What is the best TV Time alternative?

TV Time shut down on 15 July 2026 and no single app replaces it: Trakt is the safest all-round move because more third-party apps sync with it than with any rival, Simkl is the closest lookalike and covers film and anime as well as television, Serializd is the best free home for people who want to write about episodes, Hobi and Moviebase are phone trackers with two-way Trakt sync, and Episode Club — this site, so weigh what follows accordingly — is the one built around a per-episode discussion room that stays shut until you have watched that episode.

They are ranked by how safe a choice each one is for somebody who has just lost ten years of history: size, platform coverage, and the odds it is still running in five years. That is deliberately not the same question as which one we would pick, and on that measure Episode Club finishes last.

Who wrote this

Episode Club is one of the six apps below, so read our entry with the suspicion it deserves. The rules we set ourselves: every price and feature comes from the company’s own page or its app-store listing, every source is named and linked, and anything we could not check is listed as unchecked rather than guessed. Where a rival beats us it says so — including on the one feature this whole product is built around.

The six, side by side

TV tracking apps compared by platform, price and who each one suits
No.	App	Runs on	Price	Best for
1	Trakt	Web, iOS, Android	Free tier · VIP $60 a year	People who use more than one app
2	Simkl	Web, iOS, Android	Free with ads · VIP $34.99 every 6 months	The closest thing to what you lost
3	Serializd	Web, iOS, Android	Free	Writing about episodes
4	Hobi	iOS, Android	Free · Premium listed at $19.99 a year	Phone-first tracking
5	Moviebase	Android	Free with ads · paid tier, price not published	Android, film and television together
6	Episode Club	Web	Free	Talking about the episode you just finished

What each one actually does

1
Trakt
What it does well
The biggest and most mature of the six, and the one everything else plugs into. A large family of third-party apps and players sync to Trakt — it calls them Community Apps — so a history kept here follows you between players instead of living inside one company’s app. It tracks film as well as television, it has imported TV Time exports since November 2024, and it has had opt-in spoiler protection since 2016: switch it on and titles, descriptions, ratings and comments blur for anything you have not watched.
What it costs
Free to use, with a paid VIP tier. Trakt standardised VIP at $60 a year in May 2025, ending the older $15 and $30 legacy rates. Its own announcement confirms the standardisation without printing the figure and trakt.tv blocks automated readers, so the $60 here comes from the press coverage rather than from Trakt’s pricing page.
What it does not do
The free tier is much tighter than it was: 250 watchlist items, 5 personal lists, 250 items per list, 10,000 ratings and 100 notes, announced in February 2026 with a note that most were not yet enforced. Since July 2026 a free account can connect only one Community App at a time — the exact thing free accounts were most used for. And the spoiler protection is off until you go and find it in settings.
Checked against: Trakt Forums, 27 February 2026 — updating Trakt limits for 2026 · Trakt Forums, 22 July 2026 — an update to Community App connections · Trakt Forums — how to hide spoiler comments · AlternativeTo, 14 May 2025 — Trakt moves all VIP renewals to one rate · AlternativeTo, 21 November 2024 — Trakt’s TV Time importer
2
Simkl
What it does well
The nearest match to TV Time’s shape: television, film and anime in one account, apps across platforms, and importers for a long list of services including a TV Time importer that reads the export archive directly. Its PRO tier can be earned instead of bought — Simkl gives a free year to anyone who opens it on 20 days in a month.
What it costs
The free tier is ad-supported. VIP is billed twice a year at $34.99 every six months, per Simkl’s own billing FAQ. Simkl does not publish the PRO price anywhere in the documentation we could read, and its pricing page blocks automated readers, so we are not going to guess at it.
What it does not do
The free tier carries ads and cannot create custom lists; a private profile, CSV backup and advanced filtering are all paid. Its TV Time importer needs the archive you were meant to request before 15 July — nobody can produce one now. We found no per-episode discussion.
Checked against: Simkl documentation — billing FAQ · Simkl documentation — Free, PRO and VIP compared · Simkl documentation — importing from TV Time
3
Serializd
What it does well
Letterboxd for television, and it makes no apology for being only that. Ratings and written reviews on every show, season and episode, a diary, lists, and a community that reads each other’s reviews the moment an episode airs. It runs on the web, iPhone and Android, it publishes a TV Time import route, and there is no paid tier at all.
What it costs
Nothing. Serializd says every feature is free, and its App Store listing prices the app at free with no subscription shown. That listing does declare that the app collects usage data for advertising and analytics.
What it does not do
Television only — no film tracking. Reviews are public and land as soon as an episode airs, so keeping clear of a spoiler is your job rather than the app’s. No two-way sync with other trackers that we could find.
Checked against: Serializd — its TV Time import page · Serializd on the App Store
4
Hobi
What it does well
The most polished phone tracker of the six, and the one that most visibly went after TV Time’s refugees: a free TV Time import that brings ratings across, two-way Trakt sync, film tracking since version 3, a calendar and a home-screen widget. Built by two founders with no outside investment, which they say plainly on their own front page.
What it costs
Free to use. Premium lifts the free cap on films and adds the widget, calendar sync, custom reminder timing, back-dating a watch, and advanced sorting with a watchlist archive, after a seven-day trial. Hobi does not publish the price on its own site; the App Store listing shows a yearly Premium at $19.99.
What it does not do
Phones only — no web version is advertised, so there is nothing to open on a laptop. Free accounts have a cap on how many films they can track and the number is not published anywhere we could find. There is no discussion inside the app; the community it points you at is a subreddit.
Checked against: Hobi — what Hobi Premium includes · Hobi on the App Store
5
Moviebase
What it does well
A tidy, long-running Android tracker covering film and television, with two-way Trakt sync, its own cloud sync, and TMDB metadata behind it. If you are on Android and want one app for both, it does that job without fuss.
What it costs
Free with advertising, plus a paid tier. Neither Moviebase’s own site nor any source we could reach states what that tier costs or exactly what it adds beyond removing the ads, so we have left it blank rather than invented a figure.
What it does not do
Android only — no iPhone app and no web version, so your list is stuck on one phone. No community or discussion of any kind; it is a private ledger by design.
Checked against: Moviebase — its own site
6
Episode Club
This is us
What it does well
Every episode has its own room — reactions, stickers, threaded replies and a poll on how it landed — and the room stays shut until you check that episode in. The gate is on for every new account rather than buried in settings, and the same rule governs the rest: “catch me up” rebuilds the story from your own check-ins and stops dead at your progress. The importer reads both TV Time export generations plus Netflix, AniList and MyAnimeList, and duplicate rows arrive as real rewatches instead of being collapsed into one.
What it costs
Free. Tracking and community are free forever. Episode Club Plus, which adds unlimited AI and deeper statistics, is $0 while we are in beta; we expect it to become a paid add-on later, at a price published on our pricing page before anyone is charged.
What it does not do
The honest list is the longest on this page. Web only — no iPhone or Android app. No Trakt sync and no public API, so nothing else in your setup can talk to it. No film tracking screens yet, though a film history imports and is kept. Nothing on your profile is private yet: any signed-in member can see your shelf. And it is new and small, so on most episodes you will be the first one in the room.

