking via BoardGameGeek and Anibridge anime webhook matching.

Yamtrack is lighter to deploy than Ryot and getting active 2026 attention. Try it if Ryot's fitness/music breadth feels excessive.

Simkl — the cloud "almost all-in-one"

URL: simkl.com
Covers: TV shows, movies, anime. NOT manga.
Pricing: Free with generous limits. Optional paid plugins for some scrobbling integrations.

Simkl is the best cloud-hosted option for the most common pattern: one person who watches movies, TV, and anime. The auto-scrobbling is industry-leading — Netflix, Crunchyroll, Hulu, Amazon Prime, plus Plex, Jellyfin, Kodi, and Emby — and the calendar/notification system is good. The free tier is genuinely usable (no 100-item cap like Trakt).

The manga gap is the honest catch. Marketing material sometimes implies manga support; the docs and the actual UI confirm there isn't any. Pair Simkl with AniList or MAL for manga and you've covered everything without leaving the cloud.

MediaTracker — the simpler self-hosted

github.com/bonukai/MediaTracker inspired Ryot. It tracks movies, TV, games, books, audiobooks — but no anime or manga, which rules it out as a true unifier. Mention it only if you specifically don't care about anime/manga and want the simplest self-hosted setup.

Comparison table

Platform	Movies	TV	Anime	Manga	Books	Games	Free tier	Paid	Standout
Letterboxd	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	Unlimited	$19/yr Pro	Cinephile community
Serializd	❌	✅	partial	❌	❌	❌	Unlimited	—	"Letterboxd for TV"
Trakt	✅	✅	basic	❌	❌	❌	100-item cap	~$30–50/yr VIP	Best media-server scrobble
TV Time	partial	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	With ads	~$3.99/mo	Episode reminders
Simkl	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	Generous	Optional addons	Best cloud all-in-one (no manga)
MyAnimeList	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	With ads	~$2.99/mo ad-free	Largest anime/manga database
AniList	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	Full	—	Modern UI, GraphQL API
Kitsu	❌	❌	✅	✅	LN	❌	Full	Optional Pro	Open-source, light novels
MangaUpdates	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Full	—	Deepest manga metadata
Mihon (reader)	❌	❌	❌	reads + syncs	❌	❌	Free	—	Auto-syncs reading to MAL/AniList/Kitsu
Plex Discover	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	With ads	$4.99–14.99/mo Pass	Personal-library integration
Anime-Planet	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	With ads	—	Free legal anime streaming
Annict	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	Full	—	Per-episode notes
AniDB	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	Full	Patreon	File-hash collector data
Ryot (self-hosted)	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	Full	Optional Pro cloud	True all-in-one
Yamtrack (self-hosted)	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	Full	—	True all-in-one, active 2026
MediaTracker (self-hosted)	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅	Full	—	Simple self-hosted (no anime/manga)

Four pragmatic recipes

Recipe 1 — "I just want it to work, free, three apps"

Letterboxd + Serializd + AniList.

Three best-in-class focused trackers, three free accounts, three apps on your phone. Movies on Letterboxd, TV on Serializd, anime + manga on AniList. Add Mihon on Android if you read manga and want the reader to update AniList for you automatically. Total cost: zero.

This is what I'd recommend to 80% of people asking the question. The "unified single app" dream costs you quality in every category — three focused apps cost you a couple of taps and give you the best experience in each.

Recipe 2 — "I have a Plex/Jellyfin server"

Trakt (or Simkl) + AniList.

If you already run Plex, Jellyfin, Kodi, or Emby, the auto-scrobbling makes Trakt or Simkl pull their weight. Simkl is the better default in 2026 (Trakt's free-tier paywall is annoying, and Simkl's anime support is genuinely better). Add AniList for manga, since neither does it well.

Recipe 3 — "I want one app that knows everything"

Ryot or Yamtrack, in Docker, on a $5/mo VPS or your home server.

Pick Ryot for the more polished experience and broader scope (fitness, music, podcasts). Pick Yamtrack if you want lighter deployment and the 2026 development pace. Both import from Trakt/Simkl/MAL/AniList, so you can move existing data in. Both auto-scrobble from Plex/Jellyfin/Kodi/Emby via webhook.

If you're running this elsewhere in the oriz family of self-hosted projects already, this is the path that keeps your tracking data in your own database.

Recipe 4 — "I'm a manga maximalist"

Mihon (Android) or Suwayomi-Server + Komga (self-hosted) for reading, AniList as the cloud canonical, MangaUpdates for metadata-deep series.

Tracker syncs in Mihon: tap a series, link it to AniList, and from then on every chapter you finish updates the cloud. Use MangaUpdates as a reference for scanlation groups and release-pace data — it's the manga version of IMDb's depth, but actually pleasant to use.

What I'd skip

IMDb watchlist — fine for passive bookmarking, painful as a real tracker. Use TMDB lists if you want the same database without the friction.
JustWatch / Reelgood as primary trackers — they're streaming-search tools, and the watchlist is an afterthought. Track on a real tracker; use JustWatch for "where can I actually watch this."
Trakt as a free tier in 2026 — the 100-item watchlist cap is too small for any real backlog. If you don't want to pay VIP, switch to Simkl or Serializd.
MediaTracker if you want anime/manga — it doesn't do them. Pick Ryot or Yamtrack instead.

Closing thought

The "best" tracker is the one you'll keep using. Auto-scrobbling helps — you don't have to remember to mark the episode after you watch it — but the deeper requirement is that the app rewards you for opening it. Stats that make sense, a feed that surfaces what your friends are watching, a calendar that shows what airs tomorrow.

For me in 2026 the pragmatic answer is AniList for anime/manga because the API lets me build little scripts, Letterboxd for movies because the diary is a good piece of writing-prompt habit, Serializd for TV, and a self-hosted Yamtrack as a backup that imports from all three so my history survives any one platform's enshittification cycle. Pick the recipe that matches how you actually consume — and try not to spend more time configuring trackers than watching the things you're tracking.