Does anything else hide comments until you have watched?

Yes. Trakt does, and we did not know that before writing this page. Trakt has offered spoiler protection since 2016: turn it on and unwatched episodes, shows and films blur their titles, descriptions, ratings and comments, and a comment can be flagged as a spoiler or wrapped in spoiler tags line by line.

So the gap is narrower than our own marketing would like. What is genuinely ours is the default and the shape: the gate is on for every new Episode Club account rather than waiting to be found in settings, the unit is a room for one episode with its own poll, reactions and threaded replies rather than a comment list, and the recap and discussion prompts stop at the same pointer. If a setting you switch on once is all you wanted, Trakt has done that for a decade and does it well.

Trakt Forums — how to hide spoiler comments

Can I still get my TV Time history out?

No. The export ran through gdpr.tvtime.com and had to be requested before 15 July 2026. The site is offline and the accounts are deleted, so there is nothing left to request. Trakt, Simkl, Serializd, Hobi and Episode Club all read a TV Time export — every one of them needs a file you already have. If you saved the archive it still works years from now. If you did not, no app on this page can recover your history, and any that says it can is worth being suspicious of.

Whip Media — the official TV Time shutdown notice · TechCrunch, 2 July 2026 — TV Time is shutting down

What we could not check

Trakt’s VIP price. trakt.tv blocks automated readers, so $60 a year comes from press coverage of Trakt’s May 2025 announcement, not from Trakt’s own pricing page.
Simkl’s PRO price, which appears nowhere in the documentation we could read.
Moviebase’s paid tier — neither its price nor exactly what it unlocks is stated on Moviebase’s own site.
Hobi’s Premium price, which is on the App Store listing but not on Hobi’s own site, and the size of its free film cap, which nobody publishes.
The detail of Serializd’s TV Time import. Serializd publishes a page for it, but the page would not open to an automated reader, so we have described it as existing and nothing more.
Whether Simkl or Moviebase have any per-episode discussion. We found none — which is not the same as there being none.

Sources

Every claim above traces to one of these. Prices are in US dollars and change without notice — check before you pay anybody, including us.

TV Time, Trakt, Simkl, Serializd, Hobi and Moviebase are the trademarks of their respective owners. Episode Club is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any of them, and nobody paid for a place on this page.

If the room is the part you want

Episode Club is free, it reads the TV Time archive you saved, and it takes about two minutes to find out whether the gate is as good as it sounds. If one of the other five suits you better, that is a fine outcome — everything above is the whole argument we have.

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